You scroll one reel: a person knitting a perfect pink sweater with perfect skin. You scroll another: someone receiving their acceptance letter from a university you once dreamed of, their parents teary-eyed, but courage, happiness, and gratitude are visible. You look at the poster pasted on your wall but scroll past the reel to only find someone having their perfectly time-stamped routine; the next reel appears to be a 15-second torture of someone being consistent in their hobbies. One reel and about 50 others, and you are in an agitating spiral of insecurities, low self-esteem, chronic anxiety and a question, “Why am I average?” pasted into the crevices of your brain.
Welcome, you are a newly registered member of The Comparison Trap, and there is no going back. In the past decade, with the rise of globalisation and advanced technology, media use has drastically increased. We have been spending about half of our days scrolling on media platforms and the other half concerning why we are not like the others we watch on media. The underlying issue is that our brains slowly adapt to this rewiring, resulting in a constantly informed mind that is rarely reflective and deeply convinced that everyone else is doing better. A person trapped in the realm of comparison, inherent in the cloak of self-surveillance. It makes you feel like you’re falling behind, that everyone else is better than you, and that you’ll fail. This is the stage where constant comparison starts creating anxiety, dissociation, and stress in major cases. This cycle becomes a psychological habit, where individuals compare their worth to the perfectly curated images of the media. The brain recognises these events as a pattern, internalising these images as benchmarks.
What makes the comparison trap so deadly is its innate nature to be invisible. The victims do not even realise that their distress is caused by external manufacturing. Consuming both digital and physical media of the same type — such as lyrics, books, movies, and excerpts — locks their minds in an evaluation mode, particularly for teens who are in the process of forming their identities. An identity that is constructed around anxiety disorders, emotional exhaustion, and deep-seated insecurities tends to isolate itself from both reality and society. Such individuals struggle to create a perfect image on social media, where likes and comments serve as measures of social worth and where validation is both addictive and quantifiable. Such behaviour initiates a cycle of heightened anxiety, algorithmic response, and emotional volatility. We can only entertain the argument that social media shows the raw and organic, where slow living is not perfectly curated.
A 15-second highlight reel that makes you question nearly every aspect of your life, including your decisions and physical appearance, is merely a facade of unfiltered content meticulously crafted to appear perfect. This is where media literacy plays its role. Ironically, a platform designed to make you feel insecure can also help you break the trauma cycle once you realise that the media is perfectly constructed. This, no doubt, takes time.
It’s time to discover your true self.
Time to detangle the spiral.
and time to view your worth outside social media space.
In such a time, reclaiming that you are enough is not only an act of self-love but a psychological act of resistance as well.