You're always doing ok in my eyes <3

As always, there's two sides to the same coin. For some their relationship with online/social media will cause depression, for others it saves them from committing suicide. For some the 'filtered' Insta posts will enhance their insecurities, for others this medium will give them a 'first ever' way to share their genuinely cool personalities even though their looks would have many look away from them at first sight (metal heads, people in wheelchairs, heavily tattooed people that look aggressive but suddenly share the kindest words on their accounts). Most of the times, the more privileged your life is, the least you'll benefit from trends, you'll be heard and appreciated anyway (no, not always, but you know), but for the lesser privileged (lower socio-economic status, disabled people, people with social/behavioural challenges) these tools can be a true life and even money saver (I'm reading a lot in the 'spoonie'/chronic illness communities on twitter and I've seen many medicine been bought by fellow twitter peepz sharing a dollar or two when in need) (I also realize this is mostly an American thing because they have to by lack of alternative, but still, pretty cool under the circumstances).

Some will use social media only superficially, others will gain life-time friendships from it which they might have not been able to find 'offline'.

There's a few extremes I noticed the last few years (I've been 'hardcore' on Twitter since 2007, way less active the last years, but I've seen it evolve from the beginning years):

• Opposites can find each other VERY easily. We used to only speak with like-minded people because those are the people we attract IRL. Now we can just click a hashtag and enter a community of people that think opposite of us AND immediately engage with them. This has both positive (let's see more different opinions please!) and very negative consequences (all the polarization seems to come from there too - we don't like to 'nuance' our opinions so they become more and more 'extreme' in a sense).
• I've seen a HUGE change in how we portray beauty. YES I agree with your comments on 'filters' and such, but ALSO we see a lot more women taking social media in their own hands and redefining beauty by showing their striae/unphotoshopped legs, or a less flat stomach (still beautiful) and last but not least way more representation of non-white people in the beauty scenes in general. Women taking those beauty standards and redefining them is now also influencing covers of bigger/influential magazines who also have had to redefine their own standards on the topic of 'what is beautiful'.

Some have done well with the adoption and transitions. They've let it be a healthy part of their personal and professional lives. They've balanced it well and I applaud that.

Indeed as always balance is the key. I must say, when I started on Twitter I had had years of experience on a social media community like Steem but (ofc) without the crypto. It was amazing. When Twitter came we lost the sense of 'community' as people started to do 'personal branding'/making a name for themselves was more important than actual engaging. For me, Steem was like finding a goldmine in more ways than one as I was finally able to move away from that 'personal branding' stuff and go back to a (relatively) small engaging community again.

(Ironic PS: I've been off-Steem for the past few weeks a lot because I'm trying to figure out the old-skool social media again as I want to make a name for my 'brand', lol, and damn it's tiring.)

Sorry for the freewrite. I loved your post. Could've left it at that :P Hugs.