S1E19 - Social Media Isn't Real

Welcome to Under the Surface. This is where we slow down and look at the patterns underneath the stories we tell ourselves. Today's chapter is called Social Media Has its Strengths and Weaknesses. Welcome to No One Is Normal. The podcast with real stories remind us that none of us are alone. You can also visit the website www.bradhill.com or www.NooneIsNormal.co. For resources, updates, and future podcast episodes, I am Brad Hill and each week we talk about the messy, the complicated, and the deeply human moments that shape us and remain in our memories. I am not here to tell anyone how to live. I am here to offer the stories, the insights that made me realize that No One Is Normal, including me, because healing starts when self-honesty begins. Social media is one of the strangest inventions of our time. It can put the entire world in your hands and still leave you feeling completely alone. I have seen both sides of it. I have watched people pour their hearts out online, only to have trolls and keyboard warriors crawl out of their basements to spew venom at them. I have been on the receiving end of that more times than I can count. People who know nothing about my life or my story decide that a single post is enough reason to attack my character. I would love to say I always handled it with grace, but I have snapped back more than once. It is easy to fire off a comment that feels justified in the moment, only to regret it later. Behind a screen, everyone is a hard-ass. In real life, most of them would not say a word to your face. The more time I spend online, the more I see how it shapes how we see ourselves. Every scroll becomes a comparison and another reminder of what we think we should look like, own or achieve. People twist vulnerable moments into jokes or outrage to get attention. We spend more time staring at screens than looking one another in the eye. It is no wonder so many people feel so alienated and alone, staring at someone else's life, while they ignore the one that needs full attention. As a society, we are hooked. We scroll when we are bored, lonely, or avoiding our own thoughts. On the contrary, buried under all that noise are real connections as well. I met my wife on social media. It is where a simple friend request, and a few likes, turned into a story that changed both of our lives. That is the paradox. This thing that can tear people down in a single comment can also build something real. This episode is about learning how to live in that tension and how to protect ourselves while we do. Social media is the weirdest thing I have ever watched become normal. On one side, it gives people a place to share their thoughts, their pain, their wins, and their real lives. On the other side, it hand strangers a megaphone, and lets them aim it wherever they want. I have seen it turn honest posts into a target. I have watched people twist vulnerability into entertainment. I have also been guilty of snapping back, because sometimes it feels impossible to stay quiet when someone is being cruel on purpose. What makes social media so dangerous is how quickly it blurs the line between reality and performance. You can scroll for five minutes and end up feeling like your life is behind. Your body is wrong. Your work is not enough, or your piece is something you have to earn. A lot of people are not looking for conversation online. They are looking for a reaction. They want the dopamine hit of starting a fire, then walking away. And if you are already tired, already stressed, already insecure, it is easy to hand them material to burn. But social media is not only a problem. It is also the reason some people survive the week. It is how communities form. It is how people find support when they feel alone. And in my case, it is how I met my wife. That is the part that always messes with me, because it proves the platform itself is not evil. It is a tool. The same space that can destroy someone's confidence in a single comment can also connect to people who never would have crossed paths otherwise. I think that is the real lesson of this chapter. Social media has strengths and weaknesses. And the problem is that most of us don't use it intentionally. We use it emotionally and impulsively. We use it when we are lonely, frustrated, insecure, bored, or stressed. That is when it becomes a weapon against our mental health, instead of a tool for connection. For me, the shift happened when I started paying attention to what it was costing me. If a conversation left me drained, angry, or spiraling, it was not worth winning. If someone wanted to misunderstand me on purpose, I stopped trying to prove myself. If something was pulling me into comparison, I stepped back. Social media didn't change. I did. The internet will always have trolls and keyboard warriors. It will always have outrage cycles and dog piles. It will always have people who are louder than they are kind. But it will also always have moments of real connection, real healing, and real humanity. The goal isn't to pretend it is all good or all bad. The goal is to stay in control of yourself while you use it. And to protect your peace, like it actually matters, because it does. Social media is still a very new part of human life, which is wild when you think about how much power it already holds. We have entire generations growing up, learning how to be themselves, while also managing an online version. That is a lot to carry. For many people, the phone has become the first thing they see in the morning, and the last thing they look at before bed, because it fills the gaps where quiet once lived. The more we scroll, the more normal it feels to constantly compare. Someone shares a vacation. And we start thinking about our own finances. Someone posts a filtered selfie, and we start examining our own face. Someone announces a promotion. And we wonder