Are You Guilty of “Kardashian Editing” Your Facebook Page?

Recently, I’ve seen many a study explaining how Facebook is making people (especially teens) more depressed. The studies theorize that it’s because when we scroll through our newsfeed and see all of our friends’ smiling photos, nausea inducing “My husband’s so perfect” status updates and check-ins to the coolest clubs and restaurants, we assume that there’s something missing in our lives.

In all actuality, Facebook is just our lives edited. Some of us are skillful about it, others not so much.

Think about it, just like a reality show, the raw footage of our lives is pretty mundane: we get up, go to work, come home, go to sleep.

There are the people who post every moment of their existence to Facebook…yawn…but most of us are editors, crafting our Facebook pages into what our vision of our life should be. I call it “Kardashian editing”.

Why am I picking on the Kardashians? Well, unlike most other reality stars, their mom, Kris Jenner, is one of the executive producers of their reality shows. This means she has final say over what’s used and not used from the hundreds of hours of raw footage. By having that power, she can make her family look like the innocent victims, the heroes, remove unflattering angles….the list goes on. So in reality, their reality, isn’t really reality.

When we Kardashian edit our lives, we only upload or tag the photos we look smoking hot in, only publicize our check-ins when we’re somewhere enviable, and spend tons of time crafting the perfect status update. In other words, just like the Kardashians cut and edit their reality show to make themselves appear in the best light possible, we do the same to our lives in Facebook. The ones who take it to the extreme, are typically the ones who make us feel like our lives suck.

So next time you’re on Facebook and see your friend’s seemingly perfect photos, remember that for every one sexy duck lip photo, there were probably 10 others that didn’t make the cut. And those flowers your best friend’s boyfriend just bought? She probably didn’t mention she got them because they had the argument of all arguments the day before.

In the end, we all have our ups and downs…don’t be fooled by the Kardashians.