The past couple of years I've been feeling a growing aversion to the internet, and it really came to a head for me a couple of weeks ago.
My mental health hasn't been the greatest the past couple of months. I was working on a very emotionally charged play and am in the middle of applying for Drama School as a mature student, which, if you've followed my story for the last couple of years you'll know is a HUGE deal for me. This, plus receiving daily updates from my paranoid mother's doomscrolling addiction whether I wanted to hear about the state of the world or not, and a number of other things including chronic pain for the last 3 years seemed to set off a chain reaction of chemicals in my body which tipped me into a bout of insomnia which has lasted two months. It got so bad at one stage that I fainted (in the shower of all places) and am very lucky I didn't hurt myself. I lost interest in the things that fired me up, I procrastinated applying for drama school, I procrastinated learning my lines for my play, and I had so little energy I started isolating myself from friends and I dragged myself through my days in a fog.
I'm not very attuned to my body. I don't generally know when I'm stressed out or anxious because I am not someone who carries stuff around in my head. I only know when things have gone sideways because my body starts fighting back giving me migraines, palpitations, insomnia, gut issues and chronic muscle tension. All of which I'd been having since April and it took me literally blacking out in the shower at the beginning of May to go 'I think maybe I'm stressed or depressed or something?'. I started cracking down on my lifestyle: I implemented a strict bedtime routine, with blue light glasses and hooked myself up to my fitbit and an app called RISE to try and get my sleep debt down from over 20 hours. I dragged myself out for walks daily, stuffed myself with vitamins, I did yoga, I stopped drinking caffeine after 1pm. I even tried using a therapist on Better Help for a month. Nothing helped. I was feeling more and more like a feral cat that had been caught in a box, hissing at everyone and frantically trying to claw my way out and back to myself.
Experience is an excellent teacher
One of the benefits of having been through bouts of anxiety and depression and insomnia and severe burnout before in the past, and also going through long periods of feeling ok, and some periods of feeling great, is that you can look back on those periods of your life and think 'what was I doing when I was feeling good that I'm not doing now? what patterns and lessons from my own lived experiences can I learn from?'
The last time I felt good - really GOOD in myself was in 2019. So I sat down and thought long and hard about that year, what was going on in my life and what I did and didn't do:
I'd come out of a long term relationship. The guy was a good guy, but the relationship was not healthy. I'd been having chronic back and gut problems for months - I ended up in hospital being checked for bowel cancer at one stage. As soon as we broke up, the back and gut issues miraculously cleared up within a week. Your body knows when something is off. Listen to it.
I became a minimalist. Having a clutter free space made it easy to keep my space tidy and I felt good not being visually assaulted by a chaotic space
I took myself off on walks and little adventures like trips to museums and galleries
I did a LOT of yoga - at least an hour a day
I had a spiritual practise: I smudged my space regularly and talked to the universe like the shameless hippy I am
I played music that made me happy
I read books: especially ones about minimalism, mindfulness, slow living, mental health and general self improvement like 'the cross roads of should and must' 'desire map' and 'the artist's way'
I deleted facebook, I deleted twitter, I engaged minimally with instagram, I stayed away from youtube comment sections and didn't fall prey to clickbait. I had a handful of youtubers I enjoyed: boho beautiful, muchelleb, lavendaire and yoga with adriene and the silent watcher (which is an incredibly creepy name for a channel but it's actually just long videos of snow falling or a pretty river with birdsong). I only watched them. I didn't watch people who yelled at me about how I'm not enough unless I was being a 'boss bitch' 'killing it' with a 6 figure salary, got up at 5am and 'smashed' it in the gym so I could 'slay' the day with a 'snatched' waistline (why is the language around productivity so aggressive?!?!)
I didn't really watch much stuff on Netflix. I was more into learning and creating then being a couch potato.
I was a vegetarian... Now I know my body doesn't actually like being vegetarian very much, but when I was mindful about my food sources I made healthier choices - I didn't nosedive into the biscuit tin or stuff myself with chips. I made an effort to eat whole foods.
I kept track of the solstices and moon cycles to feel more grounded and in harmony with the rhythm of the year and what foods are in season, so I wasn't blindly careening through life going 'how the hell is it June?'
I started daydreaming about becoming an actor and looking into drama schools.
I somehow re-found my creativity and started painting again
Where did I go wrong?