if we are happy where we are at in life. There is a reason doom scrolling. It leaves so many people feeling worse. Not better. The brain is not built to take in the emotional lives of hundreds of people in a few minutes. It is exhausting. There are stories of people who wake up already anxious, because they reach for their phone before they even reach for their own thoughts. Their nervous system starts the day on high alert, reacting to news, tragedies, and hot takes. Before they have even had breakfast, over time that constant stimulation can blur the line between what is happening in our real life and what is just happening on a screen. It all feels immediate and personal, even when it is not. Another layer, people do not talk about enough, is how social media trains our brains to live in a state of high alert. You are not just consuming information. You are constantly being interrupted. Notifications, comments, headlines, trending outrage, the next clip, the next story. It is like living in a room where someone keeps tapping you on the shoulder every 10 seconds. Even if the content is not traumatic, the constant switching is exhausting. It fragments attention and makes it harder to stay grounded in your own life. The more fractured we become, the easier it is to mistake stimulation for connection. You can spend an hour scrolling and still feel lonely when you put the phone down. That is a weird kind of emptiness because it looks like being social, but it feels like being unseen. Your brain got fed, but your soul didn't. You consumed 50 people's opinions, but you did not have one real conversation. You watched 100 moments of someone else's life, but you never started your own. What really gets people is that social media does not show you content. It teaches you what to value. It rewards extremes. It rewards the hottest take, the sharpest insult, the cleanest glow up, the most dramatic before and after story. Quite growth rarely goes viral. Consistency rarely trends. A stable life looks boring on camera, but stability is what most of us are actually craving. Peace does not come with captions or filters. Peace comes from routines, boundaries and relationships that do not require constant performance. It is also why so many people feel they have to prove their lives are real. They do not just want to be happy. They want to be seen as happy. They do not just want to heal. They want to highlight real of healing. And if they do not get the response they hoped for, it can feel like the moment did not count. That is one of the sneakiest ways social media rewires self-worth. It can turn private joy into public validation. It can turn your identity into a product. It can turn your pain into content. Taking a quick pause here. If this episode is resonating, I would love for you to follow the known as normal podcast on whatever platform you listen on. Every follow helps to show reach people who might need these stories. Now let's jump back in. Over time, you stop asking, "Is this good for me?" And start asking, "Will this perform?" That is why boundaries matter so much, not because social media is evil, but because it is powerful, and anything powerful needs limits. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is stop narrating your life long enough to actually live it. Stop checking the comments long enough to breathe. Stop trying to win the internet long enough to win your own peace back. On the other hand, there are powerful stories where social media has done the opposite. People have used it to share recovery journeys, so others know they are not alone. Someone in the darkest place of addiction might see a post from someone who survived the same thing, and suddenly feel a little less hopeless. People with chronic illness or rare diagnoses have found entire communities that understand them in ways their own friends and family cannot. Survivors of abuse have connected with others who believe them and help them feel seen. In those moments, the timeline stops being a "highlight reel" and becomes a lifeline. There is also a growing awareness about how important it is to set boundaries with technology. Some people take regular social media breaks. Whether that is a weekend offline or deleting apps from their phone entirely for a while. Others create rules like no phones at the dinner table or no scrolling in bed. These small boundaries are not about demonizing technology. They are about making sure that real life still has room to breathe. When people step away from the constant noise, they often notice simple things they had been missing. The way their body feels when they are not hunched over a screen. The sound of someone's voice without the distraction of notifications. Even something as basic as watching a movie all the way through without checking an app can feel different when you have been fragmented for a long time. Another reality is that social media has trained many of us to chase metrics rather than meaning. Yet, the algorithms approval does not tell us anything about our value as a person. It's not just a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person. One person could say something cruel and suddenly that was all I could see. I would tell myself I didn't care but I clearly did because I would replay it in my head. I would feel that pressure to respond, to explain myself, to defend myself, to prove something. And sometimes I snapped back. Sometimes I went to war in the comments like it was a mission. It felt good for about 10 seconds. And then I just felt drained. Eventually I had to face the truth. I wasn't changing anyone's mind. I was just letting my peace get stolen by someone who didn't even use their real name. I was giving energy to people who weren't interested in understanding me in the first place. They were interested in winning, mocking, or provoking. And I was letting them rent space in my head