I am consuming quite a large quantity of digital information each day and losing time while thinking that I am finding useful information that makes my life better. But as I continue to do this, I am starting to think that the exact opposite is happening and that I find more negativity around me. This makes me feel that I am losing real connections and time spend with family and friends by instead metamorphosing into my online persona. Don't get me wrong, there are also good things in the digital world, but once we step into this realm it is hard to stay away from other negative things that pull us into reading or watching it and leaves a mark on our psychics. If we want to have a healthy digital present, we need to filter out a lot of things around us. Before maybe there was better moderation, but lately I think all platforms gave up on that expecting for the social itself to discern and filter those materials. Guess what? It doesn't work or happen this way. Lies, fakes, negatives... are thriving now more than ever.
I feel that now more than ever we need to be more intentional and cautious with how we use the online world. It is easy to say that you are strong and you won't get pulled into the drama, but the truth is that even the strongest minds sometimes slip. One bad day, one bad piece of news, one bad actor spreading false negativity and suddenly you realize you have spent hours doomscrolling instead of living your real life. It’s scary how fast it happens without even noticing and I have observed that on my own skin after doing that and shouting at me: STOP!
The time spent online often replaces time with loved ones. It might start with a few minutes here and there, but it easily grows into hours. Instead of talking with our family or meeting friends, we get caught up in mindless scrolling. Before we know it, real relationships get weaker while our online persona grows stronger.
Digital negativity affects our real emotions and it is hard to shake it off. Even if we say "it’s just online," our minds and hearts can’t always separate the two. Constant exposure to negativity makes us more anxious, more fearful, and sometimes even more aggressive in real life. It's a slow change that we barely notice until it's already shaped who we are. And believe me, we are affecting the others around us that care for us.
Chasing online validation changes our behavior in real life as well. The more we post and share, the more we seek likes, comments, and approval. This chase for attention can make us act differently than we would face-to-face. We start building an image and projection instead of just being truly ourselves.
The loss of moderation leads to information overload and social medias dropped doing that lately. Without proper filtering, everything — good or bad — gets thrown at us at once. It becomes harder to separate truth from lies, useful knowledge from noise. In the end, we are left exhausted and confused, not wiser. If you go now on X, I bet that you will be overwhelmed in few hours about the tweets you get there or at least that's how I've started to feel about it.
I've started writing this article in airport while waiting to onboard my plane. Instead of waling around, I was standing scrolling on social media platforms and after some time I felt some negativity surrounding me through all the news and information that was thrown at me. I somehow realized the effect on me and that made me believe that I need to take a step back and look carefully at how much I let the online world affect me. The online can still be a wonderful tool if we use it with intention, learn from it, develop ourselves to grow, but in the same time if we keep our real-life relationships strong. It's not about cutting everything off, but about finding balance. Real life — the experiences we have, the world that we allow us to see, the people we hug, the moments we share — should always come first. Otherwise, we risk losing the most important parts of ourselves without even realizing it. And while our online persona might be growing, that might not be real and truthful to ourselves.