Social media is a constant phenomenon today in the life of an American teenager, whether it is on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, most of us have one. I am not going to sit here and rant to you that every aspect of social media is bad or how much more fun you would be having if you paid attention to the real world because I would be lying. While some aspects of the online world are great, everyone is the same.

Most online social media sites are full of ‘relatable’ accounts, but what makes these accounts relatable to everyone? As a person who spends a fair amount of time on social networking, I have noticed that so many people I know have bits of personality basically “stolen” from what they see every day online. Let’s use Twitter as an example, sometimes a person will ‘retweet’ something, and then the next day they will be quoting the tweet as though they came up with that themselves. Everyone sees the same jokes and slang every day, and we are all morphing to act a certain way, whether or not it is subconscious. Relatable accounts rely on the impressionability of the youth.

Why does everyone love mediocre things? It is great to find people who share interests with you, but it has become so common. Loving a specific season was never something that everyone talked about. It seems like the general ‘hipster’ or ‘indie’ movement moves with the seasons. As soon as autumn starts, most people post about how excited they are to wear sweaters or how much they love Halloween, but the day after thanksgiving it is almost as though a switch was flipped and everyone starts obsessing over winter aesthetics. The same question could be asked for people. Why are some teen boys and girls idolized on the internet? Is it because we see something in them we wish we could see in ourselves?

Sure, everyone has different personality traits or mannerisms, but I believe that the majority of people’s traits are directly affected by what they follow on social media. Everyone is the same, because we are all exposed to the same things online, and our personalities are derived from that. Slang can easily be transferred through social media, especially because we have access to lots of different cultures, which is great, but also ironic because people online have very little diversity.

There are about four main uses for Twitter, which are as follows: to complain, to interact with friends and others, to spread knowledge, to get attention and to pick fights. There are also lots of different ‘sides’ of twitter, and the people who are lumped into these ‘sides’ have very similar online personas, and personalities. This leads to people becoming disinterested in others because they have already seen someone like them, which always leaves them searching for a better person to follow.

By saying everyone is the same, I do not mean exactly the same, but we are all affected in the same way by what we see on social media. Suddenly egg jokes become funny, everyone hates Minions, and being depressed is a trend. People online often cannot grab the interest of others because they are essentially a carbon copy of someone who most people already follow. Social media can be a healthy outlet to learn and express opinions, as long as you come up with those opinions yourself, and not by reading and reciting something you saw on the internet.