I think it started going wrong during the pandemic. I was pretty happy for the first year - as an introvert I was born for extended periods of me time and lockdowns were not a problem for me, aside from massively curtailing my adventures and depriving me of trips out in nature. That's when I began to rely on instagram for my outdoor and creativity fix. Then I got some injuries that kept me in bed for a year and gave me off the charts anxiety and I started depending more and more on social media to have some sort of connection with the outside world.
Where did the internet go wrong?
Around this time a few things started happening: BLM, The rise of the pronouns, ADHD & neurodiversity becoming buzzwords everyone was diagnosing themselves and everyone else with, and GenZ became teenagers. Oh yeah and then Russia invaded Ukraine and threatened global annihilation, the Palestine situation blew up and prices for everything skyrocketed. Race, gender, age differences, mental health, diagnoses, money and war are all incredibly sensitive and contentious issues and, predictably, they have created a lot of division between people online. A prolonged period of sitting behind the safety of a screen and a username has given a lot of people a weird approach to human interaction. As there are practically no consequences for being an arsehole online aside from being blocked (you're not likely to have the shit kicked out of you if you start a fight for example), it seems to give people full permission to be as vile and hateful towards each other on the internet as they can possibly be, and spreading misinformation for their own entertainment. Because provocation gets clicks and comments. Which gets you boosted in the algorithm. Which gets you attention - even when it's negative. Which people capitalise on. There are no repercussions and they have nothing else to do, so they just go for it with spreading misinformation, race baiting, homophobia, abuse and bullying and self-righteously judging other people whose lifestyles they disagree with.
Comments sections were originally created to build a sense of community. People don't seem to realise that just because you can say anything, it doesn't mean that you should. They seem oblivious to the fact that they are just as capable of thinking 'this isn't for me' and just moving on without leaving their unsolicited opinions as they are of wasting their time writing something obnoxious to a stranger. They seem to forget that at the other end of their hateful comments is another human being. There's a motto in my family: 'before opening your mouth ask yourself is it relevant, is it true, is it kind. if you can't say yes to all the above, keep your mouth shut'.
This kind of stuff filters into your brain without you even really realising it. Every time you scroll you're taking this poison into your nervous system.
Ai, identity, insecurity.
I have hated Ai passionately since it first started surfacing a couple of years ago. It HUGELY gives me the ick. I want absolutely no part of it. I don't want to use it, I don't want to be used by it, I want absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever and lately it feels like there is no escape from it. The world of deepfakes etc scares the crap out of me, particularly as I've come from the design industry and I'm going into the entertainment industry - where creatives have very little protection and were constantly exploited even before ai. I think the entire thing is deeply unethical and I hope it dies a very quick and painful death, and that can't happen too soon. It has left many in the creative industries feeling incredibly rattled. Content is stolen and reposted without crediting or paying the creators enough as it is - with companies like shein regularly stealing designs from independent creators on Etsy, who are virtually powerless to fight back. Again it raises the issue of 'just because you can doesn't mean that you should'.
Safety & exposure
The internet is rapidly becoming a scarily toxic place. People make a big deal about how ai and algorithms are there to benefit us as users, but these things take away our control over what we see, and as a result we have things shoved in our faces we would never EVER choose to seek out for ourselves. Just two weeks ago I went on youtube to find a meditation for anxiety and 'recommended for you' on the side was a video about a 'gay age gap couple'. One guy was in his 60s and the other guy looked like a literal child. He may be barely scraping 18 now but he sure as shit was a minor when they met. Why is this disturbing content being shown to me? and what the hell has it got to do with meditation? Youtube used to have a 'don't show me this' option on their recommended videos, but that seems to have disappeared. So basically they're saying 'we don't actually care about what you want to see we'll show you stuff that's designed to provoke a reaction so that we can make money off it'. Youtube is no longer about creators being given a platform in exchange for a cut, it's about the platform exploiting creators and manipulating viewers into maximising their profits. This 'wtaf' moment was on the back of the previous day going onto twitter to try and contact spark notes and being confronted with two videos back to back of violent teenagers attacking teachers and bus drivers, and then when I starting typing 'got 12' into google for something baking related, the automatic search result dropdown list of recommendations were 70% pedo things about little boys. What the actual fuck google?!?! How many revolting people are searching for that disgusting stuff in order for it to come up as a top suggestion for me - A straight woman in her 30s who spends her free time googling recipes, meditation videos, nature walks near me, 'what insect is this?' vintage sewing patterns, spaniel puppies and boho interior design. WHY? Why am I being exposed to stuff like this??? I know the internet has always been a shady place but 'in the old days' at least you couldn't just stumble across things like this by accident while looking for something absolutely unrelated. Obviously in order to report that I'd have to click on one of the suggestions which there is no way in hell I'm doing.
