Anxiety and Identity With Social Media

Sometimes choosing yourself goes against what should be done, which makes things messy — this is the human experience. There were many instances where I lost myself just to choose myself again, like I had to forget what I was really like in order to remember. Sometimes I act in ways I hate, not out of weakness, but to show myself what I'm not. Maybe to prove strength, to end up being indifferent to the feeling. To understand what it takes to be a certain way. To even make sense of what I'm feeling in the first place, ways we as humans don’t even have the answers to. Each day we keep pushing towards something that should just be felt and understood, and not a cheeky line that answers everything and all the above. It will never just click, it’s unending. 

It sounds like a long way, but losing yourself can be part of finding yourself. The detours aren't always mistakes — sometimes they're the only way to understand where you actually stand, or shouldn’t. You drift, and the discomfort of being somewhere unfamiliar tells you more about home than staying put ever could. I wouldn’t know I’m still drifting, still stagnant.

And even when you want to abandon yourself — when it feels easier to just go along, to shrink, to become whoever the moment is asking for… you can never be that. Something keeps surfacing. True colours aren't just a saying. They're almost a force, what can also be described as anxiety medically. Identity doesn't just wait for your permission to show up. It makes itself known in the things you can't quite let go of, in the moments where you surprise yourself, in the quiet resistance you didn't plan on having.

You don't always protect your identity from the start. Sometimes you understand what it is only after you've watched yourself betray it. 

I knew who I was before social media came about. I wasn't happier the more it trickled in — I was less settled, less sure of what was real.

I remember when Facebook first arrived, my stomach was in a whirlwind. Not excitement, just unease. People already didn’t like me, why would they like the online me? Something about it felt like a question humanity wasn't ready to answer: how much of yourself do you put out there, and what happens to what's left? Were people even who they said they were? I wasn't sure it was safe. Not in a paranoid way, but in a deeper sense. Safe for us. For who we were trying to be, or becoming.

And then I started seeing it. I'd have a whole conversation with someone online — open, warm, like we understood each other — and then see them in person and feel like I was meeting a stranger. Same name, same face, different being. We're friends? Maybe. It doesn't feel like it in real life. That gap unsettled me more than I could explain at the time. 

It started as a mask — and masks, at first, feel like freedom. You could say things you didn't want to say out loud. Feel things without having to act on them. Try on versions of yourself with lower stakes. That part almost made sense.

But then the mask stopped coming off. What began as a tool for expression became a replacement for it. People weren't using the internet to say what they couldn't say in person — they were becoming someone online who the person in real life could never quite live up to. The performance and the person drifted apart, and most people didn't notice because everyone around them was doing the same thing.

That's what I mean when I say the meta mask took place. It wasn't just individuals hiding behind screens. It became the whole architecture: the likes, the profiles, the curated versions of a life. Identity stopped being something you lived and became something you managed.

Managing your identity is not the same as managing your schedule or your self-care routine. I want to be clear about that, because I'm not talking about people who haven't figured themselves out yet, or who live differently than I do. I'm not saying they aren't living fulfilling lives. I'm not calling anyone dumb or uncool. And I'm not sitting here pretending I'm above it, or that jealousy has nothing to do with anything. That would miss the point entirely.

What I'm saying is simpler and harder than that.

I can't go back and recover the followers I lost, I can’t go back to tattooing without the numbers, having to start from scratch in an industry that's built on popularity and exposure online. I can't go back to elementary school and put more effort into building friendships outside of what I was given. Most of those situations weren't cooperative to begin with — I'd be sitting there genuinely wondering what was wrong with me, or what was wrong with them, with no real way to tell the difference. If you didn't want to participate in something, if you opted out of something, it was like hitting a real-life dislike button. You just became less, everything is a spectacle. And that quiet social penalty shaped things whether you wanted it to or not.

All of it sucked. But it wasn't my fault, and it wasn't theirs either. That's what maturing actually feels like — not getting over it, but arriving at the place where blame stops being useful. It was just a bad time to grow up in. A transitional moment that nobody had a guide for.

And then there are dating apps. I don't think people talk honestly enough about how unnatural that is. Not just inconvenient… unnatural. Really cuts the chances of people who wanna date naturally. Because now everyone who wants to meet someone the old way, the human way, is competing with an infinite scroll of profiles with perfectly curated information, beautiful photos that can take your breath away. Or a life that looks good on page, just fabricated to get you in bed, how horrible and deceiving.

The instinct to be present, to let something develop, to just let the brain flip a switch the way it's supposed to — that instinct gets crowded out. You're not meeting a person anymore. You're making a selection, based on a profile, on an initial reaction. And that changes something in how the whole thing feels, even when it works. Or possibly makes the category even smaller since you are against the whole concept.

Everything feels out of place, all of this feels unnatural. That’s what the future is now, it’s unnatural. There’s so much displacement. There’s so many knots left untangled, there’s so many issues, inconveniences, and hard walls you walk right into.

If you don’t act when you’re younger, you’re only going to be stuck in the future, this is the very hard truth — if you don’t know what you want to be, what you want to do in life. Life will never stop for you, life will never wait for you to get your shit together, even if you’re sick. If you don’t build that world, make it grow, if you don’t get a chance to see how fruitful you can be in life I apologize, because this shouldn’t ever be the case. Social media has done great things for people, and I’m happy that worked out for them, but I can’t say I’ve had the best experiences. I’m not as optimistic as I used to be, about all areas in my life. I don’t have the numbers. The stats. Even real life connections.

I often wonder how popular I’d be if I just was doing what everyone else was doing. If I grew up prettier, if I looked a different way — maybe dyed my hair, if my voice sounded differently. Wasting less time wishing I didn't feel the way I felt inside. I’d be happier with more money, I’d be happier if I was someone else, these are truths, but you can never change that, and the world won’t change for you to fit in either.

What you're left with is yourself. The same self that kept surfacing no matter how many times you tried to push it away. And maybe that's not the hopeful ending people want… but it's the honest one.