I'm still trying to figure out how much social media affected my confidence during those pivotal teenage years. Growing up in the early 2010s, I was glued to Instagram and Facebook, constantly scrolling through curated highlight reels of friends' seemingly perfect lives. It's crazy to think about how that exposure to an airbrushed ideal of beauty, success, and happiness actually made me feel like I wasn't measuring up. It's wild to look back and see how these apps manipulated me into comparing myself to others, when really, everyone's struggles were just as real as mine. Does social media genuinely have that much power over our self-perception? What do you think?