And you’re falling for it.
Just yesterday, I was reading podcaster Chris Williamson’s newsletter, and he shared some interesting data that will bring a not so surprising shock through your system:
“Per day, according to DataReportal, the average American spends 5 hours and 30 minutes sleeping (an all-time low) and 7 hours and 11 minutes on screens (an all-time high).” (source: Dylano from Essayful)
Now, we all know that statistics about American society are not representative of the whole world, but we can agree that, in general, this trend is happening around the planet.
More and more time is spent attached to a screen, whether it is running marathons of netflix-manufactured series or watching vicariously how other people pretend to live.
Yes. I said ‘pretend’. Not a typo.
When we watch a movie or series that is really good (not like that horrible Wednesday adaptation), a psychological phenomenon happens. We go through some sort of hypnosis while watching the story.
We get into it.
That’s why we suffer when a character suffers, that’s why we get hooked when an episode ends with a cliffhanger. We zoom into the story as if in the first person we were living it.
So, the same phenomenon happens when we see things through social media, especially when watching Instagram stories.
We feel it as if we were watching a movie. We get trapped into the fantasy.
And the tricky part is, this is presented to us as reality. As the real day-to-day life of a particular person. A reality that we wouldn’t even consider while watching a movie because we know it is fiction.
But social media…
Although it is presented to us as reality, it is produced/created/curated as a movie.
This might be attributed to the fact that we are still in the early stages of social media, artificial intelligence, and the like. We are ignorant while interacting with it; we are still getting familiar with this media.
Same as the first people that watched the first movie ever, which was a 1895 French short silent documentary film directed by the Lumière brothers. This video of a train, called The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, caused an incredible commotion to the people who saw it. Rumour has it that they all ran away from the theatre because they thought it was a real train coming towards them.
Incredible, huh?
What if a similar situation is happening while you watch TikTok or Instagram videos?
Do you think it is real what is in front of you, or is it fiction?
A long time ago, human design expert Jenna Zoe shared some thoughts on the magic illusion of social media:
‘This platform (Instagram) skews your idea of “how everyone is doing life” – which can drown out of you knowing what kind of life is richly rewarding to you.’
So, what if not only makes you believe that that woman looks like that, lives like that, has that holiday in that paradise location, has these friends, dresses with X, earns a certain income, the partner or children are like X, the decoration at her house is like X, and on and on…
Good grief, this list could be infinite.
Not only these aspects could be fake, exaggerated, curated, false, but the way they are presented before you might make you yearn for them. You might get trapped into the illusion of these shiny objects, faces, experiences:
how ideal that holiday location
how interesting this opinion
how lovely this couple look together
how miserable my life looks in comparison.
The illusion is trickier than we think. In a way that these fantasies will make you yearn for them. Ending up trapped into the idea of desiring what you didn’t desire in the first place.
And as this quote says:
‘The longer you entertain what’s not for you, the longer you postpone what is’. – unknown
The longer you live a life, and everything in it, that has nothing to do with you, the longer you will wait for what is truly meant for you.
And, in the meantime, you will definitely feel frustrated, bored, angry, sad… (you know, all the good stuff) failing to notice the origin of the problem.
Are you ready to see the shiny carrot for what it is? Are you ready to let go of fantasies and illusions and start creating and building a life worth living?
Love,
Noemi
