Jealousy of Partial Information Online (and Offline) Harmful for Self-Confidence

Plenty of articles these days mention the correlation between social media and mental downturns at a personal level. Anyone using any social media platform would be bombarded by texts, pictures, and videos of others enjoying both their professional and personal lives. On the professional side, social media is inundated with boasts about the latest promotions, product launches, and other notable career highlights. And in private lives, others seem to be all having beautiful kids, getting married to beautiful spouses, and visiting beautiful locations for carefree vacations. It is not easy not getting jealous.

Indeed, jealousy may be deliberately fueled on social media to get views and followers. The words "haters gonna hate" speak to the unabashed efforts by some to exclusively post over-the-top content about their latest strings of successes, even though, like practically anyone else in the world, their lives are filled with moments of miseries and sorrow, failures and regrets, broken dreams and dashed hopes. But by curating their personal content so that only the happy moments shine through, they try to remind both their audience and themselves that a little inconvenience does not change the nearly perfect nature of their lives.

The audience should not be fooled by such a one-sided display of success. Yes, the real world is indeed filled with people who are richer, more skilled, and more intelligent than one can ever be, but not everyone who portrays him or herself as such on social media is indeed such a person. And unbeknownst to the audience, successful people are filled with stress, accumulated from the need to continue being successful to maintain an image of constant success. In reality, no one's life can be that successful, that constantly. Those getting jealous should accept every happy note they see with a grain of salt.

And the lack of constant success is true in the offline world too, among some of the people recognized as the world's most successful. Behind every self-made billionaire is a story of early days putting together fledgling businesses that are on the verge of failure. People today may only see them as holders of bottomless bank accounts and media attention, but one should not forget that they got there with plenty of sleepless nights, mental stress, and the accompanying physical damages. For every person making an average salary but having plenty of free time, that life of simple joy would evoke jealousy among the rich.

Even the most successful would find competitors that they would be jealous of. Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest men, was ruthlessly mocked after his current girlfriend was found fawning by his side when the two spoke to famed actor Leonardo Dicaprio at an event. Bezos' decision to put up pictures of himself loving embracing his girlfriend on social media after the event only invited more ridicule that a man of his caliber would so easily display jealousy. It shows that the rich may be rich, but they are not at the top of the world is everything.

The average person should also not forget that there are plenty more unfortunate souls who are doing way worse than the average person. Poverty both in low-income neighborhoods nearby and countries half a world away means plenty of people do not even get to live an average life as they struggle to simply live on the barest necessities. For those who are starving and cold, even someone who has a steady income and a warm home would invite plenty of jealousy. A person should not forget who may be jealous of him or her when s/he is jealous of others.

Remembering the misfortunes of both the poorest and richest in the world, then, would help one regain confidence after inadvertently comparing one's own life with those seen in both the online and the offline world. No one can be better than anyone else at everything. And no one can be successful without failures and stresses that are ultimately damaging for them even if the end result is perceived as positive by the general public. The key for sustained confidence is to remember that, when one is suffering, plenty of others also are, no matter how successful they seem to be in public.

Just remember that boosting one's own self-confidence that not need to involve belittling those of others. Both traditional and social media are filled with partial information that tends to exaggerate for the sake of getting more attention. Trying to put down such partial information only plays into the hands of those who disseminate them, as even negative coverage generates sustained attention for the content creator. It is easier just to ignore all the hype and live one's own life, however mundane and tedious as it seems to be in comparison. The ordinary may actually be a source of jealousy for those going through the constant ups and downs of public attention.