How To Keep Your Sanity on Social Media

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]How do you keep your sanity while on social media? Because I think a lot of people nowadays the the advice given out there if you want to have more clarity of thought of you know not be with your mind as foggy would not be as much time on social media a lot of times the solution would be just get out of it and yeah that would be ideal in theory but in real life now it's very hard you know no one really is going to get fully out of it. You're always gonna have an excuse that you're messaging people or you're keeping up with your friends and family. You're never really gonna get fully out of it. Now, if you manage to do it, congratulations. It's the best thing you can do. But what if you don't get out? How do you actually keep your mental sanity while being on it? Now, it is very simple, but first we have to understand perhaps what I would call here the biggest problem with it. And that is really the fakeness of it all.

[00:00:59]Because when you're on social media and you're, you know, interacting with this content, seeing these things and looking at this, I actually have to put the glasses again.

[00:01:08]What what you see there and what, you know, I feel like a big problem that happens is that if you assume that to be real, then that's going to be the problem because most of the things you see are simply fake. either because they are AI and they're truly fake or there's scenarios that are made up or that they lack context or really they're not displaying the truth. And when you're seeing things that are fake, but you're assuming that they're real and your emotions are being spiked as if they were real, and you're acting on them as if they were real, and you're interacting, arguing, doing all these things, you're going to lose your mind because it's going to be a very synthetic, I think, that's how you say it, experience of life. And you're going to be just rage baited and you're going to be dealing with content that is very lustful. And essentially your emotions are going to be spiked and you're going to take bad decisions based on that based on something that is truly fake.

[00:02:12]And you're going to the more time you spend on it the the faker your experience experience of life will be.

[00:02:19]And the thing here is that with things that are fake fake just as with for example fast food that we could call it sort of fake food. It's, you know, it's giving you a very intense flavor to disguise you from the fact of what you're actually eating and how bad this is for you and how not how, you know, fake it actually is. And the more you eat fast food, the less you can enjoy a proper real meal, even though the real meal is what you should be eating, but you're going to desensitize yourself in a lot of ways. You're going to replace the real existence of life with something that is fake. And then you're going to crave what is faked.

[00:02:58]You're going to crave the substitute.

[00:03:01]Now, when we transfer this to, you know, social media, which I think really replaces much more of your time, that you're awake, that you're doing things, all of that, and you think if you start craving more this and things that look like this, well, then you're going to miss out on life itself. You're not going to be able to enjoy a beautiful hike, a beautiful view at the top of the hike, a just a chill afternoon with your friends, and then you're not going to be able to enjoy the things, in my opinion, that really make life worth it because these are things that are not always pleasant and they require sacrifice out of you and responsibility and discipline. And this could be, you know, learning a new skill, a new sport, all the way to things that are more serious like starting a business, becoming a parent, being the bigger person. All of these make you experience life in a better way and have a better life and really feel more fulfilled, but they're not all pleasurable right away. They're not they don't spike your emotions as when you're scrolling every 5 seconds a new piece of entertainment. Of course not.

[00:04:07]And because of this, if we are to keep getting to the point here or sanity while engaging with social media and scrolling and doing these things, we really really simple is whatever you see that kind of upsets you or triggers your emotions or whatever you just call it.

[00:04:23]It's either AI or bait. Bait in rage based baiting or baiting you with lust or these sort of emotions. Because when you call things like that, and I found myself doing this recently, it's like I distance myself from it so much more. If I look at something and I start getting a little upset at it, I'm like, it's rage bait. And when I call it like that, I'm like, I'm not going to fall for these tricks. And in a lot of ways, you recognize better what it is and what it's doing here to you. or if you see some thing that is a bit too goofy, you can just be like, "It's probably AI."

[00:04:55]Whether it is or not, but it just allows you to disconnect from these things and it allows you to or allows you to realize that you don't have to engage emotionally with it. You can see someone being a an absolute on the comments of Instagram and instead of keep scrolling and seeing the people arguing with it and maybe even arguing yourself, you can just say it's probably rage bait. moving on. And the more you do this, at least that's what I found in myself. The more I do it, the less appealing social media becomes because or or becomes appealing just for the things like I like and that are not really problematic, which is like videos about golf or skateboarding or I don't know, cute animal videos my girlfriend sends me. It just becomes a much more chill experience of it all, which I believe is what it should be. It should just be some quick entertainment that is not getting me into political arguments and into being rage baited and into, you know, lustful things that I don't really want to be looking at. And one can kind of step away from that all and just be like, yeah, I know what I know what you're trying to do moving on. Because furthermore from that, you know, because that's always obviously on the surface level because you really have to question as we're talking in the beginning, well, why do I even have to keep to try and keep my sanity in the first place? You know, it really gets to the point that I believe we we have to ask, well, shouldn't I then just get out of it all if I'm sacrificing my sanity or I have to do an effort to keep it while on it? And when I say sanity, it really is about keeping your mental clarity, keeping yourself free from a lot of the addictions and vices that we see nowadays, whether those be porn or um gambling or even fast foods or things like that. You're bombarded with these all the time because these people know of these businesses that, you know, nowadays people have very low impulse control. And when that is the case, if you show them enough pretty girls, they're going to fall for it. If you show them enough ads about gambling of people winning, they're going to go and sign up for the app and try them try themselves. If you show them enough videos of, you know, of a burger with fries, well, if they watched when they're hungry, they're probably going to fall for it. And so, in this manner, yeah, perhaps we have to consider, should we really be on these platforms?

[00:07:21]Is it really worth it to just keep with my family and message and all these kind of and for my personal brand or whatever? Is that really worth it what I'm sacrificing?

[00:07:32]Well, more and more I'm getting to the conclusion that it is not. But then I'm a hypocrite too because and I believe we all are for the most part because we are all on it. There's very few people that can say, "Yeah, this is bad. We shouldn't do it." And that they're not doing it themselves.

[00:07:49]It really is a difficult problem to answer here. And I don't claim to have the answer because I'm still on it. I still scroll a lot of times more than I should. But I think we all ought to consider, like we talked in the beginning, not to engage in these things as if they were real, to actually call them for what they are, which is fake. And then to try as best as we can to step away from it.

[00:08:13]Because I find myself that the more I step away from it, the sad part is that in the beginning of it, there's a sort of resistance where if I'm going on the hike, a part of me is like it's kind of boring. Even if I know that I want to do the hike and I know this is what life is, there's a part of me that it's that it's craving the the cheap easy dopamine that I just want to scroll a little bit.

[00:08:32]I just want to just a little bit. I'm a bit bored just a little bit. But we have to fight against this because and I think I read it was CS Lewis that wrote this that you know we incur the risk of starting to crave the substitute for the real thing. And if we crave the substitute for the real thing then then I don't think there can be any faker experience of life than that where it's instead of wanting a real orange juice you just want the the Fanta. It it's it's honestly pathetic to if if I consider this in myself because if we think about it, life itself, an unaltered experience in this case where we're artificially spiking our emotions with more intense versions of things is fundamentally not desirable. Because when we think about it truly beyond personal brands and monetizations and I got to be rich and buy the car and all of that, life itself has a certain rhythm to it. And a lot of times I do believe our problems come from not matching that rhythm. If you look at a tree growing, a tree does not have to worry about growing faster or slower. It grows at the exact perfect pace, the exact perfect one, not rushed and not too slow. And I believe because we are part of nature, we are fundamental biological creatures. Of course, we can understand this rhythm too. But we have to step away from these things. We have to take a step back and really do what I believe we fundamentally know how to do.

[00:10:06]That is to live.