It’s not exactly difficult to see the predicament we young people find ourselves in. Lift your head from your device at any bus stop and you might even be lucky enough to catch the glint of drool dispensing from a teenager’s mouth as they scroll endlessly. Between the phone and the EarPods they are most likely wearing, a kind of defence is drawn up, an alternative reality is created.
This isn’t to blame young people, of course. Rates of anxiety and depression diagnoses, as Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU has shown, have more than doubled between 2010 and 2018. These conditions, amongst others, lay, for the most part, at the feet of social media companies for whom it is a job well done if they can keep your eyeballs stuck to their platforms through whatever desperate measures required. I write here, though, not about the problematic features of social media, but of one resultant problem which I worry is becoming more pervasive than we as a society might want to admit.
This is the problem of the ”perfect” life, the life we perceive as perfect online. It’s clear to see how social media has suited the role of raising expectations of young people. We see the lives of others at their best, and our endless imaginations need only a picture to create an ever-expanding vision of what living the good life looks like, and consequently, an ever-frequent reminder that the life that belongs to us is fundamentally misshapen. This has driven- as researcher Dr Thomas Curry has shown- perfectionistic tendencies to have risen by 33% amongst young people from 1989-2017.
It’s not just social media that is responsible for this rise in unrealistic ideals. As a society, we have subtly built an ideal person which all of us- but particularly the young- have unknowingly bought into. This person is wealthy, but not so much as to be out of touch. They have a career that is important, and endlessly relevant. They work hard, but not so much as to not be able to comfortably fit in their strict exercise regime, their charity work, meditation practice, and most importantly, this person finds the time to let everyone know about it. But, of course, they mustn’t try so hard as to be inauthentic, for this would shatter the dream.
"They work hard, but not so much as to not be able to comfortably fit in their strict exercise regime, their charity work, meditation practice, and most importantly, this person finds the time to let everyone know about it."
Knowing this, even on some level, we give ourselves over to either the constant pursuit of the ideal life and are perpetually disappointed that we fail to live up to a life that seems to be so effortless and achievable for some, when somehow our attempts are fruitless.
Alternatively, we resign ourselves to the screen, the drool, the pity and indeed the guilt. One thing, though, that I have always found interesting about this is the ability for people to create an entirely separate identity in their minds for the perfect person on the screen who seemingly requires such admiration. Even if we happen to know the person we admire and envy in equal measure, we somehow take their life online to be a better account of them. As we personalise these online profiles, we begin to idealise them not just in the terms of their behaviours and actions, but we start to assume, in a wholly reductionist way, that there must somehow be some parity between the lives presented externally and their inner mental life.
"...but we start to assume, in a wholly reductionist way, that there must somehow be some parity between the lives presented externally and their inner mental life."
Herein lies our problem. Our obsession with the perfect has engrossed us into the mental lives of those we admire, we no longer just believe that these “perfect” people are living perfectly, but that their minds must be as spotless as their kitchen. Their minds must be devoid of judgement, they must have endless energy, they must be happy. The grip that thisparticular facet of comparison has on our lives is palpable. It’s not just a coincidence, for instance, that the online productivity influencers who seem to have mastered time itself, are also eager to inform you that happiness is a choice, and that perhaps if you can somehow apprehend these thoughts and dispose of them, or manipulate them, you can purify your mind (no doubt their discounted course will be necessary for such a task).
Two kinds of people, it seems to me, are capable of believing something of this sort: the desperate, and those who have bought into all the other varieties of comparison before reaching comparison at the level of the mind. This person is simply unable to distinguish sense from senselessness. The toxic relationship to one’s own mind starts to emerge as a result. Not only do we feel shameful that our thoughts are so imperfect, but we actively seek to try and mend this imperfection through some version of thought control. And when this inevitably fails, we feel even more shame. The notion of being perfect, or of living a life that is striving for perfection is prized in our society and is associated with, for instance; our best music, or our best leaders.
But its reach goes far beyond this, it has affected the minds, particularly of young people, who think they should be compared to a fictitious version of their idols. The reality, of course, is that our minds are all messy, flawed places where intrusive thoughts surprise us, and rash unwholesome judgments are frequently made. If there is a cure for this, it should closely follow the chain of the problem itself. The problem starts with an unfair presentation of how one should be living, so we need to be more belligerent in our attempts to show lives that are realistic and flawed, not just for our own schadenfreude, but as a way to counteract the endless visions of perfection we see in modern life. We need to lower our expectations of what a life well lived looks like. We can only hope that the saintly expectations of our minds will follow.