It wasn’t yesterday that I realized I dislike social media. The first time I showed how I dislike social media was in 2012 when I had a miscarriage and it seemed that all my girlfriend were getting pregnant, but me! Right then, I realized Facebook was making me more depressed, vulnerable, weak, and untrue to myself. So, on June 2012 I quit Facebook. It took me 1.5 years to go back to the site, and of course I had to go back showing the “trophy” that took me away from Facebook to begin with: The birth of my first child.

You see, on that last paragraph you can already notice the mountain of bad feeling social media can attack you with: envy, jealousy, pride, false reality, loneliness, exaggeration, depression, anxiety, anger and much more, but I don’t have all night to write about it… At this very moment I am happy to announce I have been 1 year Facebook- free!! Pause for applause…!!! Yes, I dedicate this moment to all of you that share your lives way to much on social platform (eye rolling, sarcasm speech)!!

But in life you win and you loose, right? My husband always tells me I can’t have everything! He is right, but it sounds super unfair and selfish when he says it. Now, here is when I start the real reason of my post… SOCIAL MEDIA SUCKS AND SO DOES ITS LIKES NUMBERS!!! Camila, great job for leaving Facebook, but what about Instagram? Camila: “Oh, but Instagram is different! I don’t have to see lives of people I don’t follow! Plus it’s a great source of information for learning how to treat my nappy hair, the latest fitness exercises, food recipes and seeing funny memes! Right? Wrong, wrong, wrong Camila!

From the moment I left Facebook, and concentrated all my energy into another social media platform, Instagram, I was naively transferring my vulnerability to the same source of exposure. Now comes the worst part… the amount of likes I receive towards some pictures compared to others, showed me how cruel our society can be. Are you ready for even worse fact? One of my children ALWAYS receives more likes than the other! 😡 No, I will not tell you which child gets more likes because I won’t give you the benefit of a doubt that both my children are beautiful!

For awhile now, I have noticed that when I post a photo of one of my kids, he/she always receives double the likes than the other. I know you must be thinking: Oh Camila, maybe you are wrote how gorgeous he/she is in the caption! Duh!! So, I purposely do not write about physical compliments of my children in the captions. I always choose to write captions that expresses my children’s personalities, rather than physical beauty. When you see my Instagram posts about my children, I always highlight what my kids’ mean to me, or how they make me feel, or their ever evolving personality.

What drives me crazy is that about 95% of my followers are adults and mostly 75% are friends/acquaintances. Yet those are the people that chose to click the “like” button for one child and not the other. What are they thinking? In what basis are they judging my children? What is their point? Who are these people that are following me anyways?!!

Sorry (but not sorry) dear Instagram followers, I will not let you choose which kid is prettier, smarter, more charismatic, more handsome, more beautiful than the other. I will not let you dictate my emotions like that. I will not let you judge appearances in my family just for fun. I will not let you make my children part of a societal sick concept of beauty. I will not let my children suffer from low self-esteem based on your distorted vision. I will not let your “likes” express your “dislikes” on my children.

Oh Instagram followers, I think you forget that maturity arrived in my sense when my children were born and ever since I will not let anyone demean my children’s miraculous lives so easy, as a  matter of fact, at all! Whether you asked for it or not, as long as I keep my Instagram account, I will not post any picture of my kids’ alone. Every post regarding my children, you will see both of them together! If you want to compliment my children, do it for both. If you want to praise them for their beauty, do it for. If you don’t want to “like” it, don’t! I am totally, totally, totally fine if you don’t “like” it. But, I am not fine with you picking a favorite child over the other! 

I’m a 36 year old woman, mother of two, bilingual, college graduate, almost preschool teacher and who likes to belief that she still carries some common sense; so next time you want to pick favorites, go ahead a  find a book on self-love to read.

Love,

Camila