You don’t have to look far for warnings and admonitions regarding the use of social media, and its effects on our psyche are well-documented. Everyone’s talking about it. If you search “negative effects of social media,” the first link is to a listing of academic articles from the scholarly side of Google. From time to time, a post crosses my digital path. I click, I read, and then—inevitably—I have an anxiety-filled debate with myself about whether I should purge my Facebook account or not. When I did some poking around to write this post, I discovered that psychological researchers from Norway have even developed a scale for measuring Facebook addiction. (I won’t say whether I took their test or not…)

I’m sure people from all walks of life would agree, but from the perspective of a single person, I find my relationship with social media troublesome at times. I primarily use Facebook, and I have a comparatively small number of friends on the site. Only a handful of these are singles without children, so I end up scrolling through pic after pic after pic of cute kids. I read status after status after status about the silly things the kids did, the latest milestone, how #blessed a woman is because of her awesome husband. Sometimes, I click on my own profile after scrolling through miles of families and it seems so empty, no matter how many posts I’ve made.

This leads me to question why I’m on the site. I created an account so I could keep up with friends since so many people choose to share news through their feeds instead of face to face. Even a phone call or a text is too much for some, and given the way our society is structured, it makes sense. When we’re all so spread out, from the layout of our cities to the layout of the cubicles in our offices, a single Facebook status provides an easy way to alert all the people who matter to us of changes in our lives.

We’re social creatures. It’s fun to share memories, moments, and thoughts with others. But what happens too often is that most of what we choose to share is positive. We create a sanitized version of our lives, and other people don’t get to see our mess. If those other people are like me, they struggle with feeling like their lives aren’t good enough by comparison. Maybe we should all give more consideration to what we post, but ultimately, when we’re on the receiving end, when we’re the ones scrolling through the cute pics and the happy hashtags, we are responsible for our own reactions.

This whole post was prompted by a verse I read in Romans the other night:

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. (Rom 12:15)

All too often when I see others rejoicing, I weep for myself. I grieve that I don’t get to experience the joy of raising kids. I mourn not having a companion with whom to share my days and nights. I start listening to Satan’s lies; I think God has left me behind because he hasn’t seen fit to bless me with a family of my own. I forget that those #blessed women are just like me in that they’re choosing to share the best, the happiest moments from their lives. Just like I post a picture of a friend and me doing something I love like checking out a small town coffee shop that roasts their own beans instead of a screenshot of the show I’m binge watching on Netflix while I sit by myself in my bed eating a bowl of ice cream, my Facebook friends post happy moments instead of the kids’ screaming fit or a transcript of an argument with their spouse (and the people who would post the latter aren’t people whose lives I’d like to imitate).

It’s up to me not to let others’ happiness ruin my own. Even if they all have lives full of sunshine and rainbows–which I know isn’t true–it would demonstrate an ugly mix of narcissism and envy to resent them for it.

If you’re like me and you tend to let social media affect you negatively, remember Paul’s admonition. Share in the joys and sorrows of others. It’s much healthier and it might even help you remember some of the blessings in your own life. There’s so much bad news everywhere and we all tend to complain way too much, so taking a moment to celebrate a good moment isn’t a bad thing.

What are your thoughts on this?