social media and the problem of envy

I’ve been working on several projects over the last month, but I have two essays left that I want to share on social media. This one, the last of the “problems of social media” essays, and then one concluding essay next week.

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"The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks his leg he will be able to walk better himself." — Helmut Schoeck

Have you ever been scrolling through your phone when your eye catches a peer’s post? This person, someone you’re secretly trying to outdo, just shared a life update with some incredible news. As you realize that your peer is getting the kind of life that you’d love to have, your chest begins to tighten and a sense of anger creeps over you: this isn’t fair!

This is the feeling of envy, something that no one talks about but everyone experiences. While lots of people will admit that they struggle with comparison on social media, that’s just a euphemism for comparison’s rotten fruit: envy. But whether we’re willing to admit it or not, envy on social media is tearing our lives apart.

This means that if we ever want to use social media in healthy ways, we have to understand what envy is, why we struggle with it, and if there's anything we can do to solve this ugly problem. 

so what is envy? 

While everyone has heard of envy, few people know what it means. Envy is the feeling of resentment you have towards other people who get what you want in life. You see someone else’s life, and rather than celebrating or admiring what they have, you grow upset that you don’t have it.

Envy causes us to hate seeing our peers excel, and grow frustrated and upset that we’re not getting the attention and approval that they’re getting. The writer Gore Vidal described envy clearly when he said, “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”

Envy, though, doesn’t so much want what the other person has, but rather causes us to hate the other person for having what we want. You resent them for getting the life that you feel like you deserve more than them. As Helmut Schoeck, an Austrian sociologist from the 1960s, said:

The envious man does not so much want to have what is possessed by others as yearn for a state of affairs in which no one would enjoy the coveted object or style of life.

This shows an important distinction. Envy isn't about getting what other people have, that’s coveting, but rather punishing them for having what you want. We resent others for their success and want to hurt them for getting our goals before us.

This is why envy is such a popular motive for antagonists in movies. Whether it's Scar's envy of Mufasa, the queen's envy of Snow White, or the stepsisters' envy of Cinderella, envy motivates these characters to find ways to destroy their opponent’s lives.

While envy is something that we'd prefer not to talk about, it’s a core part of our culture, showing up in every kind of relationship. Schoeck goes on to say:

Envy is a drive which lies at the core of man's life as a social being, and which occurs as soon as two individuals become capable of mutual comparison.

Any culture that struggles with pride and comparison will also be flush with envy. Why? Because as we compete against our peers to accomplish our ambitious identities, other people get there first, causing us to resent them.

This is why envy shows up among equals, between peers who share similar gifts, callings, gender, class, and desires in life. In general, we don't envy people far above us, but rather those who are most like us, the people that we're competing against as we go through life.

When we see our peers getting the life we want before us, we resent them and want to tear them down. And so envy is so often the driving force behind our desire to discredit, diminish, ridicule, gossip about, exclude, criticize, and sabotage the lives of others. 

We lie to ourselves and say that we're not motivated by envy when we do these things, but rather a desire for justice, fairness, and truth. This is why envy often shows up as righteous indignation, where we criticize others for not meeting cultural standards or expectations. As pastor Bob Sorge writes:

Envy clothes itself in the cloak of a noble passion. Envy never wants to be discovered, so it generates a noble zeal that deflects all eyes on a secondary issue. … Envy deceives us from the true nature of our heart motivations.

And so we try to hide our envy behind more noble reasons. We don't say that we envy someone, but rather point out how irresponsible it is to travel so much, how bad their parenting techniques are, or how wasteful they are when it comes to their money. Envy expresses itself indirectly so that we can maintain an "I'm a nice person" facade. 

While envy has existed in every culture in human history, our culture is struggling with it more than ever. Why? Because of the explosion of social media.

how does envy show up on social media? 

So why has social media fanned the fires of envy in our hearts? Because envy always starts as an act of perception; you have to see someone’s life to envy them. And now, with the rise of social media, you can see every part of your peer’s lives. 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. 

We see only the most exciting images from their vacations, the happy faces of their friends and children, accounts of their continual self-improvement, the fascinating people they are meeting, and the examples of success in their endeavors.

This is why one popular podcaster referred to Instagram as "my daily dose of envy.” Social media makes him hyper-aware of his peers’ successes, which causes him to resent them, since they’re getting the kind of life he wants before him.

