“Online is just a fantasy. You can put aside your [tiring] job, your family that doesn’t care, your flabby belly, and you can be perfect. You can be funny, talented, kind, and warm or snarky. You are free to just let go,” quotes ScienceDirect.
Nowadays, it’s no surprise to find lies spread on social media to make people seem like someone they are not. These principles that cause people to lie on social media also lead other organizations, such as news media, to do the same.
Professor Jeff Hancock, an expert in communication and the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, found that organizations lie online for specific goals or motivations. For instance, if you are trying to date someone, you might say you like the outdoors even though you hate nature. The goal or motivation in this scenario is to make the person like you more.
“A person often utilizes social media to achieve their goals, and much like deception itself, technology simply becomes a tool for accomplishing those goals,” states Professor Hancock.
The same goes for highly respected news media outlets. At the end of the day, each is pushing its own political narrative or opinion, and it will seep into how they write a story.
For example, after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, CNN ran the headline, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.” CNN is known to lean more politically to the left, which perhaps influenced them to write this headline, not mentioning anything about shots being fired.
A Fox News headline, during the immediate aftermath of the shooting, read, “The Secret Service confirms that Trump is ‘safe’ after the former president was rushed off the rally stage following reports of possible gunshots in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
Political association tends to shape how the media describe events closely related to politics. This is why two people can read the same thing in two different outlets nowadays and end up disagreeing on the basic elements of the story. Just like how people lie online to achieve a goal, the media ever so slightly twists details to make you agree with their perspective, either by leaving out some details or including many details that serve no purpose in the story.
Every image and quote can be taken out of its original context to vilify the other person. Both sides of the political parties are trying to get you to vote for them and make the other party look wrong.
It’s not just news media that does this; it’s no surprise that social media is notorious for twisting the truth and taking things out of context. No one disputes that social media influences how they see the world.
One issue arises from this conclusion: that people lie. Everyone either fabricates or lies on social media to achieve a specific goal, whether that’s making people feel sorry for them or portraying a perfect life.
So how can anyone trust anything anyone posts then?
Many people don’t like the answer, but the truth is, you can’t. Social media lacks one of the most important things needed in making a logical judgment: context.
For example, take the incident involving 8 passengers with Ruby Franke. On the outside, it seemed, as it is with almost all family vloggers, a perfect life. The parent influencer presented a happy family of six children to their audience of two million people, stating that the vlogs were bringing their family closer together.
Unfortunately, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Behind the camera and carefully selected moments was a reality no one truly knew; Franke was abusing her children by tying them up in the basement and refusing them food and water when they “misbehaved”.
This might seem like an extreme example, but understand the key takeaway: People tend to show all the good and little of the bad. Just because someone’s life may look perfect on social media doesn’t mean it is in real life.
When looking at that one person with a seemingly carefree, perfect life according to their Instagram page, try to keep in mind that you see what people want you to see. You can’t see what goes on underneath; whether that’s the daily arguments between their parents, the constant cosmetics applied to fit society’s standard of beauty, or the heavy weight of depression.
So try not to compare yourself to others, because comparison breeds envy, an emotion that poisons everything it touches.
Take a break from doomscrolling and reflect on YOUR life, not others’. Instead of wasting time wishing you had what others had, put in the effort to change yourself. You have the power to see past the lies of the media, whether social media or news, and not let others force their truth on you, but to discover it for yourself. 
