social media and the problem of comparison
"Comparison is the thief of joy." — Teddy Roosevelt
When you scroll social media, you see post after post of people putting their best foot forward. Other people are funny, pretty, wealthy, smart, adventurous, creative, and successful.
As this happens, we all face the temptation to compare ourselves against them. We all want to know where we fit in, whether we’re ahead of or behind our peers. And so comparison becomes a core part of how we use social media; we’re constantly measuring ourselves against our peers to see how we stack up.
We shouldn’t be surprised that we struggle with comparison, though, since it’s a natural outflow from pride. Why does pride always lead to comparison? Because pride pushes you to want to know where you stand in relation to other people. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.
Because of this, prideful posting always creates a spirit of comparison, causing us to use social media to keep tabs on our peers’ lives, achievements, and milestones.
While comparison on social media seems like an innocent hobby, it cuts off the ability to enjoy our lives, since there’s always someone out there with more than you. Unless you address this problem, comparison on social media will tarnish your perspective and turn you into an unhappy person who is never satisfied with life.
So what can we do to solve this problem?
so what is comparison?
The first step, of course, is understanding the problem. Of all of the concepts that we’ve covered so far, comparison is the easiest to comprehend. When you compare yourself to others, you evaluate how you’re both similar and different from them.
It’s important, though, to recognize that comparison isn’t inherently bad. Comparison always starts as an observation, as you think through how two things relate to each other. In this way, comparison can be a helpful part of life, since it helps you to better understand yourself.
By comparing yourself to other people, you can gain important insight into who you are and what you’re good at, which helps you make the best choices and decisions for your unique life. Since self-knowledge is often relative, if you never compare yourself to other people, you’ll always be in the dark about your gifts and abilities.
For example, growing up, I dreamed of playing basketball at some small college. But in high school, as I compared myself to my peers, I realized that I wasn’t good enough to make that dream a reality. Comparing myself to others gave me important information that helped me chart the best direction for my life.
Comparison becomes harmful, though, when we stop using it as a tool to increase our self-understanding and instead use it to find our self-worth. Unfortunately, we often use comparison not to learn about ourselves, but to judge whether we measure up to other people.
This switch happens when you start comparing things that you’re building your identity on. Unhealthy comparison always involves the comparison of what you feel defines you.
For example, if you compared your quilting skills against your grandma’s, I don’t think you’d feel bad if she was better than you. Why? Because you don’t find your identity in sewing little scraps of fabric together.
Imagine, though, that you’re at a wedding reception with your peers. You’re trying to figure out how you fit in, so you start to compare yourself to others on identity markers like…
Who got married first.
Who is the best dressed.
Who has the better-looking date/spouse.
Who is the best dancer.
Who has the most money to spend on a wedding.
All of us have compared ourselves to others in these ways since we want to know how our identities stack up against our peers. We’re not using comparison to better understand ourselves but to prove our self-worth. As Pastor Jon Tyson says:
When we misplace our identity in ourselves, it creates comparison. … Choosing an identity, performing that identity for others, and then measuring our performance against others' cultivates comparison and insecurity in its most insidious forms.
Finding our identity in ourselves causing us to view other people as measuring sticks, serving as a baseline to evaluate ourselves and see how our identities are doing.
While comparison can happen in any area, it explodes when an identity marker feels scarce. Comparison thrives on a scarcity mindset, the belief that there’s only so much success that exists in the world.
This spirit of scarcity turns comparison into competition, as we try to beat our peers and get more of the scarce things that we’re using for an identity. We approach life as a zero-sum game, where for every one person that wins, another person has to lose.
This creates a culture obsessed with comparison. We’re constantly observing other people, using their lives as a measuring stick from which to judge our own. Competitive striving becomes the core activity of our lives, as we try to win enough identity battles to secure our self-worth.
While comparison has always existed, social media has dumped fuel on our comparison-prone hearts. Why? Because social media shows us a constant stream of the best parts of our peers’ lives. As Jon Tyson says:
Because we live in a constantly connected world, we are continually aware of the lives others are living around us. We are bombarded by a stream of images depicting leisure, travel, escape, early retirement, road trips, graduations, promotions, parties, and fun.
While in the past, comparison was reserved for real-life interactions, social media gives you an inside look into your friends’ lives, allowing you to see details that were previously hidden. As Robert Greene wrote:
Through social media we have a continual window into the lives of friends, pseudo friends, and celebrities. And what we see is not some unvarnished peek into their world but a highly idealized image that they present.
This is why perfectionism, pride, and comparison are wrapped up so closely together. As we boast about our lives on social media and try to present a perfect life, we look around to see how we fit in with everyone else, hoping that our social media identities are better than our peers.
so how does comparison play out on social media?
