Emotions and the Digital Age
The human mind and body is not made to feel the range of emotions that we feel on a daily basis in the time that we feel them. When we scroll through our ‘feed’, we experience intense rage by seeing a person beat to death by cops or a mob, sobbing tears for a pet returning home that was never gone for us, sadness for a person you never lost. We experience these intense secondhand emotions at an almost constant and we flee towards synthetic emotions like pigs to a trough, so we don’t have to deal with our own.
This is one of the first times in history we have been able to feel these range of emotions so quickly and constantly and it is deteriorating our emotional threshold. We have spent thousands of years trying to a build a wall around the emotional dangers of the unknown by having close family and friends, shelter, food, and protection. These bring a sense of comfort, security, and happiness. These will naturally ward off the feeling desperation, hopelessness, anger, and sadness. But we’ve traded that in for the ease of mind-numbing entertainment disguised as communication.
It’s easy to get caught up in as it’s secretly mixed with everyone’s favorite drug of choice, endorphins. I think we all tell ourselves at least once in awhile “I’m bored, I want to laugh, lets look at my feed.” Ask yourself how many times you have said that, and how many times did you actually leave laughing or feeling more fulfilled? It’s hard to acknowledge this because you do leave feeling something, and that feels like gratification.
Like any drug, denial is its best friend, and the more you choose to ignore this, the more it will dig its hooks in you. Next time try it for yourself, before browsing your phone, get a paper and write how you feel at that moment, spend some time scrolling and write how you feel after, do it often and see if a pattern emerges.
“try it for yourself, before browsing your phone, get a paper and write how you feel at that moment, spend some time scrolling and write how you feel after, do it often and see if a pattern emerges.”
One of my biggest concerns about planted false emotions is that some people use it to exploit and manipulate others. We are all aware that people are using these social platforms to manipulate, yet we tend to turn an eye if the cause favors us. The issue with this is the act it is performing is doing the same to you. You have to ask how many of those ideologies you hold are your ideas, beliefs, or opinions.
Queue “participate in society” meme. I get it, I’m not asking you to build a stone house in the middle in the woods to escape the consuming monsters that hide in the dark. All I am asking is to be mindful while scrolling, think about why you are reacting the way you are. Are you feeling the way you are because it’s something you truly believe in or are you being led to feel that way? Try your best to base you actions on your ideals that are not hinged on pure emotions, and always look for an opportunity to be wrong.
