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Instagram is the Key to Happiness

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Becky Instagram

Imagine a magical machine that gives meaning to your life, manifests your memories and remains forever accessible and unchanging; no pernicious second-guessing or drastic reinterpretation of the past allowed. This machine helps you construct a narrative of who you are, what you value, what obstacles you have overcome and what you are hoping and dreaming for.

Surprise! This machine exists. It’s Instagram.

Hear me out…

There are a number of negative things to say about Instagram and the experience of social media. Our default perspective when surfing through our social networks is one of the outsider-looking-in. We stalk our friends and frenemies and gawk at their life events, like small children with their noses pressed against the candy shop window. We relish every like and favorite, living out each day in a soft, fuzzy miasma of supposed validation, basking in the knowledge that if others are stalking and gawking at us, then we must be living desirable lives. #Phew.

But this way of living — watching others and watching, ever more carefully, how others are watching us — creates a damaging narrative of flailing autonomy. We live with our minds external from ourselves. Rather than being connected to our souls, our brains float out alone in cyberspace, plugged in only to the signals and noise of the online lives of other people. We react, we idealize and we envy. We lack a solid, inner core making us who we are. Instead, we define ourselves by what we post vis a vis what other people post. We are discontent, anxious, frustrated. Suddenly, we are really angry. Our only recourse is to vent online, perpetuating the cycle.

It doesn’t have to be this way. What I have found is that Instagram, in particular, and when used with confidence and savvy, provides a way out of the social media spin zone and helps point us toward a more authentic method of engaging with the world and ourselves. Here’s what you have to do:

To read the rest – head over to LifeScoop!

Logo LifeScoop Intel

photos above are from my Instagram, including a fab regram of me and Jess from @thestyleline

The post Instagram is the Key to Happiness appeared first on The Gaggle.


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