Everyone loves a good Snapchat filter.. I mean who doesn’t love that little puppy look and fire emoji crown?! But sometimes I feel as though we get swept away by the filters and stop sharing our real selves. When we are mindlessly scrolling through Instagram and clicking through the Snapchat stories, we are bombarded by edited pictures, filtered selfies, and only the best photos of the hundreds that were actually taken.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in living your best life. Wear that full face glam, winged liner and a cut-crease, show off those fresh photos with the bomb lighting. BUT, I believe that every once in a while, it’s nice to remind everyone what you look like un-edited, un-filtered, just raw you. These makeup tutorial guys and gals really do it good, they start their IG TV videos off fresh-faced and smiling, then show you a real glow up. But for a lot of us non-influencers, we tend to feel a pressure to keep the good look up 24/7. It’s no surprise, we’ve all heard “social media seriously harms your mental health” and there’s a solid reason behind that.

Not only are we just seeing edited and filter pictures, but we are constantly looking at ‘a filtered life’. I mean how many people do you follow that post about the shitty parts of their weeks, their bad hair days, or those unavoidable hormonal breakouts? I’m gonna go ahead and assume it’s slim to none (unless you’ve gone through all your followers and deleted everyone except for those few peeps who keep it real). Major props to any of you who do post about real life shit; it truly is hard to do and takes a lot of confidence. People constantly get backlash on social media for posting things, so why would anyone dare to post something that’s vulnerable or even embarrassing!? As Damien from Mean Girls would say “That’s social suicide!”. Everyone, including myself, are guilty of posting a filtered life. It’s what social media has become. It’s not casual anymore. It’s now a platform for people to show off the best parts of themselves and their lives, which again I don’t believe is a bad thing, by all means show us this best life you’re living, let’s celebrate that! But the point I’m trying to drive home, is even when we are living our best lives, there are sometimes parts of our lives that we try to hide or cover up. I want to help break the stigma that social media is just for posting only the best of the best, why not share our downfalls and fears? Why can’t we discuss more mental health issues? Why don’t we utilize this technology to reach out to other people in the world and give them a helping hand? People use social media as a platform for business, branding, marketing, and more. Why can’t we also use it for personal growth, emotional development, and promoting self esteem?