TAMARA TALKS: The hassle of the hashtag '“ there's too much choice when it comes to social media

Gone are the days (if you’re an early ’90s’ kid) when Bebo, MySpace, Piczo and MSN Messenger dominated computer screens.

Those were the days when all we uploaded to our web pages were pictures of ourselves and ‘about me’ paragraphs that absolutely had to include who our best friends were; when how cool our MySpace profile layouts were, and what song lyrics we put in our MSN screen names were genuine concerns in life.

I guess, looking back, you can see that although at the time it felt innocent and natural, we were managing the way we portrayed ourselves online.

But now? If you wanted to, you could have your friends and followers thinking you’re a happy, rich person living an incredible life, while really being lonely and skint.

And is it any wonder we’re so picky about what we choose to post? We’re given too much choice about what we upload and how we do it – and it’s hard to keep up.

Take four of the main social media channels. Across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat we’re able to live stream, check-in to places, post statuses, pictures and videos (with filters and effects), share other content, and add to our own ‘stories’ or ‘days’ by posting content that will only last for 24 hours (and for those who don’t know, those stories are different across each platform with that feature).

I think advances in social media are moving too fast. It will lead to people who want to stay connected with others feeling disconnected instead. We’re not sure what we should upload where and it’s easy to spend so much time updating different social media accounts that we don’t enjoy what we posted about in the first place half as much.