social media

What is the impact of social media on our brains, on society? Many of us who use social media in tandem with our occupation or as our occupation forget to remember its place in our lives, and the purpose of its design. Attention and time, your most valuable assets, are targeted by the diverse but constricting algorithms of these apps. What is a mind that is constantly occupied? A mind that is gradually reduced to seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, filled with comparison and thousands of ideas we take as our own authority? A mind that seeks security, permanence, while knowing deeply that there is none? Such a brain is dead, because it cannot think for itself. It must search for the next authority that promises freedom, or numb the negative thoughts with consumption of content. We may say that we do not care, life is hard and the outcome of addiction does not matter. The fact is that this way of thinking is also rooted in past conditioning, and therefore dead- without love. If we just observe our relationship with our phone, with ourselves, with others, without interpreting or judging it, we may experience something else entirely. A mind free from the narrow vision of opinion, of judgment and comparison. Liberated from the comfort seeking, habit-bound mechanical actions. That love which is freedom, the end of conflict.

-S.L

Art by Vinnie Nauheimer