#HAPPY: The dictatorship of happiness on social media

We spend hours on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, seduced by their promise of being able to share our lives and thoughts with the whole world. In this virtual world, everyone is happy. Everyone has perfect bodies and leads fulfilled lives in stylish houses surrounded by beautiful friends and family. Everyone shows off and everyone judges. But this irresistible quest for recognition can quickly turn into an addiction that wreaks havoc on our mental health. And teenagers are the most susceptible to this. In this film, we examine the real dangers of the ‘happycracy’ promoted on social networks and hear from some of its young victims.

Danny was 14 when he posted his first selfie on Facebook. But it didn’t get many ‘likes’, leading him to take more and more in a desperate attempt to secure the approval of others. Soon he was taking hundreds of selfies a day. He stopped eating in an attempt to perfect his body and lost 12kg. Then he dropped out of school and spent six months unable to leave the house, believing that he was so ugly that people would be afraid of him. Desperate, he tried to kill himself. It was only when Danny stopped using social networks that he was able to slowly recover.

His is an extreme story, but with the invention of the ‘like’ and the idea of ‘self-branding’, where everything must be validated by others to be real, the creators of social networks are changing our behavior. Marie, who is 22 years old and has 4,922 followers, is terrified of disappointing her subscribers.  So she spends one day a week perfecting an image of living the perfect Parisian life. She spends hours doing her make-up and taking hundreds of photos just in order to create the one image that she will post. She breaks down in front of the camera and confides how vulnerable she feels and how desperate she is to be liked.

Due to copyright restrictions, this video can only be viewed on RT’s live feed. Time of broadcast is available on RT’s schedule page.