When you open up your favorite social media app, you’re immediately met with idealized images and ideas from every corner of our culture. It’s an individualized experience, where you’re alone on your phone, observing the lives of your peers.
While much of social media appears like mindless scrolling, in reality, we’re always soaking up tiny social cues and status symbols that let us know where are peers’ lives are. Eventually, you linger on a post, click on a profile, and before you know it, you’re comparing your life to theirs. You make…
Material comparisons: you compare your material possessions to other people's. Who owns the biggest house, drives the coolest car, wears the nicest clothes, and has the most expensive possessions?
Relational comparisons: you compare yourself to others based on relational standing. You compare who gets invited, who gets asked out, who gets married, who gets into the inner circle, who gets praised, and who’s considered popular.
Achievement comparisons: you compare who’s farthest along towards the cultural goals of the group, whether that's hitting six figures, being promoted to the next level, or getting into the right kind of school.
Numerical comparisons: since it’s social media, you compare how many likes, followers, comments, and views you each receive from your peers.
Since social media is such an individualized experience, no one else realizes how much we compare ourselves to others. And because everything on social media gets measured numerically, everything can be compared and turned into a competition for self-worth. As Professor Alan Noble says:
The presence of metrics introduces the specter of competition into any activity. It invites you to measure yourself against your past efforts and those of others. Each metric nudges me to compare myself with others and improve.
And so we use our posts to compete against our peers, striving to perform better than them and prove that we’re more important. As Will Storr wrote in his book on status:
To get along and get ahead in this new you-saturated social media arena, you had to be a better "you" than all the other "yous" that were suddenly surrounding you. You had to be more entertaining, more original, more beautiful, with more friends, have wittier lines, and more righteous opinions, and you'd best be doing it looking stylish in interesting places with your breakfast healthy, delicious, and beautifully lit.
Comparison puts incredible pressure on us to create content that measures up to and exceeds our peers. We’re always trying to wring better-performing content out of our lives to help us win our comparison battles.
What makes social media comparison even worse is the timing of the comparison. For example, if you’re comparing yourself at a wedding, you’re at least both dressed up and invited to the event. But since social media use spikes on days when you have nothing going on, which means you’re almost always at home, comparing your ordinary life against other people’s highlight reels.
As this happens, we spiral downward into self-doubt, wrestling with questions like:
Why wasn’t I invited to that party?
Why aren't I with someone that attractive?
Why don't I have that much money?
Why do more people like their posts than mine?
Why do they always seem happier than me?
While social media seems like a minor issue, many young people spend hours each week comparing themselves to others, which causes them to struggle with self-worth and self-hatred, since they’re always finding people who they don’t measure up to. We rarely notice the people that we compare favorably against, and instead are consumed with people who feel farther ahead of us in life.
When people repeatedly feel like they don’t measure up against their peers, they generally stop posting. This is why you can still struggle with comparison even if you never post. Alan Noble writes that "many believe they live in a hyper-competitive society where they know they cannot possibly compete against those with biological or economic advantages, so they don't even bother playing the game."
This then raises the bar on what "measuring up" means and raises the expectations for everyone, which then makes young people feel even worse about their lives.
But comparison doesn’t work even for the people who compare favorably. Why? Because even if you are relatively successful compared to your peers, you'll soon start to compare yourself against a new circle with higher standards. This is why even celebrities struggle with comparison; They’ve experienced incredible success, yet since they’re now comparing themselves against even bigger celebrities, they still feel worthless.
So given how widespread comparison is on social media, why are we so driven to compare ourselves to others?
why are we driven to compare?
Young people use social media to compare themselves to others because they want to prove that they’re a winner. For us, social media serves as a culture scoreboard where society’s winners and losers are both determined and shown.
Social media shows the results of our meritocracy, which is a system that says people should be judged based on their merit and not their class or family. This has created the sacred belief that people can move up or down or society based on their achievements. While merit as a tool to decide who gets jobs or opportunities is a good thing, in our post-God society, merit has become about establishing and increasing our self-worth.
Dr. Susan Matt pointed out in her book, Keeping Up With the Joneses, that comparison grew as belief in Darwinism replaced "the idea that God has chosen individuals' stations in life specifically for them." She says that "evolutionary theory endorsed the idea that struggle, competition, and anger were natural."
And so our secular meritocracy tells us that two things are true:
Since humans are just an accident, you have no inherent self-worth.
Since anyone can hypothetically reach the top, your worth is based on your achievements.
