Recently I’ve been thinking about how to organise my social media life. What to post, where to post, how to post.
This led me reflect about two particular questions, and I though I would write my thoughts in this blog.
The first question is, where is the line between the private things that you shouldn’t post on social media and the things that you can post and make public?
I have two Instagram profiles. One of them is public. It’s my main profile, where I post pictures of the fun things I do in my life and the places I see. The other one is private, and it’s what I call the “spam” profile. I only use it for my close friends to tell funny stories or just yap about things nobody else would care about. Especially now that I moved to a different country, it’s a fun way to update all of my closest friends on how things are going. So it’s just a profile to capture much more moments of my daily life than with my public profile.
But there are some people that manage to make their private life “publishable”, if that makes sense. Like some people romanticise whatever goes on in their life, or even in their brain, and manage to create this amazing whimsical atmosphere on their social media page. Whether it’s a YouTube channel or an Instagram page. An example of this is the Italian content creator Anna Bonvicini (her YouTube channel is Anna Bonvi). Her videos manage to comfort me like few other things. She records the most boring moments of her life to show how boredom can be such an inspiration to create art. My favourite video on her channel is about her quarantine days during the covid times, together with her girlfriend. I’m literally watching these two girls doing the most random and normal things, at least at that time (cooking and ordering food, a workout session, minigames, a covid test…) and yet I feel so immersed and I suddenly wish I had those moments as well.
Some people manage to show on their profile that little things in life are a lot more worthy than we think, portraying those moments in the most artistic way possible. Even some of my friends on their private profiles do that.
I aspire to create something like this on my socials: a safe place for me and for other people to just enjoy little things in life. But that also comes with some sort of commitment to make our profile look actually pretty and enjoyable.
And here comes the second question. Why do we care so much about how our social media profiles look?
There might be some people reading this and thinking “no I actually don’t care at all”, but we can’t deny that it’s a common thing to spend hours trying to understand what picture to post, or what to write in our bio. For me personally, it is a part of my life, and I want it to be organised and sorted out like the rest. Of course, it’s not the priority, but it bothers me that I can never find a moment to make my Instagram profile look a bit more pretty and “tidy” (right now, in my opinion, it looks pretty incoherent).
But sometimes I wonder why do I and other people spend hours thinking about what to post in hope that other people will like it as well. Of course, I post what I want to and what I like, but I’ve also tried so many different ways to capture the little moments like I said in the previous paragraph. But sometimes I ask myself, can I just not think about it so much?
I feel like it’s pretty natural. I always feel like I’m performing when I’m posting on my public profile. And let’s face it, it is a performance. So we want our performance to look good. But I feel like the more we overthink about how we perform, the most stressful we make it. And we definitely can’t create a “chill and cozy” profile that’s supposed to be a safe place, if we’re stressed.
Social media should be something fun and entertaining, especially for people who don’t use them for a living. So we should be able to be ourselves and express ourselves in ways that are comfortable and spontaneous for us.
What should be private and what can be public in one’s life really depends on the person. And same goes for how much effort you put in your profile. Everyone performs in a different way and the way others perform shouldn’t influence ours.
Anna Bonvicini’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@anna_bonvi (her video are in Italian, but you can watch them for the vibes).
I used to feel the same way whenever I used social media. I was pretty addicted to it, but at the same time, it made me feel lonely. I often felt jealous seeing people traveling around the world while I was just sitting in my room. Yet, I didn’t want to overshare my own life either…I felt that people didn’t need to understand how I was feeling. Sometimes I was overwhelmed, unsure about what I should or shouldn’t post.
But recently, I’ve started to realize that it doesn’t really matter what other people are sharing. I don’t need to know what their lives look like. Instead, I try to focus on planning trips, spending time with loved ones, and putting my phone aside. Staying positive and being present makes me feel so much healthier — especially mentally.