Guest post by Joe Frango, a multiple-award-winning copywriter and creative director whose career spans top companies and major brands. His fitness blog is found on @dadboddoneright.

It’s complicated. Love in real life, that is. On social media, not so much.

Though many of us seem married to the idea that social media can make us happy, so assiduously do we post and primp and preen on these platforms, our devotion to them may be more problematic than we’d like to believe.

Our buzz-driven culture of celebrity crushes is all atwitter with titillation over every gossipy tidbit that takes us inside the love lives of the rich and famous. But social media enables us to script our own romantic narrative and control our own spotlight. We may not be Alex and J. Lo or Kim and Kanye, but thanks to the popularizing power of social media, we can have so much more than the 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol imagined we all would experience in the future. Enshrined on the marquee of our social media, our name is our fame, our selfie our star, and our love lives the blockbuster feature.

We are easily enamored of our ability to edit our love lives on social media and tailor them for the perfect Pavlovian response from our connections. We can’t help but feel the love as our parade of posts spurs a swelling series of thumbs-ups and hearts. Selfies make self-glorification and the romanticization of even the rockiest relationships a snap. Posing as the perfect couple is just too tempting to resist, like a comfy pair of Yeezies. Being in love or at least “in a relationship” is always trending on social media, where we hash out the hashtags that will attract the most admiring eyes to our posts.

Who cares if IRL that beautifully bleach-toothed and flawlessly filtered selfie partner may be MIA in a crisis—if the relationship is based more on contrivance than connection? Likes are so much easier to come by than love. Heart emojis are fun and flirty and a far cry from opening your heart. And our poses are perfect for a Pollyanna virtual world of filtering and fakery. 

And the sex. All these cuddly, grinning, look-at-us selfies scream sexual chemistry to the world—or do they merely make us groan in oh-come-on disbelief or resentment? With such carefully crafted narratives of sexual nirvana, how can those of us who are single or struggle with real relationship problems not experience profile envy? And consider the proliferation of women on social media who claim to be happily married in their bios (wedding ring emoji next to peach/ass emoji!), yet post endless shots of themselves in stylized, sexually provocative poses, inviting objectification. In creating our alternate realities on social media, we pool our loneliness and prop up our fantasies. Are we spreading our lies more than our legs?

Groping in the Dark 

Emojis have replaced emotions with new hieroglyphics. Icons overtake words to convey frivolities over feelings. Whole articles are written to decipher the dazzling diversity of heart emojis. What does the vibrating pink heart mean as opposed to the flat red heart? The social media wall has become the new cave wall for modern-day Neanderthals to post nebulous scribbled sentiments. And just as in Plato’s cave we only see shadows, the cave-dwelling of social media can keep us in the dark about what’s really going on in each other’s lives. 

In a sense, social media has always been a form of social distancing. Like online dating, it absolves us of the need for interacting as real, flesh-and-blood human beings, with all the messy nuances and intricacies our humanity entails. It allows us to exclude or edit out of our lives people we deem unworthy, and to keep the rest at a safe distance, beyond the complications and disruptions of authentic emotion. Kissy-faces may be nothing more than a kiss-off, and those rose emojis cost nothing—not even an emotional investment. 

Research suggests that people who over-post about their love lives are building their “relationship visibility” to mitigate their “relationship insecurity.” But perhaps we are trying to compensate for a lack of love itself—of meaningful romantic connections we can rely on, not just to help us get more likes, but to provide the emotional support and security we need to be truly happy.

None of this is to bash social media, which can encourage the interplay of ideas and the exchange of information and connect us to personalities and possibilities we may not have been able to experience otherwise. Social media can be a wonderfully expansive way to foster a sense of community, celebrate milestones, and share memories and memories-in-the-making.

But in a world where so much is considered disposable, from our dates to our dignity, it makes sense to question a cultural mindset that uses social media as a substitute for the love that extends far beyond selfies—to our most private, intimate, and vulnerable selves. Maybe we need to look deep within, to those flawed human beings inside us who long not so much to be liked for their selfies, but to be loved—really loved—just for being themselves.