“How to cut off access to your feminine energy,” “How to achieve your dream body,” “How to unlock your true self,” “How to manifest your best reality,” “10 things a successful woman practices every day,” “Why yoga is better than Pilates,” “How to gain self-respect,” “How to become his dream woman.”
These are prompts that I gathered in the last 30 minutes I spent doomscrolling on the internet. The longer I stay on my phone, the more I form this fallacy that I am not enough. Too much phone time, for almost anyone, can lead to a downward mental spiral that only ends in you thinking your life has to be fully remodeled and turned into a beauty commercial.
I never thought I’d say this but here it is: I went on a two-week TikTok cleanse.
How do we define self-help anyway?
When I was a young child, I envisioned self help in an entirely different way than what I perceive it as now. Self-help was an aisle in the Barnes & Noble store filled with seemingly lost wide-eyed college students and 40-year-old divorcée women who were all searching for a higher purpose in life.
But now, I open my phone at any given time to indulge in my favorite vice of all time, doomscrolling, and am constantly reminded that I always need to be better. Who knew that the opinions of strangers could become so daunting and exhausting?
My hot take is this: We have replaced self-understanding with an escalated level of self-optimization, and it is exhausting.
Initially, when I got into America’s favorite pastime of ingesting media that is bad for you, I didn’t see a problem. But once I stopped to look around, I realized I was constantly trying to keep up with every trend. I was slowly reshaping my habits to become someone I am not, all in response to the subtle messaging coming from my phone. I seriously needed a solution.
My Semi-Boycott of Social Media (funny that a social media editor would be writing about this)
I came to the realization recently that the internet in a way actually handed me a list of problems that I did not even know that I actually had.
Most of us fall victim to this cycle and mistake this behavior for growth. It’s on us at this point to rise up, instead of treating one’s being as a personal brand.
“I think as someone who is online a lot, I look back and see how it has shaped my self esteem more than I can consciously realize sometimes.” says SDSU Student Samantha Fiutak “Especially on Tik Tok, as you scroll through I think there’s been an increase in people idealizing hyper productivity…which as a college student, watching that type of content makes it really easy to compare yourself to those people, and think I should be more productive or get my life together.”
The idea that initially prompted this article was from the thoughts and realizationsI had after finally deleting the app.
Through these two weeks, I gained a level of clarity I hadn’t felt in years, the ability to sit with silence and most importantly, a reconnection with my creative drive. When you don’t have people’s opinions constantly being echoed throughout your brain, it’s almost insane how much your perception of self is altered.
To really understand how much the internet pushes us to believe we need to change, I probably should have deleted every social media app. But in this case, I couldn’t, because it is my job after all.
The new uniform of eternal sameness
Constant comparison teaches us that we must abide by a uniform that is trending in order to be perceived as worthy. If I am directed to one more “clean girl” aesthetic that contains a slick back bun, glossy lip gloss and pair of yoga pants, I will scream. Yes, these items are perceived as the overall foundation of female-togetherness yet the chokehold that this aesthetic (and everything that it represents) has over our generation is terrifying.
A big word I have seen on my own “for-you” page is “wellness,” yet what we are aiming to achieve is not really well. “Wellness” has actually become a costume, not really a practice. With this blueprint placed in front of all of us of what we should be, we begin to lose sight of individuality all together.
Many college students feel the increase in pressure to be more productive even when the things we see online are not necessarily realistic.
“A lot of those ‘a day in my life’ videos show how productive one can be, and how much they do isn’t realistic for an everyday lifestyle,” SDSU student Nadine Nava said. “Everyone needs a rest day and needs to relax, and doing things constantly isn’t healthy and too much on our health.”
The death of anyone weird (or as I like to say, eccentric) is on the rise
I have noticed, maybe just since I have been in college, that we tend to categorize anyone who is not 100 % mainstream as weird. This is not a good thing. Maybe it’s also related to university culture, but as you turn your head left and right you see people dropping like flies as they give up on the things that they really enjoy just to fit in.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a coffee shop, tote bag and claw clip just as much as the next girl, but the reality is this: We have begun to criminalize uniqueness. We are so quick to label anything remotely different as bad, yet all it is is our projection of fear of stepping out of the box.
Do we necessarily need healing or do we need to just find our way back to ourselves?
My 14 days off of TikTok did not change my life and I surely did not become a new person, but I did gain some much-needed clarity. Contrary to my tone in this article, I do believe there is always room for self growth, as I am a firm believer that we are always evolving. But, I did learn the importance of complete silence and getting in touch with your thoughts.
As time goes on it’s important to keep in mind what practices are actually healing. To me, an amplified version of self-healing is not mocking another morning routine video, but just having full peace in who you are and how you are. And honestly, my parents didn’t lie when they said it was “that damn phone.”
