How oppressive are your norms?

Not doing it for social media. (Black family wedding portrait, 1944. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland)

Anything new starts out as someone’s idea. Someone tries something, and if someone else sparks to it, they may try it, too.

At a certain point, these ideas become established as the new norm. Social media has accelerated this process. An idea can become a trend or even a movement very quickly.

As a new idea gains traction, the culture (or subculture) shifts to accommodate it. Maybe the new thing gets a name. Now, it seems as if it was always present.

The impact of a new idea can be profound. For instance, families, universities, and workplaces are having conversations about the importance of consent when it comes to touching others — conversations that can, over a generation, reduce misunderstandings and even violence.

A new idea can be silly or annoying. In terms of slangy sentence construction, “I know, right?” Is the new “Not!”

When things get weird or even dangerous is when new ideas are accepted as “the way we’ve always done it,” even when this isn’t true. As a result, people suffer unnecessarily trying to follow rapidly-changing norms that may have only been brought into the world as part of someone’s marketing campaign.

An obvious example is the wedding. Years ago, there was just the wedding. But then you needed to have the rehearsal, which begat the rehearsal dinner. And then an engagement party…and the engagement photos…and the bridal shower…the bachelor party…the bachelorette party…the post-wedding brunch…

Nothing is wrong with any of these things. However, if a young bride (or bridesmaid) is feeling stressed or ashamed because she can’t keep up financially or logistically with all of these standards, it’s important to remember that virtually all of them are optional. Even an engagement ring is not strictly necessary.

On social media, you see all kinds of viral trends: The first-day-of-school photo of your smiling children (preferably holding a Pinterest-worthy chalkboard telling the grade they’re going into). The dropping-your-kid-off-at-college photo of your child in their meticulously decorated dorm room at their prestigious university. The Instagram collage of photos of you and your friend on her birthday along with the emoji-laden paragraph telling everyone how close you are. The “prom-posal” video. The monthly photos of your developing infant, complete with letterboard. The annual tribute to your spouse on your anniversary (even though your spouse isn’t even on social media).

This could all be cute and fun, except that it causes people pain and stress. I’ve frequently seen people apologize for not adequately meeting arbitrary norms: “Ugh, this is a day late!” “I’m sorry she’s not smiling in this picture.” “Please excuse my lack of manicure, but here’s the ring!” And, of course, there’s the behind-the-scenes pressure of getting the moment (or the picture) just right, and the well-documented feelings of inadequacy when we compare our lives to others’ photos.

Working with children who are just beginning to explore the online world and the social world beyond their families, I frequently encounter their rigid sense of what is acceptable and what is not. The only fashions they have known are the ones currently in style, which means that they can’t imagine a world in which it could be any other way. This causes anxiety when they are unable to satisfy their own requirements or those of others.

To resolve this conflict between what we think we should be doing and what we can do, we go through a process of deliberately questioning whether certain things must be true — no easy task. To go against the tribe used to mean certain death for a human being. Violating the norms of your community would result in being cast out of society and into the wilderness alone.

These days, however, it is not life and death. And there is always, if you look for it, another tribe — people who won’t feel sorry for you that you didn’t do a gender reveal party or a babymoon; people who don’t care which body parts you shave or whether you wear white tennis shoes to school. Social media can be brutal, but it also opens up possibilities — it allows the misfits of the world to discover that somewhere out there, there are “people like me.”

No matter how old you are, you get to choose who you want to be. And in many parts of the world, we get to choose what movements we want to be part of. It’s a privilege we are lucky to have, and we may as well take advantage of it.