First rule of social media connections : you’re the product.
Second rule : you volunteered.

The performative trap : why today’s platforms kill deepness

You wake up. You scroll. You donate your morning to strangers you’ll never meet. You crave attention. You binge highlight reels and call it “keeping up.”

Unfortunately, social media became a stage for us to perform for one another, not to connect with each other. The main perk of social media is that we, though through a very distorted lens, keep each other updated on what's happening in our lives, but for majority the truthfulness and humanness were sucked out of it. In many cases, this also became an act : attract attention, engage, think about how you can make people like it, follow you, but the main goal of this act is to make people spend their life watching the screen. The main goal of this performance, even though most of us don't see it, is to make money for the system that was built with good incentives, but has pivoted to the dark side.

You are a product, and with every good performance, you are not connecting more in real life; it's all virtual. In real life, you are selling more ads, spinning the bolts of a huge machine of advertisers. And come on, do you really need more content in your life? For your brain, it's just more and more information. Tell me, really, do you need more information in our day and age? From hunter-gatherers, we transformed ourselves to information-gatherers. I'm not saying information is bad, I'm saying we should be wise about it. Meaningless dopamine-cortisol content mix is not working for us, does it? And I don't know about you, but I just didn't feel like there was an alternative. I mean, all my friends and acquaintances are there, I don't want to lose them. And that's why it really is...

? The fix isn’t less tech. The fix is human tech. Social media for flesh and breath, not for audiences. No selling, no performance, no masks, no content, no ads. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Tools that end online and begin at a table. Tools that don’t harvest your loneliness and call it “engagement.”

But try and say it out loud. I really need some meaningless content right now. Or I could use some reels right now. Or it was such an amazing time I spent with someone's videos sitting on my couch. Now I'll just change these to the word friend. Feel the difference? We collectively need a change, to rewire ourselves. And so, from content we don't need and go from content we don't need to a deep connection we crave. So, where's that switch?

It's actually very simple.

I'm not one of these people who says that everybody needs to delete their social media right now. It actually all depends on your ability to be self-aware and also on how deep you are in sometimes a very strong hold of current social media platforms. You can limit, block with specialized apps, or delete. Sometimes in my practice, people just need one or two weeks of them deleted to realize how bad it was for them. But even that is not the key, and a very simple part. Here it is. All you need to do is prioritize three things and three things only.

1/ Always check by asking yourself, does this thing work for me or harm me? Even this little thought can get you a long way.

2/ prioritize messages, not content. Write, text to your friend, record audio, video, saying something to them, asking how is life, health, work, relationships, family, and of course, ask them out...

3/ Prioritize offline. It is there, and only there, that you can build real, meaningful, deep friendships, deep connections. And offline is the best place to grow and nurture them. Go to their place, invite them for dinner, or a museum, or a movie, or a concert, whatever. And this one, even though simple, not very easy these days, but try, try, and try, and try again if you need to. It's worth it. And if, for their personal reasons, your friends would continue to say no, it would be a sign to, at least for some time, to move on and find your humans and your tribe that will be there for you, and that will want to connect in real life, not just in back-and-forth, Reels chat.