It's exhausting being on the internet these days. Because I know I am a sensitive soul, I am habitually very careful about the content I choose to let into my life, because I don't want things being shoved into my eyeballs that cause me mental and emotional distress. But it's like the wild west out there - things have got out of control, algorithms have too much power and morally and ethically there seems to be no sense of responsibility or accountability. Frankly I don't feel like it's a safe place to be right now, and I want out.
Happiness and peace are fragile things and you have to do what you can to protect them. Mindfulness and intentional consumption are key.
Two weeks ago I was ready to delete instagram, close my computer, walk away from the modern world and live a nice quiet life in little cabin in the woods somewhere that has no internet connection. Because it was all feeling a little too much, it just seemed to be getting worse, and there's little that we as users can do to protect ourselves from seeing content that is harmful to our wellbeing and sense of balance, peace and safety.
A while ago I wrote this blog post, and in it I said that
I do think it's unfair to demonise social media and blame it for our problems and accuse it of giving us burnout because of how we choose to use it....I think if something makes you feel shitty enough to make you leave in the first place then that's a pretty strong sign that something is broken and needs sorting. If it was working fine you wouldn't feel the need to leave....I realised I spent more time moaning about Instagram than I did enjoying it. Is that Instagram's fault? No. It's mine. In a society where it's increasingly popular to play the blame game rather than take responsibility for our own actions and acknowledge the roles we play in situations, it's important that we grow up and do take the necessary steps to be responsible for our own happiness.
To an extent I do still stand by this. The internet is making this significantly harder now, when we have content being pushed to us that we did not sign up to receive - accounts we don't follow - simply because the content is trending elsewhere. But it means we have to be even more discerning as users about how we engage with content.
Two weeks ago, I deleted instagram from my phone. I downloaded a new internet browser called Brave, which blocks ads on youtube. I don't have issues with adverts on youtube per se because I firmly believe creators should be compensated. What I object to is that in the middle of a meditation video for anxiety I have three back to back adverts from the Red Cross with gunfire and people pleading for help, and there is nothing I can do about it. If I had an advert for a yoga mat before it started and at the end I'd be like ok cool. But I'm not down for getting half way through easing a panic attack and having a war shoved in my face. I literally did not sign up to see that content.
I have created my playlist of yoga videos that I want to use, so I don't get any dodgy 'recommended for you' crap in my sidebar. I've subscribed to headspace and calm for my meditations now, and I had a nice little splurge on audible because now I'm not stuck glued to my phone in my free time I want to be up and doing and listening to something that expands me as a person.
What a difference two weeks make
These are teeny tiny changes. Literally the only thing I've changed in the last two weeks is getting rid of social media and changing how I use the internet. I occasionally look things up, but aside from that I barely use it outside of my preloaded yoga videos. I am now sleeping through the night for the first time in 2 months without using sleeping pills. My tummy troubles have stopped. I feel more energy. Twice, now, while sitting on a bus - an activity which usually causes my body to tense up and my heart to race because I'm in an enclosed space with a bunch of strangers - I have actually felt my shoulders relax. A sensation I have not felt for 3 years.
I've written this blog post. I haven't written anything for months. I am starting to think about getting my proper camera out again and doing some photography - which I haven't touched for years. I have done more yoga than I have in the last 6 months and developed a mindfulness practise. My instinct is to reach for healthy food in the morning instead of biscuits. I feel a couple of percent happier every morning than I was the day before.
These were not difficult changes to make. I just had to wake up, recognise that something was harming me, and decide to step away from it. I think we are all a little too addicted to 'information' consumption - this is not unique to GenZ/Millennials either - my Boomer mother (mid 70s) and 'greatest generation' (81) father are equally hooked on the internet - far more since the pandemic than prior to it, and I can see the difference this has made in them too and it is not positive. They are far more anxious than I have ever seen them before, their memories are worse, their attention spans have declined and it's not simply as a result of aging. I know my parents. My mother has always been fairly neurotic, but shes never hoarded food before. Nowe they have a garage crammed to the rafters with enough food to get them through a nuclear winter because she's been watching american preppers on youtube and thinks that is a sensible precaution rather than a severe mental health problem. It's time we step up and take responsibility for our consumption. We are not children. We get to decide how we feel, and what information we take in. Decide what your boundaries are, set them, and implement changes to support them.
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