What made me think about this is my girlfriend, who is quite vocal about the harms social media can have on the mental health of young girls, especially when influencers post heavily edited photos of themselves and their lives, which for the most part are fake.

However, she’s active on social media as well, and being quite an attractive woman, she seems oblivious to what I consider a factual statement: her own content is also causing the same kind of concerns for other women who are not as genetically blessed as she is. What she’s posting is not fake, but it is heavily curated nonetheless. She obviously knows this herself, but do her followers?

I don’t personally follow her social media, but I’d be willing to bet she hasn’t posted about being sick for a week and not taking a shower for four days. I don’t mean that as a criticism per se, but I think it highlights how little we think about the effect our own content has on others while still being quick to judge others for what they post.