"Social life" or a gloomy array of expectations?

Awareness
Social
Research
Bhavya chetal
January 16th 2023

Today, all of us look around for some or the other kind of validation. But, does the hunger for validation from people who are not even concerned about us important? More importantly, does that form of validation lead us to our mental peace?
The kind of world we live in has made us enslaved to a big number of aspects, which mainly deal in the how laid back a human can be made. It is an evident fact that all of us have become stuck to our workplace seats, ever since the compulsion of usage of machines, like computers and mobile phones came into existence. While on one hand, it is a necessity of the new age of human evolution, on the other it is a big liability that we have created for ourselves. This is simply because of the kind of advancements that have come with the passing time, that have made it tedious for us to survive in this world even though we strive to do the deepest and most painful of efforts to achieve our goals.
What started this new series of problems for all of us, is the introduction of the human race to the concept of Social Media. The entire concept of social media and further their introduction in our smartphones as ‘APPLICATIONS’, was to connect people situated or residing overseas, seeking some way to communicate in a hassle-free way.
While such applications were simply not sufficing the needs of the growing technology those days, there came a need of applications with amplification of almost every aspect of conversation and then trying to develop it into an application to acter to the devastatingly increasing demands of humans from their smartphones. As these applications came into existence, they changed the etiology of the world ‘connection” and made it liable to many other problems that not only bothered human’s physical well-being but his mental well-being too.Earlier, when people became connected, it used to be a boon that people had never even thought of happening in such times. The kind of applications we have today, have made it more than difficult for a human to survive in this world today. We see Instagram, where people follow each other to connect, and are, likewise, “supposed” to keep their profiles updated, people have made it a platform to put their content, pictures, writings and no matter what in creative terms and then, “expect” their audiences to like it as much as possible. The word “expectation” comes in when we have some stand-ards to maintain and we are scared inside if we would be able to meet them or not. This is where the misery of this externally beautiful world of social media starts.
Many a youth, worldwide, have some kind of standards of their presence on the social media that they are supposed to meet, or they would be judged by their audiences. This is where everything becomes life-altering for all of us and makes it difficult for such young minds to survive. If I ask you to appear for an exam a month later alongside 100 others of your age and intellect, that would be based on a field that you are currently engaging yourself in, then, what kind of unconscious expectations would you set up for yourself?

You would have a benchmark in your mind that I need to be the best. You would work towards being the best out of those competing, because that is the unconscious expectation that I have set for you when I told you about the test you have to take. Similarly, the expectations for a person entering these social media platforms are set by the audience and the people who are the ones being catered to, with the content being produced and shared every minute and every second on these platforms. To go on with this, I would like you to pause for a minute and read a saying that I quote below.
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago… had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
Just recall all the situations in which you have made a choice to seek validation from someone. It is plausible that you might have taken such an approach many- a- times in your lives. But what really creates a difference is if you have tried to introduce a change to such a repetitive behaviour of yours.

On social media, the behaviour of people towards others becomes completely based upon their level of intelligence. This is because they want to quantify all that they see according to what is right in their books. Whereas, the people who are there on the social media, creating their content or posting stuff on their profiles should be given the complete space they need in order to maintain their mental peace that is eventually quite much based on their social acceptance level.
These days, people choose to be inconsiderate about other people’s feelings that makes it difficult for those who are on the radar to survive judgements of the former. Some comments and likes, might just make it a better day for someone because that person might feel loved seeing the number of likes. There is a big difference in seeking validation and seeking peace from one particular thing. But both of them involve expectations. Both these traits carry their own level of harm that they cause to our minds, once they become deeply rooted.

