Remembering Who You Are in the Age of Social Media

You like books. You like movies. You like long walks.

The addiction is strong! You keep checking Instagram like it’s actually important.

Don’t get me wrong, occasionally there will be a message from a long lost friend who you met in Mexico seven years ago, and that’s lovely, but the rest of the time, it’s pretty much all nonsense!

You might say to me ‘but I’m a social media influencer.’ Okay, good for you. That’s great. But how will you be influential if all you’re doing is checking your Instagram all day?

They literally built these apps to make us addicted. That’s the whole purpose of them. The more triggered and emotionally engaged we become, the longer we spend on the platforms.

TikTok made us forget who we are. You used to be content to sit in that nice cosy corner of your home with a cup of tea and a yogurt. Now you’re laying on your bed with your neck at a weird angle as you repeatedly watch advice from gymfluencers.

What are you doing? Did you forget that you like books? That you like going for long walks? And you like sitting across from a friend and talking.

You were going to write a screenplay, remember that? You were going to start a podcast with your friend, about your love for Indian food. Instead, you SCROLLED THROUGH TIKTOK FOR FOUR YEARS.

Photo by Amanda Vick on Unsplash

Ever accidentally find yourself watching an old movie? You sit there watching ‘Notting Hill’ and you remember, ‘oh shit, this is actually GOOD!’.

“Maybe I’ll have a movie night tomorrow,” you tell yourself, before you forget - and find yourself back on the socials.

And then there’s politics.

I don’t care who you voted for. You’re still a human being either way.

The internet would make us believe that all Trump voters are evil and Kamala voters are wonderful. But some of the worst people I’ve met are liberals, and some of the kindest and most giving people are Republicans. The opposite has also been true many times.

Yet the internet would make us believe that those who disagree with you are the worst of the worst.

The truth is, you don’t know why people vote the way they vote. There’s a plethora of reasons. Everyone on X talks like everyone who voted Trump is the devil, but do they realise they’re talking about over 50% of America? Their neighbours? Their relatives?

There’s always been division, but the internet has made it a chronic issue. We’re all separating ourselves by any means necessary and we can barely stand to be in the same room as each other.

Sure, there are people who say ‘unfollow me if you voted for that guy’, and that’s their right. But for the most part, we all want to get along with each other. The TikTok videos and the tweets have made it seem like all Republicans are heavily right wing, and all liberals are the wokest of the woke. But that’s such a tiny percentage. The majority of people just want bread on the table and the chance to be able to afford a nice meal on special occasions.

We’re all struggling and we’re all trying to figure out how to survive.

Twitter divided us, it was the land of the woke. Then Elon made it X, and it shifted to the Right. Neither versions are based on real communication, it’s based on an algorithm that’s trying to polarise us.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

And while we may occasionally find a viral song on TikTok that makes us all do a silly dance together, for the most part; it’s another way of dividing us into ‘us’ and ‘them’.

It was easier when it was just Facebook, and your main job was to stalk your ex-partner and make sure they weren’t having a better life than you.

But now social media is stealing us from the things we love. Our attention for movies, gone. Our love for quietly reading, vanished! Our care for one another, broken.

I’m not saying I have the answers and I’m not saying I won’t check TikTok straight after I’ve written this article.

What I am saying is - we need to be aware of how we’ve been robbed. Of how we are barely ourselves anymore.

This stuff was built to wreck our attention, to divide us by our differences, to desecrate our autonomy.

It’s not easy to divert your attention back to the things you love, back to yourself. It’s much easier to soak up all the TikToks and message your friends on Whatsapp to share memes about how the ‘other’ people are dumb/wrong.

But that’s not who you really are.