The Internet Is Making Us Sick

My wife Kristine just completed Whole30, a monthlong diet/cleanse of sorts which is intended to help you recognize what foods you have a hard time digesting. Those on Whole30 drastically scale back what they can eat (essentially just to meats, vegetables, and fruits), slowly introducing other food groups back into their lives to see what their bodies disagree with. In explaining the program, the creators of Whole30 likened it to living near a tree which you have an allergic reaction to. If you lived in the area for years, you might totally forget that the allergy exists, dealing with minor (but real) problems day in and day out. Yet if you took an extended vacation away and came back to your home, you just might realize how much that tree is making you sick.

In January I experimented with shutting the internet out of my life, and I feel as if the allergic reactions I have to the internet (and its addictive properties) are present in full force. If you are exposed to the web’s problems constantly they can feel negligible, but once you take a little retreat it becomes clear just how nefarious they are.

I realized that, in a way, the internet has been making me sick for a long time now.

Maybe you’re sick too.

Agood friend of mine, Max Jordan, recently wrote a piece on the unhealthy relationships we can have with social media, and he was one of the first people I ever saw take a Twitter break years ago. Max has wrestled with how much power the service holds over his life again and again, and in this article candidly talks about his struggle to find a good balance between existing online and having a happy and focused life.

This is the problem with the internet as a whole — it has the ability to reach both extreme highs and extreme lows. In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, when it is good it is very good, and when it is bad it is horrid.

On top of this, the small amounts of dopamine that Twitter (or any social media service) gives the brain can be addicting, and it doesn’t take long before we find ourselves absentmindedly opening up our network of choice whenever we have a moment of free time. The free time we think we are wasting is no longer free at all, instead simply given to the lives (and feeds) of others.

Over the last year I’ve begun to see an overwhelming amount of people begin to grow frustrated with their social networks, feeling like there is too much negativity or pointlessness to it all. Yet as this dissatisfaction rises, Max makes a good point about the difficulty in trying to isolate the underlying problem, saying this:

People are attempting to blame a variety of things. “The world is more negative,” they say. “Our political climate has changed,” they say. “I’m older,” they say. While I do think there is merit to all of these things, I don’t feel comfortable assigning the blame to outside influences entirely.

I think Max is right. It isn’t the outside influence that’s the entire problem, because this doesn’t take into account the inward influence.

Here’s my take:

It’s all of these things and it’s none of these things.

It’s you.

It’s me.

It’s the bubbles that we create.

It’s the sickness that we’ve grown used to.

That’s the problem.

One of the most dangerous components of social media (and the internet as a whole) is that it can allow us to believe that we’re right while simultaneously shutting out all the voices who might tell us we’re wrong — and it does it in a way where we don’t even question our decision.

The book ‘The Shallows’ makes a case for this reality, with the author pointing out the kind of change which the internet has thrust on our lives. In the past, if you lived in a small town and had conspiratorial views which were unfounded or dangerous, speaking them aloud to others would quickly bring about correction. Yet now, if you hold those views you can find an Internet forum or subreddit which not only allows them to exist, but affirms them.

To use our earlier metaphor, the internet has allowed for the prevelance of ‘trees’ which we’re not only allergic to, but addicted to in a serious way.

Our newfound ability to quiet all dissenting voices has created a ridiculous amount of echo chambers, and allowed for an overgrowth of self-indulgent distractions. Our current political climate is just one result of this reality, but there are so, so many examples all around us.

You’re a victim of this, without a doubt. It only takes one real look at your social media feeds to find a bias that no one is calling you on the carpet for, and that’s a problem. Whether we choose to remain online or take an extended hiatus, I believe that we all owe it to ourselves to break out of our bubbles, remove distraction, and move forward.

This is because the bubbles aren’t doing us any good to begin with. We have become adjusted to this new climate which we are in reality allergic to, and not only are we not any happier, we certainly aren’t any smarter. The sickness has only made us more frustrated with the world and disillusioned with those we disagree with. The bubble is a dangerous thing, but our acclimation to it is even worse.

So what do we do? I can only say what I did.

I left it behind.

Another friend of mine recently did Whole30, and realized at the end of it just how many sugary snacks he was consuming on a regular basis. They made him feel worse, he said, and gave him low energy. At the end of 30 days he finished the program, ate his first cookie, and didn’t seem particularly enthused. He had realized how much damage sugar was doing and how little it was giving back in return. The bubble had popped.

Yet a week later he was in the grocery store buying olive oil, and admitted to feeling tempted by the loads of cake mixes and frostings just across the aisle. So quickly, he had begun to miss the thing he recognized as unhealthy.

Sometimes the only good option is to walk away.

Maybe it’s time.