I have been on social media for four years and counting—I have fallen into every new fad, downloaded every trending app without question, and followed the virtual path that most teenagers share. I can recall my first year on Instaram; the jolt of excitement I felt when I posted a picture. That gnawing feeling of suspense that kept me checking back constantly to see how many likes it had gained. And Facebook! How exhilarating it was to scroll carelessly through other’s lives; to sit safely behind my computer screen and find such intimate comments and pictures and connections about people I had no business knowing anything about. Social media opened up a whole new, reckless, exciting world for me. Yet just as quickly as I got sucked into it, I found myself standing on the outside and looking back from light years away.
     

As I grow further and further away from the bubbling, naive, and insecure eighth grader that first logged in, I begin to question my incessant need to click, to share, and to message. This year specifically, I have gone from being chained to technology to being relatively disinterested in it. But why the sudden change? For months I have mulled this question over in my mind, and I have finally come to some conclusions. 
     

This year marks unparalleled new freedoms for me. I have gained the trust of my parents, and a license to drive—so from a teenage perspective the world is my oyster.  Ever since the dawn of this new chapter in my life, I have been caught up in a whirlwind of new experiences. I think once you internalize how big, complex, and exciting the world is, the thought of attempting to capture the 3d layers of your life on a two-dimensional screen seems ludicrous. It leaves me wondering why I felt so compelled to do so in the first place? That’s a question most of us don’t enjoy answering truthfully but we all know at our core. We’re insecure. We find comfort in the ability to perfect a virtual version of ourselves. We find comfort in having likes and compliments thrown at our profusely edited pictures. We have a sick need for others to validate that our lives are worth living, that we ourselves are worthwhile.
     

But what if I’ve come to like the real me better than the virtual me? What if I don’t measure my self-worth in likes? What if I want people to know me for more than a 50 character summary in my Instagram bio? What if I want to build a life so rich that social media can’t capture but a tip of the iceberg? Where does that put me in a generation like this?