This causes us to believe that we have to prove our relative value by comparing our lives against our peers and winning meritocratic battles. Every day, you must fight to get ahead of your peers and create your self-worth. Sociologist Christopher Lasch described our culture well when he wrote:
In a society in which the dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself, men have nothing against which to measure their achievement except the achievements of others. …Success today means not just getting ahead, but getting ahead of others.
We’re anxious about how we fit into our culture, so we compare ourselves to others to try to prove that we’re successful. As one woman I know said about her struggle with comparison on social media: “We depend on others' successes or failures to determine where we land on the measuring stick of self-worth.”
Michael Sandel wrote about this in his recent book The Tyranny of Merit:
Years of anxious striving leave young people with a fragile sense of self-worth, contingent on achievement and vulnerable to the exacting judgments of parents, teachers, admissions committees, and ultimately themselves. Our meritocratic system turns competition over efficiency into a judgment of human value.
And so social media has become the ultimate meritocracy. We’re deeply insecure about what our value is as human beings, so we use these apps to present our achievements and compare ourselves to others. We hope that we can succeed, establishing our self-worth and proving that we’re one of life’s winners.
what's the result of comparison?
At this point, you might think that comparison isn’t too bad of a problem. It’s invisible and happens in the privacy of our minds, so we often discount both its existence and its impact on our lives. In reality, though, comparison causes so much pain and misery in our lives, spoiling our hearts and robbing us of the ability to enjoy our appreciate our lives.
If you go to any major city and sit in a coffee shop or bar, it won’t be long before you overhear young people complaining about their life. Many of them have grown up in upper-middle-class families, have gone to great colleges, and now work jobs that give plenty of money and status. Yet despite all of these blessings, they’re still not happy.
Why? Because their social media feeds are filled with people who have even better lives than them. Sure, they go on nice vacations, eat at great restaurants, and have a good apartment, but they see other young people on social media who have more than them. They look at their own lives and develop a “Woe is me!” mentality, convinced that they have been treated badly by either God or society.
And so when you spend your life comparing yourself to others on social media, it causes you to struggle with:
Insecurity: Comparison always leads to a fragile sense of self-worth, since your value will fluctuate based on your relative performance. You'll always be anxious, unable to ever feel secure about your worth. As Alain de Botton said, "Living by comparison produces a fragile soul."
A sense of inadequacy: People who compare themselves to others will never feel like they measure up, causing them to sink into self-hatred and despair. Young people struggle with an expectation hangover, beating themselves up for never achieving enough.
Constant dissatisfaction: Comparison also poisons your ability to enjoy your life. Nothing will ever be good enough since there are always people out there who have more than you. Economist Thomas Sowell said that we live "in an era where we no longer count our blessings, but instead count all of our unfulfilled wishes."
A restless impatience: Comparison puts us in an immediate gratification mindset, where, like a spoiled child, we throw temper tantrums if everything doesn't happen in our time frame. When you see people who have the job, family, lifestyle, or social media following that you want but don't have, you'll grow frustrated and angry.
Workaholism: Comparison never lets you rest, forcing you to strive for more so that you’ll compare more favorably against your peers. We become obsessed with self-improvement and achievement since we think our worth is based on surpassing our peers.
Fear of Missing Out: Comparers are constantly afraid that they are missing out on some better life. They think everyone else is out there having fun while they are stuck at home, living a terrible and boring life.
Destroys community: Comparison destroys community since you can't love, enjoy, and serve people that you're competing against. You may appear friendly on the outside, but on the inside your contempt for them will poison your relationships and create rivalries.
As these problems feed off each other and grow, they create a social media culture where young people deeply struggle. Even though we are blessed to live in the richest period and country in the history of the world, nothing is ever good enough. As Teddy Roosevelt pointed out, comparison really is the thief of joy.
Unfortunately, our culture’s response to the problem of comparison is to compete even harder. We think that if we can get the life other people have, then we’ll finally feel safe and secure. But this mindset only traps us deeper into a comparison mindset, creating even more of these noxious side effects.
so what’s the root cause of comparison?
As we try to figure out how to solve this problem of comparison, we have to admit the root problem. It’s not that we haven’t gotten enough good things in life, but that we’ve each forgotten God’s goodness to us.
When you compare yourself to other people on social media and feel like you don’t measure up, your real issue is with God, whether you call Him that or not. You believe that God hasn’t given you a good enough life, so you complain against Him.
We’re like the Israelites in the wilderness after God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. We refuse to trust God and grumble about our situation, pointing at other people who appear to have it better than us.
