Rin Kwong shares about how social media impacted her love for dancing.
Throughout the weeks of the COVID quarantine in 2020, I constantly watched videos on social media of dancers my age doing immense amounts of turns, flipping in unthinkable ways and their legs being up near their heads. I’d been dancing for 9 years of my life at that point, but in those moments my years of experience felt meaningless.
I’d been dancing my whole life because it had been my reason and my passion. I loved to dance with every part of my body. Everything felt natural and so right on my body when I moved. Dance was an escape from reality. But at some point, during COVID, the spark started to fade.
I had never been on social media until the year 2020 when I entered 5th grade. My friends were already on Instagram and I was so excited to catch up with them. The algorithm showed me dance videos, tv show clips and everything else I was into. All of it was so exciting and new, but also so terrifying. I started to get more videos of dancers doing unbelievable things that I wanted to achieve. I started to feel envious of these dancers who were younger than me and were already better.
As the year progressed, the expectations and pressure got to my head. I would dread logging onto Zoom just to know I wasn’t getting better. Later in the year, we were back to school in person. We started dancing outside in the parking lot to avoid catching anything. I felt so annoyed and over everything anytime I had to go. After that season was over, I decided to call it quits. My parents tried to get me to reconsider, but I couldn’t take it anymore.