Put Your Phone Away

Don't make me yell at you!

You’re probably already put off by the title of this post. It may seem particularly ironic, coming from a social media content creator with a chronic online presence. But don’t worry, I’m not here to hit you with philosophical jargon or lecture you with brain scans of your fried dopamine receptors. Instead, I want to level with you. I want to tell you about an epiphany I had in the middle of my latest existential spiral—because if I had to suffer through it, the least I can do is drag you down with me.

When I first gained all those followers across various social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, I was convinced I had found my tribe. Thousands upon thousands of people tuning in to watch my content? Engaging with my point of view? The golden child in me practically levitated at the sheer force of external validation from total strangers.

Of course, not all of them were there for the right reasons. A significant portion had shown up purely to 'humble' a woman who dared to make satirical content about social justice, and expressed her opinions without apologizing for her existence every five seconds. As we all know, nonconformity and intellect in a uterus-carrier have historically offended society, even more so if said woman possesses a face that algorithms like. Not to brag, but if you squint your eyes real hard, I look like an Indian version of Sophia Carson. I have proof. A sweet Canadian lady said so. And I trust my fellow sweet Canadians. But amidst the outrage algorithms and bad-faith debates, there were still people—kind, thoughtful, supportive people—who reminded me that I wasn’t just screaming into the void.

Photo by Raquel García on Unsplash

But lately, something has shifted in my brain chemistry. I’ve become increasingly aware of the parasocial nature of 'my tribe'—the one-sidedness of it. The word connection implies a two-way street. An exchange of ideas. A dialectic. A sense of mutual knowledge. But that’s not what you get from parasocial online relationships. It’s an illusion of intimacy, a stage where one side performs and the other side watches—sometimes cheering, sometimes jeering.

Think of your favorite social media personality. You feel like you know them, don’t you? You don’t. You don’t know their daily wins and struggles. They don’t know yours. You don’t know their mental health spirals. They don’t know yours. You don’t know their existential dread. They don’t know yours. So where’s this heavily-advertised “connection” at? Isn’t that what social media promised us? The yellow brick road that leads to more connections, more friends, more communities. Instead, what we got was a transaction, not a relationship—a world where one side demands performance, and the other either complies or fades into irrelevance.

And somehow, the worst part isn’t the performance—it’s the fact that we’ve all collectively lost the art of real connection. We live in personalized echo chambers, fortified with blind conviction, utterly incapable of dialogue.

Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash

I won’t pretend I’m above this. I routinely roast people on my social media. In my defense, the vast majority of them deserve it. What do they expect when they tell me to go kill myself? But here’s the thing—buried among the hateful dumbasses, there must be a few people who, in another reality, you or I might have had a great conversation with.

If only it wasn’t through a screen.

The world is changing at a breakneck pace and I worry we have lost the most important element of effective shitshow navigation—community. The hyper-individualism, the incessant what’s-in-it-for-me attitude is chipping away at our collective empathy.

I feel like I am losing you. I don’t need this lecture. I am fine.

Are you though?

If you are, truly, I am happy for you. But most of my generation—and the ones coming up behind us—are not fine. Not even close. We feel isolated. We feel pointless. We are untethered in a world that tells us we’re more connected than ever, yet somehow, we’ve never felt more alone.

Dating apps are the perfect case study for this dystopian illusion of choice. Technically, you—if you are in the dreaded dating market (my condolences)—have thousands of matches at your fingertips. Technically, you can “connect” with potential romantic interests from all over the world. Technically, we can fine-tune parameters to be presented with the best possible matches. Technically, we should all be paired up by now, or at the very least, enjoying the process of pairing up. Technically, we should all be thriving in this never-ending dating buffet.

What’s the reality though?

Endless loops of talking stages. Useless rosters. Dates that feel like job interviews. Hookup culture. A gamified hellscape that enables the worst traits of humanity. Because people aren’t people anymore. We’re just a collection of eyeballs, optimized for engagement, commodified for ad spend, lulled into complacency by the algorithmic drip-feed of late-stage capitalism.

So do I have a solution? Not yet. I do have a strong gut feeling, though. A hypothesis, if you will. And I am in the process of testing it.

Here’s my hypothesis: Seek a flow-state through flesh-and-blood community.

Don’t get me wrong—I like solitude. A lot of my personal and professional pursuits require it. But I’m now making a conscious effort to place myself in communal spaces, doing things I’d do anyway.

Take travel. Instead of forcing a friend to tag along (I’m too chicken for solo travel), I signed up for WiFi Tribe—a community of digital nomads who co-live and co-work around the world. (This is not an ad placement, by the way. I literally just signed up and haven’t even gone on my first Edinburgh chapter yet—July 2025, here we go.)

Photo by jim Divine on Unsplash

Or dance. Instead of learning new styles alone through YouTube tutorials, I joined a local ballroom studio—choosing shared movement over isolated practice.

The point is, any new experience I seek, I now ask myself: Can I sprinkle real community in there?

Yes, the examples I’ve given require financial commitment, and that’s not always feasible for everyone. But they’re a starting point. And I intend to find more ways to build real human connections in the real world. I am open to your suggestions. No seriously, share them please.

If it sounds like I am asking you to go out there and collect friends, you are totally missing the point. I am asking you to reconsider your lifestyle and your bubble. It’s not a coincidence that you feel overworked, jaded, hopeless and depressed. You were never meant to live a life through a small, medium or large screen 90% of the time. You were supposed to experience the colors of the world in three dimensions. To feel its smooth and rough edges—not just swipe through it, up and down, left and right. If we can’t even sit through a coffee with a friend without checking our phones every five minutes, we are fucked.

I despise the word “influencer” more than ultra-religious fanatics despise a woman’s agency over her own body. But if I can influence you to do anything, it would be this: Start unpacking this collective capitalism-fueled fuckery and unfuck this one precious life you have.

Find something—anything—that exists in the real world, something so immersive, so grounding, so alive that it makes you put your phone away. Even if only for short increments of time. Just… try not to join a far-right cult. We don’t need more of those.