While most people are not this honest about their struggle with envy, it shows up everywhere on social media. Envy strikes you when as you’re scrolling through your phone, you catch a glimpse of someone you consider to be your equal, getting the life that you’ve always wanted, whether that’s a beautiful vacation, well-behaved kids, perfect looks, or an incredible home. You stop and gaze at their post, frustrated that they've gotten the kind of life that you've always dreamed of but don't yet have. 

As this happens, a wave of envy washes over you. You see their successes and burn with resentment. You sneer in disgust, upset that someone that you feel better than is getting the life that you deserve. "This isn't fair," you tell yourself, "I deserve that kind of life like that so much more than them."

At this point, all of us deny that we’re envious of our peers. “I’m not envious of them,” we say to ourselves, “It’s just that this is so unfair! They don’t deserve that life as much as me.”

But you can tell it’s envy because our resentment quickly turns into a desire to tear the other person down. We examine their post and scan their profile, looking for indirect ways to cut them down to size. And so social media envy shows up as:

• Hyper-criticism: we point out other people's flaws and fixate on their tiniest mistakes, in an attempt to make them look bad. "When I went to Italy, I went to much nicer restaurants than that." "Wow, does she really think those two colors go together?!" "He's a published author but doesn't even know how to use a comma?!" 

• Righteous indignation: we tell ourselves that we’re not tearing the other person down because we’re envious, but because they’re immoral and harming others. "I'm not envious of that person, I just care about climate change, and having a huge house like that is so bad for the environment!"

• Pointing out an injustice: When other people succeed more than us, we see it not just as wrong, but unjust, a sign of how broken the world is. "I'm not envious of them, I'm just upset that they're getting this. It shows how unfair our society still is." 

• Rationalizing: We attribute another person's success in life to immoral or taboo behavior. "If I had standards that low I could be married with a family by now too." "If I dressed as trashy as her I'd get even more attention."

• Diminishing and devaluing certain achievements: We try to make ourselves feel better by diminishing the importance of the goal that the other person has achieved. "Well I didn't want to get married anyway…it seems terrible" "Being a lawyer sounds like the most boring job ever."

• Downplaying any success as just luck: An envious heart believes that other people are successful only because they're lucky and privileged, not because they deserve it. "They're just lucky…if I got that break I'd be even more successful." "Ugh, it's just because they were born on third base." 

• Citing immaturity/irresponsibility: We try to dampen their successes by pointing out their weaknesses. "I can't believe that he wastes so much money at all of those high-end restaurants." "They’re so irresponsible to travel there with their children?" 

By using these behaviors we act as if we care about rightness, fairness, and morality. In truth, though, we’re just trying to tear down a rival and rationalize why we’re still better than them, even though they have the life we want.

But envy doesn’t just stop there. As you scroll social media and continue to nurse your envy, it’ll push you towards malice; you’ll feel the need to hurt the person you envy. You’ll withdraw your support from them, as you refuse to like or view any of their posts. You’ll hope that by giving them the social media silent treatment, you can play a small part in sabotaging their online life and punish them for your pain.

While no one wants to admit that they struggle with envy, it shows up everywhere on social media, as it poisons so many of our relationships, whether it’s with friends, acquaintances, or people we’ve never even met. As Helmut Schoeck wrote, "That our fellow man is always potentially envious…is one of the most disturbing, often one of the most carefully concealed yet most basic facts of human existence."

This is why people are always so critical of others on social; they’re envious of the people who are getting attention. They become haters or trolls, upset that someone they feel is equal or below them is getting more approval than they are: "Who are they to be getting so much attention?"

If anyone ever gets placed on a social media pedestal, envy will ensure that a few of their peers try to knock them off. As Taylor Swift sings, "People throw rocks at things that shine."

As this happens, envy starts to go from online to in-person, as our social media envy pushes us to tear down our rivals in the minds of our friends. We gossip about and criticize the people we envy, as we share rumors and unflattering stories, hoping that by spreading the envious poison of our heart we can damage their reputation and status. 

So why are we so driven to envy others on social media and tear them down?

what's at the heart of envy?

Our need to envy and tear down others flows out of a need to make ourselves feel better about where we are in life. This is why it’s so important to our self-image that no one ever realizes that we struggle with envy.

Why is that? Because it’s humiliating to admit, both to ourselves and others, that we feel behind a peer. As Robert Greene wrote:

Envy entails the admission to ourselves that we are inferior to another person in something we value. Not only is it painful to admit this inferiority, but it is even worse for others to see that we are feeling this. 

