They Want Us Stupid and Addicted

This isn’t about politics. In fact, I think perhaps politics might be the greatest distraction ever invented. The “culture czars” tell us how to spend our time, what we should care about, and treat us as stupid children, because we have become exactly that by consuming the products that they are selling.

Social media and “news” have become the single, greatest evil in my life. I don’t write because I am scrolling; I don’t engage with people or pursue my passions because I am worrying about my skin, my turkey neck, the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, whether or not my wardrobe matches, fires around my house, air quality, face yoga, the climate tipping point having been reached and surpassed, the best cat bed (and I don’t have a cat), the end of democracy, and the “what kind of witch are you” quiz. Everything is presented in quick sound and vision bites that make everything seem equal in importance. There is no sense of urgency or outrage about Gaza because right after gazing at the dead bodies of children, we see ads for workouts and shoes, and because social media is designed to distract and addict us, we forget the horrors of war. AND THAT IS PRECISELY THE POINT.

What better way to keep a population apathetic, unengaged, and uninterested than creating an addiction to quick information, shiny objects, and scrolling, repeating, memes? It rewires your brain fairly quickly, to the point that you can no longer read novels (the attention span is gone) or anything longer than one paragraph.

Worse than that, social media and infotainment create a low-level anxiety that feeds the addiction. You keep scrolling to soothe yourself, but the effect is to amp up that anxiety to the point of anguish for people already susceptible. Over the long haul, depression emerges, as nothing about the smart phone is truly engaging on a human level. Our brains are not designed for this onslaught of distracting images and sounds contained in a tiny screen, and we suffer for it.

This is the express intention of the social media/tech billionaires. This is how they maintain and grow their empires, gain and abuse their power, and control our attention spans. In my life, the effect has been catastrophic for my mental health, my creativity, my happiness, and most of all, for my spiritual life.

This is ironic, of course, as I need to depend to a certain extent on social media to advertise a post; however, I don’t write much because I am glued to the horror stories online, and terrified of my own aging and mortality, because the messages I receive daily are: be afraid, very afraid, for the world is in a death spiral, and that death spiral includes you. And, if you do nothing to save the children of Gaza, you are not only apathetic, you are evil. What ensues is guilt over the effects of war and a total inability to act, due to that guilt and the continual distraction of social media that tells me, daily, that I am fading away and dying, and the solution is face cream that costs $250 a month. I learn that I am a bad person for not saving the world, and that I must spend a great deal of money if I don’t want to age and die.

Of course, death is everywhere, all of the time. It dances along with life, zig-zagging from one side to the other. Another odd effect of social media is the total denial of death while at the same time, stoking an extreme fear of it. S0cial media exists to maintain a constant, low-level hum of fear and anxiety, and that has the effect of destroying one’s spiritual life, distancing one from a sense of community, and draining all the joy and excitement of the world outside of the screen. I have found myself too distracted to meditate, to pray, or to write. I careen from one disaster to the next, not even sure what is true, or real, or something that I can do anything about. If it’s not fear and loathing, it’s guilt; what a perfect combination for depression and inaction. Our crippled mental health, however, is exactly what maintains the billions of the trio above and their godfather, Trump, among, of course, many others regardless of their politics.

So now, to save myself, I must disconnect from all of it. I will advertise this post, because for anyone to read what I am saying, I have to use the tools of the oppressor. Outside of that, I am forcing myself to break the addiction, the trance, the stupor, of social media and the ridiculous pretense that it is useful for engaging with world conflicts and tragedies.

I have few friends, am losing my ability to focus, to create, and to engage, exactly what the elite social media gurus wanted to happen all along. But that stops today, right now. I refuse to sacrifice myself and the years I have left to an addiction that paralyzes me. This is about the human spirit, after all–the greatest victory for those who made their billions from social media and news is to know that they have bought our souls.

The purpose of this site and soulbank.org was to explore and illuminate the life of the spirit. I will return to that mission and break the addiction, if not for others, than at least for myself.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD