Your Everyday Girl

Every time I grab my phone, I open up Instagram. It was a bad habit five years ago, it has turned into a stupid habit now. I close the app down pretty quickly, but sometimes I can’t stop scrolling. And I continue to scroll, until I’ve lost an hour of time…sometimes two.

When I’m on Instagram, I end up watching videos about health, pilates, glow ups, vacation destinations, places to try out next, the best food in town, and I never forget to look at new eye cream recommendations.

I’m spiralling, if you couldn’t tell. I’ve tried so many under eye creams and I SWEAR they are all the same. There is no magic, it’s just another moisturizer. If you don’t agree, then please recommend something with real results.

So, I hate Instagram.

Maybe hate is too strong of a word. I despise it. I don’t think that sounds any better though.

I think we’ve lost the plot or perhaps the entire story. My life has been so consumed with the digital world that I forget what it was like to live life before social media.

I don’t think Gen Z realizes how bad they have it. I’m sorry, someone has to say it. Sure, growing up with tech may give them a tad advantage over previous generations, but what would they do without it? Could they truly entertain themselves without TikTok?

Let’s say that they can entertain themselves for a few hours, but could they live without it?

Have you seen that one episode of The Pitt when the hospital had to undergo a digital shutdown for the hour due to a ransomware cyberattack? It was chaos. The doctors and nurses were doing everything they could to keep the hospital running and the patients cared for. Thank goodness for the senior doctors because they were trained for 90s era analog procedures. I’m assuming that hospital staff are trained if there was a cyber attack or if AI becomes fed up with us and takes the day off.

As a millennial, I did not have to worry about social media growing up. We took really crap photos with our simple cameras and we did NOT share them; we had long conversations with friends over the phone, and there was no such thing as reservations, we could walk into a restaurant at any time and grab a table. Reservations did exist, but that was just for special occasions. Apparently every occasion is special nowadays.

Nostalgia has a strong hold on me. It might have something to do with Spring.

It was just a happier time. We didn’t worry about the perfect outfit, we had the weirdest phases throughout our school years, and our dreams never felt out of reach. Nowdays we tell ourselves it’s okay to be delusional, as long as we’re happy about it, but won’t that actually hurt us in the long-term? Being delusional is fun until you end up in your forties alone and your celebrity crush hasn’t proposed to you yet.

And what’s with all the weird terms? I’ve heard things like “Mid”, “Aura”, “Cap/No Cap”, and the latter just reminds me of Iced Cappucinos from Tim Hortons. Great, now I want one.

The gap that exists between Millennials and Gen Z is much more defined than the gap between Millennials and Gen X. At least that’s what it feels like lately.

Whatever, I’m going to go drink a second coffee and be “delulu” for the rest of Sunday before reality kicks me in the ass tomorrow morning at 6am.

I swear I’m not bitter, I’m just getting older.

Your everyday girl,

Sara

P.S I’m currently reading Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin and I think you should give it a read too.