And so almost as soon as we feel the initial pangs of envy, we are motivated to disguise it to ourselves—it is not envy we feel but unfairness at the distribution of goods or attention, resentment at this unfairness, even anger. 

This means that envy always involves a sense of personal failure and self-disappointment. We see people on social media who have better identities, get more approval, and live extraordinary lives filled with aesthetic beauty and coolness, which in comparison, makes us feel like a failure.

When you envy someone, you’re acknowledging that you feel like you’re losing the social media race to get our culture’s preferred status markers and identities, which is shameful to admit in our competitive and comparison-based culture.

This is why envy is so rampant in our culture; it’s the unacknowledged shadow of our approval-obsessed social media culture. We use social media to compete against each other for approval, attention, and admiration, yet since not everyone can win, those who don’t envy those who do.

And so envy is both a byproduct and a catalyst of our American cultural desire to win in life. This isn't anything new, though. In Ecclesiastes 4, Solomon says that as he looked out at the meaninglessness of life, he "saw that all toil and all achievement spring out of one's envy of another." Envy motivates us to try harder to win, so that we can stop envying others and instead be envied.

But no matter how hard we try, all of us will lose to some peers in the social media quest for approval, identity, and celebrity. These losses will always lead to envy, as we try to cut down the social media winners to make ourselves feel better. As Henry Cloud writes:

Envy causes us to subtly put down the accomplishments of others, somehow robbing them of the goodness they had attained. We hope that if we can put down others and criticize their accomplishments, then we can reduce the goodness that they have obtained. This will make us feel better about our own lack of achievements in this area.

The whole social media system makes us feel like our lives aren't good enough and that we don't measure up. But rather than admitting that we're sad or discouraged about where we're at in life, we respond in envy, hoping that if we can tear down the other person to our level then we'll feel better about ourselves.

what are the results of envy?

Despite how widespread envy is on social media, most of us don't take it that seriously. We think it's just a small problem and refuse to believe that it causes any real issues in our lives. 

But while envy might seem invisible, it has a radioactive effect, poisoning everyone around it. As Proverbs 14:30 says, "A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones." Envy is why there's such a toxicity to social media today. It rots our souls, which causes social media to stink.

We try to rationalize our envy away, telling ourselves that it will reduce our rivals and soothe our wounded egos. In reality, though, envy acts like a boomerang; we throw it out to hurt another person, but it always comes back and does the most damage to us.

While there are all kinds of negative outcomes from envy on social media, they can be summarized in two main types:

First, envy destroys social cohesion. Social media-induced envy has caused so many of our social relationships to dissolve into hatred and ill will. It has turned our culture into a splintered mess, where everyone resents their peers and spends their lives, both in-person and online, trying to tear down their rivals.

Envy destroys communities and culture. This is why Chaucer said that wherever you find envy, you find the wreckage of human and Christian community. As James says in James 3: "For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil practice."

Envy is why our culture is filled with lying, gossiping, manipulation, frenemies, backstabbing, and drama of every kind. As Cornelius Platinga Jr. wrote:

The envier gossips. He saves up bad news about others and passes it around like an appetizer at happy hour. The envier grumbles. He murmurs. He complains that all the wrong people are getting ahead. Spite, bitterness, discord which undoes all friendships, accusation, malignity—all these things flow from envy and together turn friendship and good fellowship into a rancorous shambles.

As this happens, social media-driven envy tears our culture apart, as peers become rivals and secretly tear each other down. And since social media is our town square, envy toxifies every relationship in our culture and causes different religious, racial, gender, political, or class groups to hate each other.

This is why social media-driven envy has such a poisonous effect on our society. It doesn't create community but rather causes siblings to become rivals, friends to become frenemies, classmates to become competitors, and coworkers to become enemies, causing every area of society to break down.

Second, envy destroys our personal happiness. The second way envy destroys our lives is by destroying our ability to enjoy what we have. Envy causes us to live lives of perpetual misery, constantly stewing over our peers’ successes.

When our lives are saturated with envy, we're hyper-aware of how far behind we are, which causes us to hate our lives. We're always dissatisfied with what we have and feel like nothing is ever good enough. Because of this, envy cripples our ability to enjoy the good things that each of us do have.

This causes us to nurse our grudges and become filled with self-pity. We use self-pity to convince ourselves that we’re victims who have been wronged, by our peers, society, or God himself. We sit around and cry out “Woe is me!”, insistent that we have been treated badly.

