Every teenage girl I know adheres to the cardinal rules of the profile picture.
Rule number one: it needs to be a solo shot, preferably taken at a flattering angle. Number two: full hair and make-up and best clothes are required. Number three: some kind of sepia or Instagram effect is desirable, but if that fails, black and white will do. Number four: if you know how to use Photoshop then a bit of contrast wouldn’t go amiss, to bleach out pretty much every feature on your face apart from your eyes. Number five: upload and add to your album titled ‘Me’ followed by a heart. Cue relentless comments from other girls with similar looking profile pictures about how lovely you look, to which you respond, ‘You are so much prettier!’ to which they respond ‘No, I’m not, I’m really ugly’ sad face, to which you respond ‘I am so much more ugly! You’re the prettiest girl I know’…
Something has gone horribly wrong somewhere along the social media chain. Does anyone remember the days when we actually took photographs to remember stuff? So that we could capture the moment and print out pictures which would remind us of the fun times looking back? I have a particularly high cringe-ometer, so the thought of posting a picture of myself on a social media site which I had taken of myself for the sole purpose of posting it on a social media site cringes me out beyond belief. And yet, the impact of this profile picture madness has filtered through to my generation too, to my group of friends. Browsing through our photos from the past few years it looks like we are posing for the same photo on countless different occasions. Whenever a camera is whipped out people press pause on the fun being had, and adopt their standard mannequin-esque stance, complete with best side of face on show and pout to boot. Flicking through pictures of a night out or an event is boring: every picture is the same, and none of it tells a story. What is more, any funny photos or photos genuinely taken in the moment are greeted by screams of ‘DELETE IT! I wasn’t ready!’ and an onslaught of grabbing hands to remove the digital evidence. I dread to think what photo albums of the future will look like (if indeed our entire lives are not digital by that point): ‘This is me pouting in front of the Eiffel tower!’, ‘This is me pouting by a cow!’, ‘This is me pouting in my bedroom – I like this one best!’
Why has this happened? In the first issue of Miss Vogue, the recently released daughter title of mega-magazine Vogue – a quote from a 16 year-old girl, in a feature titled ‘Under Pressure’, got me thinking. She said: ‘Instagram is the definition of social-media pressure. Just going on that for an hour, you end up depressing yourself because there are so many amazingly stunning people.’ Another girl said: ‘Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and stuff – you’re always comparing yourself to other people…You’ve always got to be doing something cool and being out somewhere interesting’.
In a nutshell, social media land has created this space where young people are always competing to look the best (or – at least – if not the best, then simply never look bad) and to have the best, most Instagrammy life. Just as people take photos deliberately to post online, some seem to do things just to be able to talk about them on Twitter. It always saddens me when I see videos of gigs or shows where every single member of the audience is holding their phone up, and watching the action through their little screen. I feel like shouting ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? JUST ENJOY IT FOR GOODNESS SAKE!’
So, what to do? Ultimately, demonstrating good online practice to our young people isn’t simply about not posting pictures of ourselves in compromising positions, but goes further than that: to demonstrate a life free from the perfect Instagram-life façade. To be willing to put normal and possibly even unflattering photos on Facebook, to do more exciting things offline than you do online and to enjoy spending time with people without shouting about it all over social media. If we find ourselves competing like our young people then perhaps we have fallen prey to the digi-pressure too. And in a direct sense – don’t just like their perfect profile pictures! Like and comment on their normal photos, the ones where they are caught off guard. Say how much you love the photos where they look natural. And hopefully – in the future – our photo albums will be full of wonderful memories, as opposed to pouts.
