Posting and Deleting: Why We Overthink Everything We Share

Oh, the joys of social media. A place where we can totally be ourselves—after spending 20 minutes choosing the perfect filter, rewriting the caption five times, and analyzing whether our post makes us look cool, funny, or just plain desperate for attention. Sounds exhausting? That’s because it is.

We’ve all been there. Staring at a post is like it’s some kind of life-altering decision. Is this selfie cute or cringy? Will people get my joke? What if no one likes it within the first 10 minutes?! And if the dreaded overthinking kicks in—boom! Deleted. Because obviously, the world was judging us so hard in those five minutes our post was up.

And the cycle continues. We want to share, but we also want to be effortlessly perfect (which, spoiler alert: no one is). We scroll through everyone else’s “casual” pics—aka perfectly posed, edited masterpieces—and wonder why we can’t just throw something up without analyzing every pixel. We tell ourselves we’re just “curating our aesthetic,” but let’s be real—we’re just scared of looking awkward or, God forbid, uncool.

Even I wanted to look perfect. I wanted to look like THAT girl—the one whose life seems effortlessly aesthetic, whose posts always hit just right. But let’s be honest: You can’t just post anything, especially when it comes to your very, very personal life. Because, well, nazar hits hard. So yeah, maybe we’re not out here trauma-dumping on the timeline, but at the same time, we could stop obsessing over making sure every little thing we post is flawless.

But here’s the truth: No one actually cares as much as we think they do. People double-tap, scroll, and forget in seconds. Meanwhile, we’re out here acting like every post is an entry into some kind of social media Hall of Fame. It’s ridiculous. And kind of hilarious.

So maybe it’s time to stop treating Instagram like an Olympic event. Post the blurry pic. Make the stupid joke. Embrace the awkward selfie. Because at the end of the day, the only person truly stressing over your posts… is you. Wouldn’t it be nice to just enjoy social media instead of letting it stress us out? Sounds like a win to me.