Rabbi Katzenstein continues,
“One of the reasons we get caught up in the rat race of life is the phenomenon that we’ll call social comparison. Social comparison is a natural human tendency. It's fairly normal and natural to compare ourselves to those around us. We live within a particular culture,community or society, and it's only natural to look around and ask ourselves how we measure up. But it can also be a trap that leads to negative emotions such as envy or jealousy, and even low self-esteem.
So how do we avoid getting caught up in social comparisons? The first way, and this may seem obvious, but needs to be said, is by limiting our social media use. Social media is a breeding ground for social comparison. It's so easy for us to get caught up in the ‘highlight reels’ of other people's lives and feel like we're not measuring up.
If we limit our social media use, or perhaps even uninstall, take a break, avoid, or delete our social media accounts, we may notice a positive uptick in how we feel about ourselves.
We now know that it’s not just a correlation, but there’s an actual cause and effect connection between the increase in social media use and the increase in mental health struggles like anxiety and depression. And it's understandable.
If we see how other people are seemingly living their lives in this grand, fantastic, awesome way, then we're going to feel pretty bad about ourselves because we're not living those lives. And what research shows, that's actually pretty interesting, is that even when we know that it's fake, that the lives that so-called influencers are projecting to us aren’t real, even when we know it's a façade, nonetheless, it still causes us to feel those negative emotions like envy, jealousy, low self-esteem and feeling like we don’t measure up. Again, even when we know it's fake, it still causes us to feel like we're not measuring up.”