We were never meant to know this much about strangers. Before social media, tragedy had boundaries. You heard only about what happened in your family or neighborhood, if any further, your city. Now, before you’ve even had breakfast, you’ve watched someone lose their spouse, another bury a child, a family lose everything in a flood, a partner discover years of infidelity, or a stranger receive a terminal diagnosis.
We consume so much pain in a single day that we don’t even think to stop to ask what it’s doing to us. Almost all of us have become emotional witnesses to thousands of lives we’ll never meet.
TikTok is the absolute worst and I am trying to break my addiction to it. Tell me why one minute I’m laughing over a funny video and my next scroll has me crying over a grieving mother or a woman who asks that we stay a minute so she can afford a lawyer to get away from her abusive partner? Or the next one has you livid about an injustice.
Then you also get anxious after watching yet another video about betrayal. By the end of the day, you’re emotionally drained, but nothing actually happened to you as a person. Your body doesn’t always know the difference between experiencing pain and constantly witnessing it.
Empathy is a beautiful thing, but endless exposure can become emotional overload. I’ve started asking myself a different question lately because the emotions I experience from being online daily sometimes get overwhelming and isn’t really good for my mental health. I am literally trying to stay sane in this saneless world. I don’t ask about what’s happening in the world anymore, I just ask how much of the world’s pain, was meant for me to carry. Being informed doesn’t require absorbing every heartbreaking story. Also, consuming every tragedy doesn’t necessarily mean I care. My heart’s too fragile, I have started swiping some tragedy loaded videos or posts with so much speed. Protecting my peace isn’t in any way ignorance. I like to see it as wisdom.
The world will always have another headline, multiple scandals and different heartbreaking stories waiting for your attention. But, you only get one mind and one heart and one nervous system. It is up to you to take care of them. I hope you actually do because if anything goes wrong, the world is moving.
