The article argues that Facebook has diminished the barrier between people’s public and private lives by allowing users to display the good and joyous side of life which is, more often than not, a facade to fool other users. The author of this article, John Harris, quotes on this saying, “Everyone, it seemed was performing, and the basic idea was to do as much performing as possible.” He made this comment in regards to David Kirkpatrick’s explanation on how Facebook caused users to perfect every little detail on their profiles in order to dissuade others. In his work, The Facebook Effect, he [Kirkpatrick] states that creating and editing your profile became a checklist of sorts. “‘Find exactly the right profile picture. Change it regularly. Consider carefully how you describe your interests.’” This, of course, displays how Facebook became more than a social media site designed for college students to network amongst each other; it became a way for people to lie, not only to others, but themselves as well. Furthermore, Harris continues to comment on the negative effect of Facebook and how currently, “It is, perhaps, in the nature of our relationships with other human beings that we work desperately hard on our outward presentation, and sometimes fall into a kind of performance that leads inexorably towards fibs.’”

I feel that at the beginning of my social media usage, it had its fair share of positive and negative effects on me. Some positives were included being able to reconnect with many of my old friends from elementary and middle school that I thought I’d never see again, finding inspiration for my creative imagination that I translated to my artwork at the time, etc. However, since I had discovered the wonders of social media, the negatives also took hold on me. Due to me being a developing child in high school, since I had created my instagram in my sophomore year when I was 14/15, I fell victim to what Harris described in his article; social comparison. I was too worried about how others would perceive me and my posts along with admiring how my peers “had it so much better than me,” even though I had no idea what they were going through behind closed doors. Luckily, I’d like to say that social media doesn’t have the same effect it did when I was in high school while I do catch myself doing social comparison here and there. I believe the depiction of my life online mostly reflects my actual life since it’s me having fun with my friends or me living important events. I feel that I use my social media as a way to post memories or important events that I found significant in my life so I can look back on it later down the line and remind myself how much fun I had in those times.