It’s plastered all over our social media safe havens, flooding our newsfeeds in capital letters and colorful emojis. Everywhere we turn, we’re bombarded by pictures of the dream body, the dream relationship, the dream life. We’re constantly told to achieve insurmountable goals: lose weight for the perfect summer body, do this for the perfect relationship, eat this for the perfect skin, use this for the perfect hair.

What none of the pages tell us is that perfect doesn’t exist. “Perfect,” as the society sees it, changes. While today we see a picture of a stick-thin girl with a demoralizing caption, just yesterday we were told we needed a thigh gap. So we’re stuck in this continuous circle, chasing our tails while trying to reach the goal dangling miles above us, as other people doing the exact same thing laugh at our silly struggle.

We can’t be too smart, or we’re strange. We can’t get bad grades, though, or we’re stupid. Too skinny is gross, but so is too thick. We have to be confident, but not too confident, or else we’re arrogant. The list could go on.

Our self-worth has become the number that shows up on the scale, how many followers we have on Twitter, and how many likes we got on our last Instagram post. We place value in numbers and other people’s opinions instead of the hobbies we enjoy and the topics we think about. We shouldn’t be counting calories based on some person’s opinion who is sitting behind a screen and doesn’t even know us.

We blame people for being fake but who doesn’t have some piece of fabrication about who they are? Instead of looking around to see who we’re better than, or who we wish we could be, we should be growing and expanding our own thoughts and interests, developing the person we want and were created to be, instead of the person social media tells us to be.

Disclaimer: Articles designated as “Editorial” represent the views and opinions of the author, not the 2014-2015 Periscope staff, CHS Administration or the CHS student body.