for free. Meeting my wife online reminded me of something important. There is real human life behind these screens. There are people trying to rebuild their confidence. While others try to tear them down for sport, that forced me to look at my own behavior. I had to ask myself whether I was adding to the quagmire or making things better. Now I try to pause before I post or respond. I ask myself whether this aligns with who I want to be. Or if it is just my ego looking for a quick hit. I still mess up sometimes. I still get tempted to clap back when someone is cruel. But I am learning that my time, my nerves, and my peace are worth more than proving a point to a stranger online. Social media will keep evolving. The algorithm will keep doing what it does. But I get to decide how much of my heart I hand over to it. That choice is mine every single time I pick up my phone or turn on the computer. If you are listening to this and feeling this relates, you are not alone. Most of us did not get a manual on how to use social media healthily. We just downloaded the apps and jumped in. Over time the platform got louder and faster. The content got more polished. The expectations got higher. Somewhere in the middle of all that, it became normal to compare our daily lives to the best 5 seconds of someone else's. Maybe you have caught yourself scrolling late at night, feeling worse with every swipe. But still unable to put the phone down. Maybe you have posted something honest and then watched it as someone twisted it or mocked it. Maybe you have been the one who took a shot at someone online because your own day was going sideways. And it felt easier to vent at a stranger than to sit with your feelings. I want you to know that none of that makes you broken. It makes you human in a system that is designed to keep you scrolling. The important thing is what you do once you notice it. Start by paying attention to how you feel before and after you spend time online. Do you walk away feeling inspired, connected and informed or do you feel anxious, angry and empty? Your body will tell you the truth even when your mind tries to justify the habit. If certain accounts always leave you feeling less than, mute them. If certain conversations drag you into a predictable cycle of arguing, step out of them. You do not owe anyone your time or emotional energy just because they tagged you or replied. You can also be intentional about what you bring into those spaces. You do not have to share every detail of your life for it to be real. You do not have to perform your pain or your joy for strangers unless you genuinely want to. Maybe for you it looks like posting something that matters to you and then putting the phone down instead of hovering over the refresh button. Maybe it looks like using social media to stay connected to a small circle of people you care about. Instead of trying to keep up with hundreds, maybe it looks like deciding that the most important moments of your day are going to stay off the internet so you can actually be present for them. I also want to invite you to think about boundaries. What would it look like to have one hour in the evening with no phone or to keep your mornings screen free for the first 15 minutes so your brain can wake up before the world rushes in. These small shifts can make a bigger difference than you might expect. They give you a chance to check in with yourself, with the people in your home and with your own thoughts before everyone else's voices start competing for your attention. Social media is not going anywhere. The question is how you want it to exist in your life as a tool you pick up with intention or as a reflex you barely notice. That choice is in your hands. Social media has shown me the best and worst of what people are capable of. It has given me trolls, arguments, and moments that made me question why I ever logged on in the first place. It has also given me friendships, community, and a marriage that started with a simple friend request. Living in that tension means accepting that these platforms are not going to suddenly become kind and gentle on their own. The algorithms will always chase attention. Some people will always chase conflict. What you can change is how much of yourself you hand over to it. As you move through your own life online, remember that you are more than your posts, your likes, and your follow account. The most important parts of who you are will never be captured fully in a photo or a caption. They show up in the way you listen and how you show up for the people you love and the choices you make when nobody is watching. Social media can amplify pieces of that, but it cannot define it. Use it if it helps you connect, learn, and grow. Put it down when it starts to cost you your peace. You don't owe explanation for protecting your mental health and your time. At the end of the day, the goal is not to win the internet. The goal is to build a life that still feels real. After you log off, one where the connections in front of you matter more than the strangers on your screen. under the surface, not to judge the story, not to rewrite the past, but to understand the patterns that shape how we live. If something in this chapter stirred recognition for you, sit with it. Pay attention to what keeps showing up. Awareness is where change starts. Just a reminder, the stories and conversations in this podcast are for informational and personal reflection only. Being shared here should be taken as medical, legal or professional advice. Always speak with a qualified professional about your own personal situation. Thank you for listening to No One Is Normal. If today's message resonated with you, you can find the book No One Is Normal on Amazon and Kindle. And explore more resources at www.bradhill.com or www.nooneisnormal.co. Remember, you weren't meant to be normal, you were meant to be you.