We shouldn’t be surprised, though, that we struggle with comparison, since it can show up anywhere, even in paradise. When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, they had everything they could ever want, except for one tree. Satan encouraged them to compare themselves to God, who had everything, and planted the idea in their mind that they were missing out on life.
They thought that if they could just get their hands on the fruit of that last tree, then they’d finally be happy. They compared themselves to the life that they thought they should have and felt justified in rejecting God, taking matters into their own hands.
But when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they didn’t get the final piece of their dream life and become equals with God. Instead, they lost their relationship with God and were cast out of the garden. Without a relationship with God, though, human beings have no security, no stability, and no way to prove their worth and spend their lives in fruitless comparison.
Comparison is what made Adam and Eve unhappy in paradise, and it’s what makes us so unhappy today. Satan comes to us and tempts us to forget God’s goodness, saying, “God’s holding out on you! How can God be both all-powerful and all-good if those people have those things and you don’t?”
“That’s a good point!” we respond, believing that if God really loved us He’d give us the things we need to win our social media comparison battles and secure our self-worth on our own. We think that God has short-changed us, so we reject a relationship with Him and go onto social media to compare ourselves to others and secure our self-worth on our terms.
And so we stop trusting God and forget His goodness to us. Like Paul says in Romans 1: For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. We grumble against God or give up on Him altogether, believing that if God was actually good that He would be glad to be our genie.
When we feel entitled to a perfect life, we reject God for not giving it to us. But the more you separate from God, the more instability and insecurity you’ll experience, which will force you to try to make it on your own. Richard Rohr says,
That’s the problem of a secular culture.” We end up crawling over one another and competing with one another to defiantly assert our private importance, which is our only possession. When we don't believe in or live as if there is a God, then our only option is to try to climb over each other to try to prove that we belong at the top.
But no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to secure your self-worth by comparing yourself to other people. You’ll strive for more and more, but never feel happy or satisfied with your life. You’ll mistakenly believe that you’ve gained everything in life by your own resourceful, and feel justified in thinking that God has never done anything for you.
how does the gospel solve our tendency to compare?
So is there any way to solve our problem with comparison? These problems aren’t a secret, which means that there’s plenty of advice coming from our secular culture on how to stop comparing yourself to others.
But while these potential solutions are well-intentioned, whether it’s learning to love yourself or spending less time on your phone, they don’t work, since they don’t address the root cause of our comparison. The insecurities of your heart won't be healed, which means the problems of comparison will continue to plague your life.
The only way to solve our problems with comparison is to let the gospel change your heart and approach toward God. To do that, we have to let the gospel rebuild our relationship with God and help us regain our trust in His provision for us.
If you want to heal your heart of its need for comparison, you need to do three things:
The first thing you have to do is define yourself by God’s love for you. Your self-worth as a human being isn’t created by your comparative value, but rather was established by when Jesus died for you on the cross and brought you into God’s family. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.
When you realize that your value is based on the fact that God has adopted you into His family, you can stop basing your self-worth on social media comparison. Paul says that as God’s child, you are His heir, which means you will receive an inheritance that you didn’t work for. Your self-worth is a gift from God, rather than something you created yourself.
The second thing you have to do is to show gratitude for what He has done. The antidote to the temptation to compare yourself to others isn’t more stuff, but rather gratitude. Gratitude isn’t just thankfulness, but thankfulness to a specific person, in this case, God. Pastor John Ortberg writes: “More gratitude will not come from acquiring more things or experiences, but from more of an awareness of God’s presence and his goodness. It’s a way of looking at life, always perceiving the good.”
He continues:
To be truly grateful you must not only recognize the benefits or gifts that come your way, but that they are not just random acts; they are not accidents. They are coming from Someone who has good intentions for you. To be grateful, you must believe that the good that is in your life comes from God.
A key way of developing gratitude in your life is to remember what God has done for you in the past. We quickly forget how God has worked in the past, which is why the Israelites were always told to remember God’s works and give thanks to Him. David shows this attitude in Psalm 103:
Bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all his benefits,
Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,
Who redeems life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
Who satisfies you with God, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
David here isn’t showing gratitude for his latest life wins, though, but rather thanking God for forgiveness, redemption, and love, which has satisfied his heart. This perspective allows you to reorient your heart from a position of grumbling over what you don’t have, to worshiping God for all that you do have.
