So maybe you are scrolling through Instagram endlessly again, looking at sixty-second cooking videos, funny pictures of cats, and like six Lululemon ads. When suddenly you scroll to see the same thing, you always dread seeing- the Instagram model. You know exactly which one I am talking about. It is the same one with the private jet, the Gucci bag, designer clothes (none of which she bought), and the gifted brand trip- an all-inclusive week in Mexico (her third trip this year, its March). You go into a loophole of looking through all of her extravagant Instagram pictures, perfect feed, flawless face and makeup, the best-looking guy you have ever seen who is obviously her boyfriend, and all these perfect trips. As you sit in your bed eating that never ending bag of Sour-Cream and Onion chips you come to the realization it is now one a.m. on a Tuesday and you are stuck in the never-ending Instagram trap once again.
You are now completely screwed for tomorrow because you must be up at 7am for your 9 to 5 office job where you hate your boss, you sit in a cubicle all day, and you just wonder how life could get any more dreadful than it is now. To make things better you drive to work in your 2007 Toyota Corolla with two-hundred thousand miles and a taillight out, the Starbucks coffee line is unfortunately too long for you to acquire that daily eight-dollar Pumpkin Spice Latte which was the only thing getting you through another workday.

Now, I am not dissing your 2007 Toyota Corolla but maybe if you did ditch the eight-dollar coffee you could probably have a brand-new car by now, but you do refuse to make coffee at home because it “isn’t the same”. I totally get where you are coming from though because I too need an eight-dollar coffee to get through the day. Anyways enough with the rambling, it is perfectly normal to feel this way when seeing someone who has the life you dream of one click away. I too think a private jet would be nice to take from place to place every once and a while.

But here is the thing, none of it is real. Let me break it down for you. I call it “The Instagram Scam'', this seemingly rich, beautiful, flawless “model” spends three hours a day facetiming her photos, two of which she spends trying to fix the crooked wall behind her (she swears it was like that when the photo was taken). She has been posting the same pictures from the one trip she took last year to Ibiza and has no content because the brand found at least three-thousand other “Instagram models” to replace her. I mean they are easy to find because people just swear Instagram modeling is, “totally the same as being a runway model”.

The boyfriend is also the guy she met in high school who peaked when he was Quarterback on his 0-8 high school football team, and he has worn the same 5” inseam shorts since he was in a frat in college. Also, the designer clothes she is wearing will be sold on her Depop in the morning because she cannot afford to pay her ten-thousand dollar a month rent in Los Angeles (Pilates capital of the world), so she has now resorted to buying clothes for Instagram photo purposes only and returning them the next day.

I hope you feel better now that I broke it all down for you. I told you it is a scam, it's completely fake. If you don’t believe me then you can ask anyone else on social media. Instagram is the hoax of the century.
 I have a solution, limit your social media time more and more each day until soon enough you won't even remember what it is like to sit there and get sucked in for hours. If you limit your use of social media, it is better for your mental and physical wellbeing. Instead go outside, exercise, make the food you see in the food videos that looks so delicious, and get some good sleep for once. But I promise you that once you take away the Instagram trap from your life you will see so many positive changes. You won't be comparing yourself to these fake personas of people anymore. Social media is a huge part of mental illness in younger generations (that’s you) so stop it while you're ahead. You can be the person who is better off than everyone else because you took a step out of the social media bubble.

So next time instead of being mesmerized by the Instagram trap for four hours, get the sleep you need instead.  Oh, and maybe skip the coffee in the morning a new car seems nice, and you might be in the market for one soon.