Are College Students Actually Having Fun, or Just Trying to Look Like They Are?

Faking it for the likes: When fun becomes a picture-perfect performance on social media.

Have you ever found yourself lying in bed on a Friday night, scrolling through Instagram, watching your friends' night out unfold, and wondering what kind of hilarious inside jokes you're missing out on?

Every BU student has likely had this spiraling thought at some point. As if that wasn’t enough, social media only amplifies the fear of missing out (FOMO) by compiling a highlight reel of everyone’s best moments, making every student’s college life look effortlessly glamorous.

But here’s the truth—no one’s life is as perfect as it seems online.

The reality: Pluralistic ignorance

In psychology, there’s a concept called pluralistic ignorance—basically a fancy way of saying that humans tend to believe they’re the only ones struggling because everybody looks like they have their sh*t together.

This social phenomenon tricks college students into believing that the perfectly filtered version of college life they see online is real for everyone else. Meanwhile, half of those people are probably also lost, tired, and eating instant ramen for dinner on a Friday night just as you are.

Worst of all, at the end of this never-ending crash out, college stops being about having fun and starts being about performing the fun. It’s not just about going out anymore—it’s about making sure there’s photographic evidence that you had the absolute time of your life at every social outing. Because if a party happens and no one posts about it, did it really even happen?

So, is everything just one big photo op?

Don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing wrong with documenting your life on Instagram. I fall victim to this trap too. But if college becomes more about proving you’re having fun than actually enjoying yourself, you’ll eventually realize that some of those FOMO-fueled nights? They were actually just… aggressively mid.