As self-pity takes over our lives, it goes on to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than working toward the life that we want, we get stuck in our victimhood and forfeit all agency for our lives. We grow angry and bitter, blaming everyone else for our problems. As the 19th-century playwright Joseph Addison wrote:

The condition of the envious man is the most emphatically miserable; he is not only incapable of rejoicing in another's merit or success, but lives in a world wherein all mankind are in a plot against (him).

All in all, envy will make you an unhappy person, perpetually dissatisfied and hyper-aware of how wronged you’ve been by others. When envy burns within you, you’ll become bitter, critical, cynical, and negative, diminishing and destroying your relationships with the people around you.

what’s the root problem of envy?

But while a sense of personal failure might ignite envy, it flows out of a deeper cause. Envy is more than just a desire for someone else’s life, at its core, envy is a grumbling complaint against God: “You owe me a better life than the one I’ve gotten,” we say. “You haven’t treated me fairly, and the proof is that person right there!”

Deep down, the root of envy comes from the belief that God has treated us wrongly and isn’t giving us what we deserve. We’re bitter at God and think He’s refusing to give us what we need to be happy. As J.D. Greear, a pastor in North Carolina said, “We start out thinking our envy is a problem between us and other people, but it’s really a grudge against God." 

This is how envy got started, after all. Satan was just below God, but he bore a grudge against God for being superior to him. So Satan resented God and waged an envy-filled war to try to tear Him down. Satan’s plan backfired, though, as he was defeated by God and kicked out of heaven.

This didn’t stop Satan from envying God, though. And since envy pushes us to want to destroy the other person, Satan set out to destroy God’s perfect creation, which is why he lied to Adam and Eve. He so hated God that he convinced Adam and Eve to disobey God and introduce the brokenness of sin into the world.

After sin came into the world, it didn’t take long for envy to start destroying things. In Genesis 4, Cain became envious of his brother Abel, resenting him because God looked upon Abel's sacrifice with favor. Cain saw how God responded to Abel’s sacrifice and disliked God’s goodness to Abel while dismissing God’s goodness to himself.

And so Cain, unable to handle Abel's blessed life, fell into an envious rage and murdered his brother. This is what envy does; it starts as a small seed of resentment and, left unchecked, grows until it reaches its ultimate end, murder. 

While we might think that we’ve advanced beyond this, envy continues to show up in our hearts in the same way. When we envy, we hate the goodness that God shows to others and join Satan’s movement to destroy God’s creation. As Cornelius Platinga Jr. wrote, "The envier is a child of the evil one; if he cannot have heaven, he can at least raise hell in the lives of others."

Like Satan and Cain, we believe that we're entitled to more from God than we've gotten, so we seek to get back at God by destroying the people that he's blessed. We feel that God owes us more than we've gotten. So while we might never touch our rivals physically, we murder them in our hearts and find secret ways to tear them down.

In this way, envy flows out of a deep self-righteousness towards God. We become entitled, believing that we merit a better life than the one He's given to us, causing us to doubt His goodness to us. As Bob Sorge says, "Envy insults God—as though by giving all that He did to my brother, He didn't have enough left over to give me my rightful portion."

The envious person forgets God's past goodness as they point to a long list of reasons they've concocted to prove that they deserve more. When we see our peers get what we want, we believe that God has wronged us, and like Cain, we want to punish them for receiving God’s blessing.

So is there any way to fix this tragically broken system?

so what's the answer to envy? 

I hope by now you can see the destructiveness of envy. It has turned social media into a toxic place, where people resent and tear each other down. 

While people are trying to change this, their only solution to envy is to get rid of anything that triggers it. So they encourage everyone to either spend less time on social media or avoid it altogether.

While this approach isn't necessarily bad, it doesn't solve the root problem of envy. Envy existed long before social media, so if you just avoid social media, you might reduce your envy, but you’ll still struggle with it.

So what can we do? 

To solve your problem with envy, you have to address the problem in your heart. You have to repent of the belief that you deserve God's blessings and step into His undeserved mercy. 

Our default mindset is the opposite of this, though. We go to God and demand justice from Him. "God," we complain, "You're treating me so unfairly; why won't you give me what I deserve?" 

But to think like this shows how deluded we are. If God gave us what we deserved, we wouldn't get anything good! As Paul Tripp says, Envy "ignores the reality that each of us is a rebel and a fool, deserving God’s rejection and wrath."

None of us can claim that God is treating us unfairly, because none of us meet God's expectations for goodness. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 3: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God." So if God gave us what we deserved, we'd experience total separation from Him forever. 

