Hello everyone!

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, today I’m going to be discussing the always relevant question of why us lowly humans never feel good enough in society, and why we are such an insecure bunch. Of course there’s both scientific and unscientific reasons for this, but the purpose of me making these posts is just to share my own opinions, so forgive me for the lack of official “research” in this post. I am by no means trying to be a psychology expert or make a claim that applies to everyone, I’m just opening it up as sort of a debatable topic.

People have always been insecure and there’s always been the issue of comparing one’s self to others, but this has all been amplified in the age of social media and everyone curating their lives to showcase their best selves online. It’s especially harmful to teenagers since we’re probably the ones that spend the most time online, and here we have a plethora of all-too-perfect seeming people to compare ourselves to as we grow up and are going through our puberty/awkward stages.

One of the stranger things is that a lot of the people us teens are comparing ourselves to are other teens, specifically influencers that have gone viral over night, usually look way older than they are, and get paid to promote brands and travel. I grew up on YouTube watching the definition of “YouTuber” and “influencer” change, and I’ve always idolized these girls my age who aren’t really doing anything that I couldn’t do, it’s just that they happen to be the ones who did it and got lucky enough to become successful from it.

However, I don’t want to spend this whole post talking about social media. There’s definitely a lot of other reasons why people have low self-esteem or don’t feel good enough. Sometimes it’s a lack of self-love that’s deep-rooted in whatever insecurities one may have, and sometimes it’s just a general feeling of failure. I know lots of times when I don’t feel good enough it’s just because I didn’t reach a goal of mine or do something as well as I wanted. I also put a lot of pressure on myself and I always want to make my parents proud. I hate disappointing people, so if I feel like I am then that will make me feel worse too.

Also, hustle culture has become a huge thing in post-grad life. I’m still in high school so I don’t know much about it, but I’ve seen lots of YouTubers in their twenties or in the end of their college years reference it. There’s this stigma where you always have to be doing something and working towards accomplishments and goals at a young age, when some people don’t really know what they want to be doing and are just trying to find themselves before they have to settle down.

Speaking of that, I’m surprised I didn’t mention the pressure to get into college first. In high school, especially at fairly competitive schools like mine (I can’t even imagine what it’s like at prep schools), there’s definitely the pressure to be in tough classes and performing well and getting high scores on standardized tests and eventually, getting into elite schools. If you’re not keeping up with all this, it can feel disheartening, especially if you still hope to get into an elite school. An important thing to note though is that obviously elite schools aren’t everything, and there’s a lot of people who don’t even go to college and are still successful- it all depends.

I think the reason you may or may not feel good about yourself varies a lot- there’s so many variables and a lot of these groupings/categories of stigmas that I mentioned also depend on your age group/demographic. The point is, there’s always going to be things and people trying to knock you down, so it’s important to know your worth and love yourself for who you are- then, you can’t easily be defined as “good enough” or “not good enough” based on other people’s criteria.

Brooke