The Unbearable Fakeness of Being

Or Thoughts on social media and our collective mental health

By Andrea Nyberg

I am sitting at my kitchen table just after breakfast, I will soon get to my work emails but just in order to get a short break, a breather, or maybe some kind of sense of being in touch, not unlike the sensation in my teens of picking up a cigarette between lessons in school, I pick up my phone, open my social media channel, and start scrolling. I see family, former friends and colleagues, people I have dated, and strangers. I come across a post from that friend that I haven’t seen in years, someone I have tried to reach out to but who has chosen not to prioritize me in her life, and an unpleasant sensation of being left out, of loss, makes a hint in my stomach. I also see picturesque landscape views of exotic, heavenly places by that former colleague who now seems to be living her dream life, always travelling, and the thought hits me regarding whether I have made the right choices in my life, and doubts start to seep in about my own destiny. Then I come across a post from that young female business leader I once met at a political gathering; I see just her face, I see those duck lips and those deer-eyes, that photographic angle and those filters that transform women’s faces into dolls, and, as a Millennial, distant memories of Pamela Andersson flash by; Pamela, as the primal mother of the gentrification of that pornographic look, calibrated now by the vastly more famous Kardashians.

I am on the subway, on my way to the Central Station in Stockholm to do some Christmas shopping. Two women are standing close to the doors, both of them in neat, black down jackets and fancy looking handbags. I look at one of their faces, those lips, those not-so-slightly unnaturally bulging lips, and I wonder if it hurts when that substance is injected into them, and what happens afterwards, when the substance is finally absorbed by the body? Another injection, or maybe many, because now the lips have started to sag in a way that is also not-so-slightly unnatural. As a matter of fact, I only need to look around a litte bit, on the subway and later on the street, to see other copies of the Kardashian sisters passing by. I also see young girls, maybe thirteen or so, filming themselves together, making faces and creating small scenes, then abrubtly cutting, and all of a sudden an atmosphere change; stiff, serious faces scrutinize what was just documented, and judgement is harsh, calling for another take; and, as if jumping out of one reality into an other, the scene is back on, jolly and light, in front of the camera.

I get off the subway and take a stroll in the city centre, partially covered by snow. A huge, decorated Christmas tree stands majestically in a small square, and I see a child running towards it, full of curiosity and joy. Then I spot the mother, not too far away, struggling with the camera on her phone, insisting that the child stands next to the tree, posing for a picture. The child, however, seems absorbed by the magic of Christmas and the green, massive branches of the pine tree in front of him; his back is turned towards his mother, he wants to touch those dark green branches; what do they feel like, what do they smell like?, all the while the mother gets more and more impatient, now almost aggressive; ”Stand there!,” ”Look at me,” ”No, not like thaaaat!!.” A small dog passes by on a long leash which catches the boys’ attention. ”Ali!!!” screams the mother, and the child freezes, then quickly turns towards her. ”Smile!!”, she orders. ”Yes,” she confirms when he does, ”show your fingers like this,” she says, and makes a victory sign, which Ali quickly manges to imitate. ”There you go!” shouts the mother, indeed victorious now, with the image of a happy boy next to a Christmans tree during a stroll out with mother – finally a publishable picture for her social media.

Later that day I have a phone call with a friend of mine who is worried about a former classmate. She asks me to visit the classmate’s Instagram page, and I partake in her worry because what I see is a young woman whose body clearly shows how she suffers from anorexia nervosa, a deadly mental health disorder involving an inability to see your body in a realistic light. In her posts she is posing in luxurious surroundings, showing off her decimated, almost skeletal body during yoga sessions, sauna sessions and on the beach somewhere far away, with hundreds of likes from followers. The posts are accompanied with wise words such as Own your actions. Be the person you want to be, and my cognitive dissonance is complete. I continue scrolling on Instagram, seeing influencers drinking certain brands of sparkling wine or displaying expensive handbags and I am wondering why I am getting lost in a world of advertisement, I am wondering who is fooling whom, and are they aware that they have become objects, that they have sold themselves to become protagonsists of our times’ version of a long and seductive commercial break? I remember the 1990’s, when we used to flee those breaks; make a sandwitch and then return to the TV show once the commercials were over. But now we are sucked into them like a drug, for that is how Silicon Valley has designed these platforms – to play with the substances in our brains.

There is vast agreement among researchers and practitioners that social media can aggravate mental health problems. But not only that; it invades the worlds of teenagers and children, stealing away precious time where one could have, instead, played with friends, or, as the World Health Organization announced earlier this year, been getting exercise. I would also like to add that social media and other virtual activities steal away the experience of ever being bored – a condition that actually can help in the development of creativity, apart from the obvious benefit of training us in being patient, perhaps mindful, and therefore it teaches us quite a crucial life-skill: endurance - or, simply, the skill to be able to accept that the world is sometimes just, well, a bit dull.

Instead, we have all become addicts. We sit at restaurant tables, but each staring into our own virtual worlds, rather than into each other’s eyes. We smile when we get that message that hits exactly that right spot; our partners powerlessly watching us, while we are being seduced right in front of their eyes. The young infants of today throw tantrums, not because they can’t reach their toy, but because the parent desperately tries to hide the iPad, wondering what on earth happened that made the child so quickly crave it, and so violently. In the meantime, I am at my kitchen table, twistedly relieved that I don’t have children of my own, yet mysteriously empty and slightly alarmed. I turn on the news and see Sam Altman speak about AI, and I make myself a cup of tea, and stare out the window, onto an old apple tree.

That tree will probably stay the same, but I realize the world as I knew it is transforming itself into something new and perhaps unrecognizable – our home here on earth will be a very different experience to my 1-year old nephew than it has been to me. Perhaps, then, I have all the more responsibility on my shoulders; that auntly duty of guiding this new human being past illusions and commercial gaslighting, through the real rawness and pain, the delight, the difficulty and the beauty – and, yes – the boredom that is so essential to the human experience, yet so shunned and misunderstood today. For isn’t it the authentic human experience that we are so missing out on? If nothing else, then at least I can teach him that while the world is undoing itself, a real warrior still quietly and slowly drinks his tea, resorting to his own mind first; and, preferably, underneath the whispers of the leaves of an old tree that has seen it all already.

Are we all greenwashers?