What is Social Media Doing to Our Souls?
We know that social media can negatively impact our mental and physical health. But what about its impact on our souls?
We’re all aware of the detrimental physical and mental health effects of using social media. But what about the third state of our human experience – how does social media impact the health of our souls?
Whilst many of us have gradually developed an awareness over time of how social media has impacted our physical and mental health, it’s peculiar how little attention, if any, is placed on what it is spiritually doing for us or not doing for us. After all, the human experience is all about the mind, body and soul. Does social media make you feel aligned or confused, energetically trusting or questionable? Does social media’s impact on your soul even matter to you? If not, why not?
I’m pondering this in light of the development in New York last week where the Mayor, Eric Adams, designated social media a public health hazard due to its detrimental impact on youth mental health, making it the first city in America to classify it as an “environmental toxin”. Whenever I think of a “public health hazard” what usually comes to mind is a bright yellow sign with a logo displaying a simple human-like figure engaged in some sort of physical health hazard – think slipping on oil/being electrocuted by a faulty wire/falling off a cliff etc.
Whilst I can’t quite (yet) picture the equivalent sign of a human using social media in a similar league of hazards, the image of a highly-wired human (or a highly frazzled Barbie if you recall the scene from the film) who has spent excessive time scrolling and swiping on Tik Tok/YouTube/Instagram looking through an unlimited number of pictures and videos, some similar, others completely different in context and messaging, is highly likely to have some sort of physical/mental/spiritual impact. This is something we can all picture and relate to. And we all react and respond differently.
It’s difficult to agree or disagree over whether social media is a public health hazard because it is such a severe label. Yet what is clear is that social media is indeed a double-edged sword, a form of communication which has changed everything, for both good and bad. We already know from data and statistics that young people who use social media excessively risk suffering from mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, addictions, body issues, attention problems, safety issues etc. The list goes on.
But then it can also be beneficial for learning, connection, collaborating and creative pursuits. Just imagine living in a world where we couldn’t easily speak to someone on the other side of the world or order fabulous new boots from Spain (yes, I am referring to myself here). Yet social media is what it says it is on the surface; it’s social in nature and social in style. And there is no formal On and Off button. Social media always involves an element of doing. Participating in the playground of social media activates how we want and wish to show up in the world. But how does this benefit our inner world and journey, what our soul needs and desires?
The 2000s was a decade which witnessed more conversations emerge around physical health. In the 2010s it progressed on to mental health. Will the 2020s be more focused on the health of our souls?
As we move further into the age of technology and technological advances and people become more removed from traditional religious practices and designated quiet time (such as when shops used to close on Sundays, which is still the case with many Catholic countries in Europe for the reason of rest and worship), I predict that we will become more aware of what helps and hinders the human experience (I call it “Hyper Humanism”). It’s one of the reasons why wellness and wellness practices and products have boomed in recent years. The health of the soul will become a vital aspect of this awareness because of how much energy we have given to distracting ourselves as part of modern life. As a spiritual person, I can’t wait for this to happen. What changes will come in response?
We give so much time and energy to doing in social media but not enough time and energy to just being and receiving what our soul needs. Most social media is just noise for the sake of noise, a distraction that feeds into another purpose. Substacker and author Emma Gannon recently wrote about how she had been reassessing her relationship with social media for a while before quitting Instagram for a variety of reasons including “performative-only activism” to how it “makes people lazy with each other”.
Personally, I’ve always been a reluctant user of social media. It’s never something I’ve really invested in (although as a visual person I will say that I LOVE photos and Instagram filters). I’ve always preferred more deliberate and intimate forms of digital communication like email, video calls or text messages because it creates and carries more meaning and intention. Give me a handwritten card or letter any day of the week. Spending hours scrolling and swiping on an overpopulated screen with hundreds and thousands of “users” (some are people, some are not) are not activities that make me present or aware; two states of being which are against our human nature as it is only through our presence and awareness that humans observe, notice, feel, survive and thrive.
I’ve recently started to feel that social media is a bit like having a bouquet of fake flowers. Yes, fake flowers are pleasant to look at. It’s better to have fake flowers than no flowers at all. But it just doesn’t conjure up the same feelings and senses that we experience with real flowers which go through their natural states which includes growing, being in a full state of bloom and colour, the leaves and petals start to fall off, the stems start drooping, the colour of the water becomes clouded. Despite going through these different stages you can feel a natural state of change happen and emerge, one that we may dislike but sincerely respect, an experience that resonates with our soul and the natural order of life of living things.
In contrast, social media has a permanent state of staticness that just doesn’t shake off. This is where social media fails to nurture our souls because it is too synthetic and fast by style and design whereas our souls require silence, slowness, connection and concentration in order to grow, develop and make sense of things. Just like all living things do.
This isn’t to say that social media is completely soulless. There are an amazing array of spiritual/wellness writers, content creators and business owners out there who have brought their products and services to a wider audience through the help of social media. Their work has helped enlighten many people, and they have had a net benefit on such people. Like I said earlier, social media is a double-edged sword.
But social media often blurs the boundaries between what or who is real and what isn’t. What’s important and vital, and what’s just a short-term fad. This is why it’s fundamental to protect the time we need to sit with and process our internal thoughts and feelings. As it is here that we connect with our soul and listen to what it desires from the human experience.
Whatever we may or may not think about social media, it is clear that our souls have chosen to be here, at this time, to undergo a transformation in this lifetime and to experience the human life that we have collectively created at this stage in human history. We are becoming more collectively informed about our human experience in terms of our mental and physical health. But our soul’s experience, and the health of our own soul, is something that only we can individually know, understand and trust. And it’s something that we should cherish, value and respect more if we wish to understand the learnings of human life. As said by Confucius:
“A seed grows with no sound, but a tree falls with a huge noise. Destruction has noise, but creation is quiet. This is the power of silence. Grow silently.”
In our time of unlimited options and choices – social media being at the core of this – the only real option and solution is to carve out time away from it. In time, perhaps more cities and countries will declare it a public health hazard. After all, humans are not physically designed for information overload. But even in the event that they do, it won’t actually matter unless we individually and collectively come to our own realisation about what it adds and takes away from our soul’s human experience. And why this does and doesn’t matter. And whether a sacred perspective on life is worth valuing and cherishing.