While en route to a spontaneous Taylor Swift 1989 world tour concert this past Sunday night, I looked over at my roommate and admitted that I really wish I hadn’t given up social media.

I was practically peeing my pants with excitement the entire ride to the Xcel Energy Center, but I couldn’t help but feel weirdly upset that I wouldn’t get to feature Tay shaking it off on my Snapchat Mystory.

How messed up is that? I was on my way to see my absolute favorite artist and I was sad because I wouldn’t get to tweet, Snapchat and Instagram the experience.

Her performance was everything I had hoped it would be (excuse the cliche) but Taylor really put things into perspective for me during the concert when she said,

“One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my twenty five years of existence, is that it’s really not good for your happiness or your state of mind, to care so much about what people who do not care about you, think about you.”

I thought about this statement in relation not only to my life but the way I and others portray themselves on social media.

The fact that we love to post isn’t the problem, it’s the manner in which we do it and the audience we share it with.

We don’t always do it for ourselves, to save memories or keep in touch with family and friends like we say; we do it because deep down we seek social acceptance, especially from those who don’t have our best intentions in mind.

And if you argue that isn’t the case, then why do we want likes, favorites, and views so badly? These days it’s definitely a goal.

As Taylor Swift points out, we damage ourselves when we put all of our time and energy into justifying ourselves and our actions to people who simply don’t care about us.

A majority of our captions don’t just let people know what we’re doing but they blatantly convey to our followers that we want them to be jealous of us and our experiences.

Many of us have perfected an air of nonchalance that disguises how much we actually care.

The point of all this is that we’re losing sight of who and what matters.

I matter and the experiences I have matter. What I’m realizing is they are just as important even if they don’t have 100 likes and favorites from people I may or may not even know.

Should we stop posting all together? No, but I think it’s important to post with a good heart and positive attitude and to essentially live our lives in that same manner.

None of us are perfect, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that our filters and carefully crafted captions aren’t fooling anyone, yet we spend an ungodly amount of time building a cyber life that makes it look like we’re flawless.

If only we spent as much time actually being happy as we do trying to convince others we are.

So thank you Taylor Swift for allowing me to realize that I’m just as guilty of this as anyone out there, and in response to your words of wisdom: PREACH.