The Single Habit That Kills Millions of People Everyday
There’s a pandemic happening before your eyes.
- You checked out TikTok and saw someone earning 6 digits from posting crappy videos. You looked at your platform and felt nothing but a goddamn failure.
- You checked out Instagram and saw someone flaunting an ideal physique. You looked at yourself in the mirror and swore to never post photos on the internet again.
- You checked out Facebook and saw a seemingly perfect family. You stared at the photograph hanging on your wall, and said, “Wish my grandparents are still here too.”
- You checked out YouTube and saw how Cristiano Ronaldo acquired 1M followers an hour after launching a channel. You thought, “Hope things can go as easy as that to everyone.”
In July of this year, I deleted all social media apps on my phone and laptop for good. Quora, Twitter, and Medium are the only apps I left. I go to Quora and Medium to publish and move to Twitter and Gmail for outbounds. Nothing more than that. No more surfing on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. When I need to wind down, I go off alone and read. “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov is my current obsession. I also adored Bon Iver’s music. Holocene rocks me to sleep faster than any other tracks. That song has a special knack for my pineal gland. But I also hit on Cigarettes After Sex, Stereophonics, and Keane sometimes.
For years, I was unaware of how mindless scrolling was affecting my life. I supposed it was only a modest way to destress. I didn’t know that this default action of reaching out to my phone and scrolling up and down feeds is rather the worst way to loosen up. I had no clue that it was making my life miserable — that half of my insecurities were due to this behavior.
- I feel behind at 22, running a business, because I see high schoolers making banks from side hustles.
- I feel like I have to rush my life because I see people in their early 30s completely settled, with families, and financially stable.
- I feel like I can’t slow down because I see people getting their parents retired earlier.
- I feel like I have to triple time because I see people living their best lives in their mid-20s.
It came to me that my problems weren’t to blame for my suffering. It’s not the thought of my parents growing old, time running so fast, or responsibilities getting heavier, that make me feel pressured, but how the internet distorts reality — how I was fooled into thinking that life on the internet is what life in the real-world setting should be.
What’s visible on the internet is heavily manipulated. And since it is among the most powerful engines today, anyone can be victimized. It takes only a single piece of content to bend minds. A 10-second video clip is powerful enough to influence you; to tell you, “You should be like this”, or “Your life should be like this by now.” A single image can completely drive you into thinking, “Your body is the worst in the world. And this, the body you see in this photo, is the body you should be exactly working on.” It is so easy for the internet to make you feel, “You are the worst, least accomplished, unhappy, and the most miserable person in the whole world.”
The internet only exhibits the pleasant parts of everything. People taking sentimental family photos. College students flexing their hard-earned thesis manuscripts. Graduates getting diplomas on stage. Couples displaying engagement rings. Parents welcome a new member of the family. These are inspiring moments, but they are not the entire picture. Behind all these are the hard-to-accept truths hidden from the camera’s glow. Some of which are stories you wouldn’t even dare to know. Luckily, the internet is excellent at filtering them out.
You are doing good in life.
The internet, however, contaminates your mind to believe otherwise.
I was able to pull myself up from a downward spiral only when I detached and saw myself from behind.
The news was true. You don’t realize how much something affects you until you pull back, and view your life from an audience’s perspective, just like how mindless scrolling was ruining my life for years without me knowing.
I wrote a mini-workbook for anyone who wants to write every day but is afraid to do so. If you want to learn how to build a healthy writing habit, maybe this workbook can help!
You can grab it here: How To Build a Healthy Daily Writing Habit
