I did not notice comparison stealing my joy all at once. It happened one scroll at a time — another mother’s spotless home, another ministry leader’s bigger platform, another woman’s marriage that looked, from the outside, easier than mine. None of it was a single dramatic moment. It was erosion.
Paul warns against measuring ourselves by comparing ourselves with one another (2 Corinthians 10:12), calling it, essentially, unwise. I used to read that as a nice sentiment. I now read it as a diagnosis of exactly what was draining me — I had made other people’s highlight reels the measuring stick for my very different, very ordinary, very real life.
What helped was not quitting social media entirely, though I did take real breaks from it. What actually helped was Paul’s instruction to test your own work, so that you can take pride in yourself without comparing yourself to someone else (Galatians 6:4) — shifting the question from “how do I measure up” to “am I being faithful with what is actually in front of me.” Those are very different questions, and only one of them ever gave me peace.