We’ve all fallen victim to the casual doomscroll, the kind where you don’t even realize an hour has passed until you finally turn off your phone. We sit and consume and watch, unconsciously listening to the endless realm of TikTok, where we see the most beautiful girls who have so much to say and lead the most productive lives you could imagine.
But it’s not until we turn our phones off that we realize how unconscious that hour really was. We sit and compare and like and scroll through profiles of these perfect girls with the practical schedules that help them achieve anything and everything in a day. We watch their clothes, makeup products, gestures, and relationships as if they are our closest friends.
We hold such value in these videos and the time we spend watching them. When we finally turn off our phones, get out of bed, and begin getting ready for the day, we start to question our wardrobe, hairstyles, our daily routines. Worst of all, we doubt what we see in the mirror.
Social media has served as the feared bathroom mirror, the constant reminder of our wrongs and supposed failures, standards never to be met.
These ideals are engraved, we begin to have these superficial relationships with the influencers on our screens, but more importantly, superficial relationships within ourselves, consumed by self-deception. We sink into these doom circles within our own minds, internalizing the perpetuated ideals of what it means to be women, attractive, passionate, along with unrealistic routines for comparative success, and for what?
As women, we are strong, passionate, intelligent and ever-evolving individuals.The concept of the individual is something that we get so easily lost in; we try so hard to blend into the pockets of society that have been forced onto us, rather than understanding and exploring the true nature of ourselves and the world around us. Social media has allowed us to formulate attachments to influencers and algorithms using them as a guideline for standardization.
Perhaps the issue isn’t that we look up to these women on our screen as if they are role models in our present life. The issue arises when our admiration subtly transforms into familiarity, when we learn to view the pushed content as authorities and directors of our lives outside of the screen. These one-sided interactions are intentionally constructed and reinforced by systems beyond our control so that they feel intimate, comfortable, and safe.
Closing the app turns into more than just a way to disengage, but rather a return to reality, stepping away from these subconscious reiterations, an increase in autonomy, and an unmediated return of ourselves in the best form.