That increased level of self-awareness could be part of what’s contributing to the disturbing trend. It’s one thing to want to put your best foot forward. It’s another to believe that your face is never good enough on its own without heavy editing.

I knew it! Social media is not reality. But wait, we already knew that. But then why do we so needlessly get sucked into believing people are posting accurate representations of their lives? We tell ourselves that what we are seeing is not reality, but there is still this tiny voice in the back of our minds trying to convince us otherwise. And then we go and listen to it. 

Why? 

Have you ever wanted something so badly that you found it was hard to think about almost anything else? If you have, you might have been experiencing what’s called “scarcity mindset”. Scarcity mindset is a sort of tunnel vision that occurs when you want or need something so badly that all other things fade to the background (Vedantam, 2017).