All of us have had several problems in our lives that have caused us being the kind of people we are today. This is indicative of the fact that the experiences we have had make us what we are. Consequently, many of our experiences among our childhood years, as stated by Freud, go deep down into our unconscious mind that makes it difficult to get those thoughts and cognitions out. But the fact to be noted is that, some of us experience such circumstances and deal with such problems and people that they make us vulnerable to opinions of others. Certain people, even reveal that they find it difficult for themselves to work without having appreciation coming from some particular people around us or those who hold higher authority over them. What makes it even more messed up is that such people, when on social media, become completely depressed when people start pushing them away or ‘trolling’ them because of some probable reasons like them being less beautiful or being less attractive.We forget that such situations make a person, who is already vulnerable to such comments from his/her followers, subject to a lot of mental health issues and a grave danger of having a mental disorder too. This entire subject of discussion does not carry a lot of significance because, when served with entertainment, people remained concerned with all the negative that goes on behind the screens and are least interested in the positive. This magnifies the negativity that the people on such platforms are introduced to. The youth today is simply expecting people to call their content ‘worthy of attention’, which is making it difficult for everyone to get into this hall of fame.
Expecting something leads to a lot of degradation of positivity and self-loathing. That is where the problem starts. When a person starts thinking about how well she/he is, the person starts detaching from his/her reality. It a very difficult state of mind and it makes a person drown into thoughts of deteriorating calm and self-doubt. When someone does not live up to our expectations, it becomes difficult for us to bear the fact that that person is not going to fulfil what we in our minds wanted him/her to do. Whereas, what we wanted them to do was not really stated by us in front of him/her in clear terms. How we express is a flawed concept in the Indian society, because here the parents have a rigid mentality where they think that what they say shall be imposed on their children. Parents believe that the education that children seek is given to them in their schools, whereas education is the understanding of the world we live in the understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Well, you might be amazed to read this, because Psychology says that there is nothing as right or wrong, and if it exists, then it truly does, provided it has been proven.

But, the understanding or a working knowledge of the world and how much of a dynamic place this world is, is what education means. Parents fail to understand that they are making their own children dependent on some source of validation by making them seek validation for everything they do. If the child wins a medal, she/he is likely to be appreciated. If that does not happen, the child is likely to be pushed to his/her limits until what the parents want is achieved. Children need to be versatile enough, mentally, to know what is right or wrong, and most importantly what stands as the best choice among those presented in situations of stress, that demand high order judgment skills.
Children, on the other hand, are growing individuals who have a completely different approach towards life due to an atmosphere free of dependence that they live in. metaphorically, these children are dependent on their parents’ opinions for everything because they are programmed in their initial years to be this way. When they grow up, they still want someone to guide them and tell them what stand as right or wrong for them. They become spineless and that is where the influence of technology sets in. when such individuals try to seek the validation which they don’t know, is deeply rooted in their minds, creates a completely new set of problems for them that they do not know whom to consult with. In this new age of technology and a completely different spectrum of socialising, the children need to know how to cope through what they actually term as ‘social life’.
Where we stand and where we head towards, is what defines us and our thoughts. The entire concept of expecting is flawed because there is no individual in this world who has gotten anything upon expecting. While individuals tend to make this mistake, people who expect certain other people to live up to their expectations in terms of the kind of social life they have, is very much a contributor to the current state of the youth in our country, talking in the context.Our lives revolve around what we want them to be, influenced by our needs, and taken down by our wants. Similarly, the kind of expectations we keep from others and how we want them to behave makes it difficult for them to survive around us too.
By expecting people to behave in certain ways, somewhat based on the social protocol, we make them subject to a lot of suffering that is internal and that remains dormant until it has reached a destructive stage.
There is not much that can be done in such a situation by anyone except the closest support the person has. There is a lot of loss of empathy that can be seen among all of us these days which is the root cause of such problems being caused to a person. The best treatment for such a person is to try their best to see a therapist that can heal the person from the root to the epithelium and make it all better.
For that matter, expectations are a ruse and should be kept from those who really stand for what we exist as. Taking things seriously is right, but if we do that 24x7, it might just kill the aura we have cultivated and what we have processed ourselves to develop into. I would request everyone to tread lightly with whomsoever they feel is not up to the mark, because we never what insecurities and state of mind a person might carry at a given point of time. Try and ease it out instead of making it even more difficult for someone. It can heal others. A hand that reaches out can truly do wonders.
For those who feel they would drown into their insecurities, always carry a hope to do what is in your capacity and try bringing your best out. The outcome and appreciation are the results that matter only if we let them influence us. Tread lightly with yourself and do not become harsh just because you did not succeed this time. It not the end of this world and there is nothing like a failure. If you learn from falls, and remember the heights, you shine bright.