Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life

So the identity you formulate online actually becomes your personal key into this matrix.

opinion, I feel the space has become too hostile for me to express myself in.

actual grit, sacrifice, pain or determination, social media is a fairy tale in which the mundane doesn’t figure.

The hypocrisy is stunning – all sorts of sexually charged images of girls in bikinis revealing their derrieres and hoicked-up cleavages are fine, but a woman feeding her child in the most nonsexual setting possible is somehow unacceptable.

I realised how complicit I was in the mass glamorization of our lives; it started to make me feel really culpable.

Instead of diversity and originality, what the majority of people on social media appear to want is more of the same. Conformity is rewarded by both the community and the system – what we “like” most drives the algorithms, which in turn feed us more indistinguishable content which we happily consume.

Anna Whitehouse, the journalist behind the @mother_pukka Instagram account and the Flex Appeal campaign – which aims to eradicate maternity discrimination in the workforce and encourage flexible working for both mothers and fathers

‘influence’ has taken on some quite sinister connotations over the past couple of years, and the idea of people quietly swaying our behaviour and making people buy stuff doesn’t feel positive at all. But I just thought, why can’t I use the platform to influence change – not just for me, but also for my daughters?

story entitled “The Goddess Myth”, most of the women surveyed said a natural birth was extremely or very important, yet 43 per cent ended up needing drugs or an epidural, and 22 per cent had unplanned C-sections. Is it any wonder they might feel as if they’d failed?