I got a Facebook account in 2008. It was before the age of selfies and smartphones, Snapchat and Instagram. Then, it truly was a social network — simply a tool for connecting, and everything was fairly innocuous. I was in eighth grade, and my friends and I posted albums containing way too many pictures of our sleepovers and vacations. We wrote inside jokes on each other’s “walls.” Things got really interesting when Facebook added the private messenger and the like button.
That was twelve years ago — saying that makes me feel old — and now there are dozens of options for social media. What was once a tool for connecting now feels like a Pharaoh demanding more time and energy every day from its users. Make sure you post often, but not too much. Make sure you use the right hashtags, but not too many. Make sure you use a filter, but look authentic. It’s a delicate balance we’re all constantly trying to strike. Every platform has its own law we have to obey, or else we get punished by the algorithm. And it seems like while we’re trying to figure these platforms out, they’ve already got us figured out.