On social media, the top descriptors to complete the phrase “My husband is …” are “the best,” “my best friend,” “amazing,” “the greatest”<br />and “so cute.” On Google, one of the top five ways to complete that phrase is also “amazing.” So that checks out.<br />Alone with a screen and anonymous, people tend to tell Google things they don’t reveal<br />to social media; they even tell Google things they don’t tell to anybody else.<br />Type in “I always …” and you may see the suggestion, based on other people’s searches, “I always feel tired” or “I always have<br />diarrhea.” This can offer a stark contrast to social media, where everybody “always” seems to be on a Caribbean vacation.<br />According to 2014 data from Spotify Insights on what people actually listen to, men<br />and women have similar tastes; 29 of the 40 musicians women listened to most frequently were also the artists most frequently listened to by men.<br />Once you’ve looked at enough aggregate search data, it’s hard to take the curated selves we see on social media too seriously.<br />Just how different is the real world from the world on social media?<br />The pressure to look a certain way on social media can do much more than distort our image of the musicians other people actually listen to.<br />The other four: “a jerk,” “annoying,” “gay” and “mean.”<br />While spending five years staring at a computer screen learning about some of human beings’ strangest<br />and darkest thoughts may not strike most people as a good time, I have found the honest data surprisingly comforting.<br />Social media is making us miserable.
