“Can you reach me? No, you can’t.”
Fresh from her Antarctica mental health and life retreat, Lorde’s first single from her new album “Solar Power” touches on what deep down we all wish we could do. That is, fling our electronic devices and let them sink deep into the blue waters. Unfortunately, that is easier sung in a pop song than actually done today, when technology interferes with just about every sphere of our existence.
This is especially true of Gen Z, an entire generation that doesn’t know themselves without social media. It is how young people, myself included, nowadays are defined. Social media has become more than the way we interact—it’s reality for us, and it’s becoming a bit too real. We are all guilty of curating our Instagrams and methodically typing out tweets with the hope that someone will come across our page, scroll through our perfectly filtered photos and think to themselves, “They look cool.”
In defiance against this accepted way of how social media is used, people have attempted to make things like Instagram “casual again.” Casual Instagram aims to return to posting whatever we want to. People are encouraged not to post perfectly edited pictures, but instead seemingly “random” shots that truly reveal their daily lives. In many ways, this idea is great. It serves people wanting to present their authentic selves online while subsequently being able to hop on a “trend.”
Unfortunately, casual Instagram proves to be just as pre-planned and pre-approved as normal Instagram, whether we like to admit it or not. Sure, you can meander to class on that lushly gardened path, carelessly snap a photo of that pretty building you pass everyday and try to pass it as casual. Yet, what do you do before you post? You scrutinize the photo, wonder if it’s passable as “casual enough” and think about what your followers will say about it. Will they see right through you? Will they believe that truly is a spur-of-the-moment shot of your morning coffee?
This is very telling of the hold social media has on our generation. Even when we try to control or change how we interact online, we find ourselves constrained by self-image and the perception of others. “Casual” social media cannot exist among people trained to satisfy others. It is easy to misconstrue “casual” as authenticity, but the truth is, we don’t know how to be authentic online. The digital age has made us forget what being casual online could even mean since whether we admit to it or not, we care about what other people think.
Culture has warned us of the dangers of technological dependence. In their song “Sincerity Is Scary,” The 1975 sings, “We can find out all the information, access all the applications that are hardening positions based on missed communications,” and, “We’re just left to decay / Modernity has failed us.” The unfortunate reality is they are right. Are technological advancements even worth it if we become less human in the process? Lorde does her best to make it seem like deleting social media and leaving the virtual world is an easy task, but it is not, not so long as our lives are indefinitely intertwined with the mentally draining world of social media.
It is necessary now more than ever to acknowledge the ways in which we are influenced. Social media largely dictates who Gen Z is. Gen Z is recognized for the use of 15 second videos to share our interests online, loud activism and a call to change and increasing interest in the future. Contrarily, Gen Z is attributed to meaningless black squares, TikTok trends that are detrimental to sustainable fashion efforts and contributions to the polarization among people through hate. According to The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 45% of Gen Z say their mental health is good or excellent. Much of these mental health concerns are directly influenced by the environment, politics, financial concerns and, you guessed it, social media.
In 2005, the Pew Research Center observed 5% of adults who use a social media platform. Just 16 shy years later, that number has risen to 72%. Back in 2019, Instagram made the radical decision to remove likes with the goal of improving self-esteem among users, but according to an article by Vox did nothing to solve “the Instagram vs. reality problem.” There is nothing easy about solving social media. The unseen side effects are depression and anxiety, which creep in with those feelings of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), a lack of confidence and the general belief that one’s life is not matching up to the digital existences of others. McLean Hospital compares social media usage to a slot machine: we come back even after knowing we might lose and feel like shit afterwards. We come back for a sense of belonging and identity, forgetting why social media was created in the first place: to connect with the world around us.
I have tried to disconnect in my personal life often. I have taken Instagram breaks, deleted TikTok in a rage and posted random collections of pictures to prove to myself that I still am genuine. Nothing has worked. I always reluctantly log back on to see how my friends are doing or come up with a caption that would work perfectly with a recent photo. It’s infuriating, both the reluctant return to the digital and the reality that try as I may, I cannot disconnect.
Only one hobby in my life has felt impactful enough to help me disconnect: walking.
This summer, out of boredom and appreciation for my beautiful green neighborhood, I began going on what I ironically call “Girlboss Walks.” At first, it was a way to stay active, but it became akin to therapy. I would walk around and listen to a podcast, so I wasn’t fully unleashed from my phone, but it changed my entire perspective. I would forget what I was doing, get lost in the words of the podcaster and gaze at my Midwestern hometown with new eyes. Instead of being overwhelmed with what is going on with my life, both online and off, walking allowed me an hour or so to breathe (and boy, did I need that fresh air).
On her podcast “Thinking is Cool,” Kinsey Grant has said, “We are the monsters of a Frankenstein we raised ourselves.” The Frankenstein she refers to is social media, and Gen Z the monsters of social media consumption. As I began regularly taking walks, it felt strangely easy to disconnect, and I wondered, could the solution to social media really be this simple? Could a walk really make us all better and rid the monster Grant says we all have within? Unfortunately, no, walking by no means is the answer to all our concerns. The presence of social media in every aspect of our life will not be rectified by a brisk stroll through a pretty park, as much as we want to simplify the problem. However, a walk may be just what we need to re-center ourselves. A walk reminds us that we are humans roaming the beautiful earth, and the precious minutes we waste on apps we never get back. A walk forces us to be present. A walk is more than leisure cardio — it’s a new way to see the twenty-first century.