Snapchat Story Of My Life

Cogito ergo sum is probably the most famous philosophical phrase in the world. Perhaps though, had René Descartes been born 400 years later, he’d have coined the Latin translation for “I Snapchat, therefore I do”, because you’d be hard pressed to find someone who misses an opportunity to show off how interesting their life is on social media.

It seems our generation has latched onto Snapchat like a barnacle to a wrecked ship, and there’s little indication that we’ll relinquish our hold on the app anytime soon. There’s an interesting discussion to be had about why we find Snapchat, and indeed social media generally, so addictive and why it plays such a significant role in our lives. If you ask a particularly curmudgeonly middle-aged person, they might tell you it’s because we’re a generation of narcissists who can’t go a day without the approval of our peers. On the flip side, a logical person might tell you that it’s due to the rush of dopamine we get when we feel the buzz in our pockets that signifies someone’s interest in us. As a compulsive social media user, I like to think it’s the latter so that I can paint myself as a victim of low self-esteem, though I fear it’s probably a combination of the two.

It is this exact informality that perpetuates the unshakeable perception that everyone else is out having fun and doing great things whilst you remain, quite frankly, a bit boring…

Snapchat stories, like all social media platforms, provide only the highlight reel of somebody’s life. You can’t check Snapchat in the morning without seeing five people’s nights out. You can’t check it after dinner without seeing another five eating out. You won’t be able to check your phone on Christmas Day without seeing 25 presents more valuable than yours, and because you’ve little chance of remembering who did what, it all blends into a big, amorphous bubble of fun you can’t compete with.

This is most pronounced on Instagram, as we have somehow all collectively agreed this is the platform society cares most about. On Snapchat though, things are a bit more casual and a lot more fun. And yet it is this exact informality that perpetuates the unshakeable perception that everyone else is out having fun and doing great things whilst you remain, quite frankly, a bit boring.

Social media isn’t going anywhere any time soon…

It would be easy at this point to say that you should delete Snapchat, throw your phone in a river, run for the hills and live like a Buddhist monk. If that were realistic, I would. Alas, as I said at the start of this article, social media isn’t going anywhere any time soon. The only solution is to bear in mind that it’s natural to only want to show the best bits of your life. Everyone knows that nobody is interested in the bowl of coco pops you had for breakfast, but people might be interested in the four-course banquet you had for your mum’s birthday dinner. No one cares you watched Made in Chelsea then went to bed at 10pm, but they might care that you saw Drake and got home at 4am.

Not in the mundane, perhaps in the extraordinary; but that doesn’t mean the mundane doesn’t exist.