Does Social Media Affect Your Self Esteem?

While the Internet is a great way to connect with people, Have your opinions known. One must wonder if it can do more harm than good when it comes to how one feels about themselves.

How many times have you checked your blog views this week? Your Twitter followers? Do you wake up in the morning, check your Facebook before having your first cup of coffee?

For the past couple of months I have been connecting all my social sites with the same name/email address.  This after well meaning friends, acquaintances told me that I need to brand myself. Pick one topic, Make myself easier and appealing to follow.

So, I Prepared my once dead blog, all in the hopes to gain the all important and coveted followers. While I have been writing all my life. Marketing my musings like they were a shiny new toy is new to me.

Yet, I must ask myself, Why does this matter? Does it make the words I choose to express, my views, any less important? Should I be worried because I lost 2 Twitter followers or excited because I gained 5? If no one comments on my status does this mean that my topics are dull? Am I boring? Do I immediately re-invent myself. Or am I comfortable with the real me?

Back when I was a young girl. Long before there was an Internet, Before computers even. I was a writer. Daily entries in my diary disguised in spiral notebooks.Between the bindings lived stories, random thoughts, my dreams. Afraid that if I allowed anyone access to  those pages, ridicule would follow. So forever hidden they remained.

Now  not only are my friends and family able to read my daily activities, the world can as well. As a once extremely private person the thought of this is daunting. However to know that I, anyone, can have a voice is exciting.

While I appreciate any and all advice, I cannot tie myself,  this blog, my tweets or even my status update in a neat little bow. For I am too eclectic to do so. My life is messy, my interests many. My opinions, the stories I share, cannot help but to reflect this. 

While  one can become caught up in the statistics, logistics of social media.  They can  also embrace the opportunities given.  Meeting people from different places, backgrounds. Become enlightened,while learning of other’s lives. All while not worrying about conforming themselves, just to fit in one demographic mold.

It took 40 years of life experiences for me to reach this moment. Totally comfortable with my authentic self. If people that stop by my pages, would like to stay for awhile, I am honored. If not, that is alright as well. For I am a writer. My passion is the words on the page. If no one reads them, their importance is not diminished.  At least not to me.