It’s 10:20 p.m. on a Sunday, and I am suddenly moved to tears after a random quote on my TikTok feed tells me exactly what I need to hear. I swipe through the slideshow set to emotional, stirring music and feel profoundly touched. I think to myself, “This is why I’m on social media.” I am reminded of the books, TV shows and movies I have been introduced to because of this app — how many new stories I have immersed myself in. To a lesser extent, I think also of how hard I have laughed or how many smiles I have shared. 

Then I scroll down to the next video, and these feelings quickly fall away. I see graphic coverage of the bombings in Gaza. Then I see news of the latest celebrity passing, followed directly after a real-life story of a woman’s brutal sexual assault. And eventually it’s hard to breathe, so I put down my phone. My heart feels heavy. I never feel like I’m doing enough.  

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I want to be clear that this is not an argument in favor of ignorance. While I understand the significance of the opportunity to be a well-informed citizen of the world, I also find the way in which many of us go about becoming “well-informed” to be absurd. 

Why am I looking at my cousin’s smiling newborn baby immediately after reading the death toll on the Gaza Strip? Why am I watching grinning, perfectly choreographed dancers after reading someone’s heart-wrenching tribute to their late friend? 

I have found that the greatest criticism I have with social media isn’t the FOMO or the constant comparisons, or even the overwhelming prevalence it has in our daily lives (though these are certainly valid). The hardest aspect for me has been the tremendous capacity for emotional whiplash. 

Everything we are offered makes us feel a certain way, but then a page refreshes. Sometimes it goes too quickly, and I sit there thinking, “Wait, what was I just feeling?” I can still sense the edges of the emotion — but I can’t quite remember. It leaves me uneasy, thinking there’s something I should be feeling but am not able to.  

The videos and pictures I consume blur together all at once, making me feel numb and inhuman. How can we possibly be able to reconcile these vastly different images so quickly, and how can that be expected of us? We weren’t meant to feel such vastly different feelings from one moment to the next, and we weren’t meant to feel them in manners so extremely fleeting. 

I am afraid when we are exposed to too much, baited to feel more than we are capable of carrying, the natural consequence, and ultimately our only defense from having a complete breakdown is apathy and indifference. I’m afraid of becoming emotionally stunted. I confess, I feel it happening already. When I hear of the latest school shooting, when I learn of brutal violence or see pictures of war that even 25 years ago would have been unimaginable, I feel myself wince, then eventually (but inevitably) continue to scroll. 

I have stopped crying at most horrifying news stories like I did when I was younger. And maybe that’s an unfortunate result of time or of the state of our world, but I think it’s more than that. In addition to not knowing what’s real anymore, I also don’t know if I’m processing any of it correctly. The result is a murky kaleidoscope of content that is either useless, painful, graphic, informative, funny, beautiful, sad or forgettable. Few pieces of media fall under only one category, but still, it is getting increasingly harder to sort through them. 

While I can bet that most of you reading are eager to do your part in the world and use social media as a tool to become better-informed, I also gently encourage you to know your limits — to find the right time to shut your laptop or turn off your phone. 

While social media and our technology are undoubtedly assets, they can be profoundly harmful as well. When the range of content you are consuming back to back begins to feel absurd or too heavy to hold, it’s okay to leave the digital world behind. There are some feelings worth sitting with longer than the duration of a couple scrolls.