By Lauren Havens | LTVN Broadcast Reporter
I wonder how different I would be if I had grown up without an algorithm watching me grow up too.
I got on social media my freshman year of high school. At an age when I was already trying to figure out who I was, I suddenly had thousands of people showing me who I could be.
At first, the time spent online felt like self discovery. My style changed, the way I presented myself changed, and even parts of the way I acted changed. I slowly started to lose unique qualities that made me, me. That is the strange thing about growing up with an algorithm. At some point, my feed stopped showing me things I might like and started showing me who I thought I should be.
The problem is that millions of other people were experiencing the same thing. We are told our feeds are personalized, yet somehow we all know what shoes are popular, carry around the same water bottles and stop wearing a certain top or jacket that is no longer “cool”. Life online has become a constant game of catch up, and it often makes me feel one step behind.
For teenagers and young adults specifically, I think that this cycle can disrupt figuring out who you actually are. Navigating through life as you grow is already difficult, and adding social media to the mix creates a constant stream of comparison.
Maturing is supposed to be awkward. You are supposed to experiment with interesting clothes and music, and have fun in the moment. Those experiences are what develops someone’s personal taste. But lately, social media is giving us an outline before we even have the chance to build ourselves.
I do not think that means everything we discover online is fake. Some of the things social media introduced me to became genuine parts of who I am. The internet can expose us to people, ideas and styles we never would have encountered otherwise.
But there is a difference between discovery and following. Do you still wear something after TikTok says it’s uncool? Do you still listen to the artist when the song stops trending?
I think I have become much more comfortable answering those questions as I have gotten older. My interests don’t always make sense together, and my style doesn’t need to fit perfectly into a certain aesthetic. There are things I love that I discovered online and things I love despite the internet telling me they are no longer cool.
There is nothing wrong with participating in trends or finding inspiration. The danger comes when keeping up becomes so demanding that we never stop long enough to ask whether we actually wanted to keep up in the first place. Sometimes finding yourself might require allowing the algorithm to get you wrong.