The third thing you have to do is trust God to give you what you need in the future. Now some of you might be saying, “Really? I’ve fallen for this trap of God’s goodness for too long. He hasn’t been doing much for me at all.” But Paul says later in Romans 8 that none of us can say this. Why? He says that if God, “who didn’t spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
If God gave you a gift as great as salvation, can’t you trust Him to give you the day-to-day things you need for life? As a child of God, He promises to give you everything you need in life. This is why Jesus was so adamant about God’s fatherly goodness, saying, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
This doesn't mean that life will always make sense. As we scroll social media we’ll be tempted to wonder, “Why is my life going this way? Has God forgotten me?” But God isn’t a bad parent who forgets His children or loves them unequally. As God says in Isaiah 49: "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you."
In these moments, we have to trust that what God is doing in our lives is for our best, even if it doesn’t look that way. As Tim Keller said, “God will only give you want you would have asked for if you knew everything that he knows.” And as you trust God with your life, your attitude will switch from one of scarcity to one of abundance. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and promises to bless us in His timing.
When you define yourself by God’s love, show gratitude for what He has done, and trust God to give you what you need, it all works together to create contentment, a deep satisfaction in God that fills our hearts and keeps us from comparing our lives to others. This deep contentment is why Paul could say in Philippians 4:
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance, and need.
Paul was in prison, having faced significant challenges in his life as he followed Jesus. He didn’t start comparing himself to other people who had easier lives, but rather shared how content He was in God’s will for his life.
When you establish your self-worth on being God’s child, you no longer have to base your self-worth on social media comparisons. You can trust God with your life, knowing that He loves you and is working for your good.
Part 7: What would gospel-saturated social media look like?
As these gospel truths saturate your heart and renew you from the inside out, it changes how you use social media. You no longer have to compete against your peers to win the comparison battles and build your self-worth, but can rest in God’s love and provision for us.
We have to realize, though, that while the gospel tells us that we are equally loved by God, we’re not called or gifted in the same ways. And so as you use social media, remember what Paul says in Ephesians 2: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
What’s Paul saying here? He wants us to realize that God has uniquely created each of us for a specific purpose. Your life isn’t a string of random accidents but has been carefully planned out by God. This means that God has given each of us different gifts, talents, experiences, and opportunities according to our unique calling in life.
While society tries to convince us that we’re all the same and should hit the milestones and achievements at the same age, God wants us to realize that He didn’t create us to compete against each other, but rather to complement one another. As Parker Palmer wrote:
We are all made out of a different material. We complement each other. You have to have that perspective. We are not competing against each other to complete a set of life checklists first, but rather are each following the path that God has for us.
This means that you have to rethink what success in life and on social media is. Success isn’t showing how you’re reaching our culture’s preferred identities faster or better than your peers, but about faithfully following God’s call on your life.
This is hard to do, of course. We all want to be the greatest and are concerned about our peers. This even happened with the disciples, when Peter was worried that John was going to get a better life and ministry than him. But Jesus shot down his concerns, saying, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." Jesus is clear; your job isn't to worry about other people but to focus on following Him.
This is why the writer to the Hebrews said, “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” This is such an encouraging verse in our age of social media. You don’t have to live someone else’s life or run their race, but can focus on persevering on the path that God has placed you.
When you post about your life on social media, post about how God has called you to follow Him. Don't worry about what everyone else posts about as they try to compete and compare more favorably to the higher-ups. Instead, just share the life that God has called you to. As you share on social media, consider music producer Rick Rubin's words:
You are creating the work that best represents you. Another artist is making the work that best represents them. The two cannot be measured against one another. Art relates to the artist making it, and the unique contribution they are bringing to the culture.
While he’s talking about musicians, it also applies to us. When you share who God has made you be and how He has called you, you can stop comparing yourself to other people.
If you are struggling with comparison, remember that comparison is often the result of a heart that’s stuck. This means that you need to spend less time-consuming other people’s lives and more time living the life that God has for you. As Bob Goff said, "We won't be distracted by comparison if we're captivated by purpose."
When you see other people excelling on social media, learn from them and let them inspire you on your path. Let them be models for your growth, not measuring sticks for your worth. You have to realize, God isn't trying to turn us into social media stars who effortlessly win at life, but rather is working to conform you to the image of His Son, as you grow in character, wisdom, and holiness.
And so as you use social media, tell yourself:
God doesn’t need two of the same people, which means our lives are going to be different, not better or worse.
Because we’re different, I wouldn’t expect to have the same gifts, experiences, accomplishments, or timelines as each other.
Our differences aren’t downsides, but rather make life more interesting and enjoyable, since it would be boring if we were all the same.
While my life might not make sense, I’m going to keep moving forward, trusting that this is God’s best for me.
As the gospel fills our hearts with God's love and restores our trust in Him, we can stop comparing and competing against each other and use our lives to follow Him. While we may not get everything we want, by God’s grace, we can follow His call for us and enjoy His many blessings on our lives.