You have to realize that what you need from God isn’t His justice, but rather His mercy. God is merciful, meaning that He doesn't punish you for your sins, but rather showers you in love and acceptance. Paul says in Titus 3 that God "saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy."

But how is it possible for a perfect God to show mercy to enviers like us?

The answer is through Jesus Christ. Jesus came to earth to be the greater Abel, to sacrifice himself so that we, enviers like Cain, could be forgiven of our envy and reconciled to God. Hebrews 12 says that Jesus is our mediator who saves us through his "sprinkle blood, that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel." 

Jesus was the greater Abel because, even though he was completely perfect, he was arrested because of the religious leaders' envy and sentenced to death by Pilate to appease an envious crowd. 

But despite this unjust sentence, Jesus never envied others.

Even as he was dying on the cross, Jesus didn't say, “God, this isn't fair. I don't deserve this kind of death. Why am I getting the punishment that those people deserve while they're getting off completely free?!”

Instead, because of his love for us, Jesus stayed on the cross, and received the punishment that we deserved, while giving us the perfect record of his envy-free life. As 1 John 4 says, "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

Now, because Jesus satisfied God's justice, we can receive God’s mercy and, unlike Cain, be welcomed back into a relationship with God.

The gospel solves our problem of envy because it causes the foundation of our envy, our self-righteousness, to collapse. The gospel says that we don't deserve any of God's blessings, but it also tells us that because of God's love, he pours out his blessings onto us, starting with salvation and continuing in so many other ways. 

When we understand our sinfulness before God and need for His mercy, we stop telling Him, "You haven't given me what I deserve!", but rather, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

So if you want to break through your struggle with envy, you have to preach two things to your heart:

1. Because I’m created, sustained, and saved by God, everything I have is only because of God's mercy towards me, and not because I deserve anything at all. 

2. Because God is the only thing that can ultimately satisfy my heart’s longings, I have to repent of trying to find the good life through a certain lifestyle, and instead find it in God, through His love for me and perfect provision in Jesus.

While in this life we’ll always have unfulfilled desires, in eternity, God promises to solve our feelings of incompleteness forever. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:9 that God has prepared a greater future for us than our minds could ever conceive.

So when you’re tempted to envy others, trust that in God’s new creation, He’ll give you more than you could ever imagine. As Psalm 37 says: 

Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong;
for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pastures.
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

As God’s beloved, trust that even if you don’t have everything you’d like, God is providing you with everything you need.

what does gospel-saturated social media look like? 

When you understand the gospel, it’ll allow you to use social media not out of a spirit of envy, but of love. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that “love does not envy,” meaning that gospel-saturated social media will be a place where love overcomes envy.

You can admire their achievements, like their posts, and congratulate them on their lives, as you let God's unmerited love for you fill your heart until it overflows onto them. You’ll stop using social media to resent and tear down your peers, but rather to find ways to encourage and build them up.

This doesn't mean that it's easy to not be envious on social media. So as you are tempted to envy others on social media, remember these things:

1. God never promises that life will never be completely fair: This is a fact of life; God doesn't give gifts, talents, or blessings equally to people. We're all different. God doesn't promise to be fair, but He does promise to love us and be generous with us.

2. While we might be blessed differently, we are all equally valuable: While it's okay to share about your life, don't lord your blessings over other people, acting as if they make you more valuable than others. As Paul says, we're all members of one body and no one should look down on another part.

3. There’s no correlation between gifts and worthiness: Everything you receive from God is His gift, not a result of your merit. As Richard Rohr wrote, “The Bible moves the focus from attainment to acceptance, from hard work to soft surrender, from ‘I am worthy’ to ‘God is good.’ All is gratuitous.” 

4. Reorient your purpose from getting your best life to serving God: If the purpose of your life is to get the good life, you'll always struggle with envy. But if the purpose of your life is to serve God and surrender yourself to His plan for your life, you'll be able to appreciate your life, even if you don't get everything that other people do.

5. If you're stuck, let your desires push you into action: Sadly, envy is often a symptom of a stalled life. You feel stuck, but rather than doing anything yourself, you just hate on others. God is a God of grace, but He does work through wisdom, so let the success of other people inspire you towards action, not envy. 

As you entrust your life to God, it’ll allow you to quit obsessing over everyone else on social media and start enjoying your life. Trust that God’s working in your life, not to give you a life that is easy for others to envy, but to refine you so that you'll be ready to spend eternity with him. Even if your life doesn’t make sense right now, keep moving forward and rest in God’s perfect provision for you.