A trip to Hawaii. Yesterday’s brunch with the girls. Clips of that one iconic midnight snack run. How often do you find yourself capturing life, a fat smile on your face and phone in hand. You can’t exactly pinpoint when it happened, but one day documenting these moments became second nature. Habitual. A reflex.
It’s natural to hoard these memories. We need a visual reminder to serve as a mental nudge so that we can see and relive the nostalgia. The instinct to take pictures is rooted in the desire to preserve it forever.
But, as with most millennials, a second instinct hits. You feel an itch. The quiet urge to share. In the era of social media, it’s so easy to broadcast personal moments with the tap of a button. The world you see with your eyes can now be seen by everyone in your network and more. It’s fun to see what others are doing. It’s even more fun to feel seen. But at what point does our desire to share become a need for validation? Are we simply soothing an itch with all these likes and comments? Are we slowly using moments for social media rather than using social media for moments? And more importantly, do you still feel happy capturing these moments? Or are you accidentally missing it by focusing on getting the perfect shot and witty caption?
These are internal questions that a lot of people find themselves asking. Falling into unhealthy mindsets perpetuated by social media is common. “Do it for the gram” and “FOMO” wouldn’t be popular terms otherwise. Thankfully these days platforms and users are taking things into their own hands and moving towards “private media”. Rather than uploading to a feed with a large network of connections, users are now cultivating their content for smaller, close knit groups. This reclaims the intimacy and personal nature of our moments. Moments that matter with people that matter.
Why does private media feel more fulfilling than regular platforms?
Personal Aspect
The beauty of private media is the ability to keep content for yourself. You can accumulate any sort of photos without regard for aesthetics. You can write journal entries and captions without filter. You can infuse your rawest, most vulnerable emotions into these pieces. The privacy level of private media allows you to be your most authentic self and ensures that this is all for you.
Being Selective
That being said, moments aren’t always something that need to be kept completely to ourselves. Our lives and memories involve people, who oftentimes feel the same nostalgia over shared moments. Private media functions allow you to be selective and hand pick who is involved in viewing your content. This increases the quality of interactions and opens way for reminiscent conversations. By sharing content with relevant people, connection becomes a priority.
Collaboration
What better way to connect than through collaboration? As insinuated earlier, social media is a one-way broadcast of our lives and how we see our world. It lacks engagement and frames content from a singular view.
Now, imagine a fond memory you had with your friends. Simultaneously each of you were having your own perspectives and emotional takeaways. Private media applications reinvent a shared moment by allowing you to collaborate these views with everyone. Seeing photos, journal entries and content intermixed with everyone else ensures that no detail is left out. The memory hence becomes even more vivid and stark. It becomes so easy to relive it.
Next time you take a trip to Hawaii, go for brunch with the girls, or take a midnight snack run, capture that moment. When you’re taking those pictures forget about social media. Forget about the likes and invisible followers. Record everything the way you see it - not to impress anyone else, but simply and genuinely for you. A visual reminder, a story, an emotional prompt.
Because remember: time is something that you can’t take back. We can, however, try to hold onto it and immortalize our memories forever. These personal recollections take us back, and allow us to relive moments that matter.