We Have a Toxic Relationship with the Feed
Why social media feels fake—and why that’s the least dangerous thing about it.
I’ve been saying this for years, long before it became a wellness infographic or a caption people nod at and then ignore.
Social media is a highlight reel, and we’re all comparing it to our behind-the-scenes. Even me.
But comparison isn’t the root of the problem. It’s just the first symptom we recognize because it’s the one that hurts our self-esteem the fastest.
The deeper issue is this: we are in a relationship with a system that does not care if we are well, grounded, or safe. It cares whether we stay engaged.
Curated Magic, Carefully Cropped
For most of my life, I “kept it Disney”.
Not fake exactly—just edited. Sunlit moments. Smiles. Milestones. Trips. Cute outfits. The kind of posts that quietly say everything is fine here, even when the credits are rolling behind the curtain and someone’s crying in the hallway.
I shared the good parts. The palatable parts. The parts that wouldn’t make anyone uncomfortable or require a follow-up question I didn’t have the energy to answer.
Positive highlights only. Roll credits. Fade to sparkles.
That choice came with a quiet cost.
I would scroll past friends’ baby pictures—perfect nurseries, soft blankets, glowing smiles—and feel a deep sadness settle in my chest. I was genuinely happy for them and still profoundly depressed by what I didn’t have, what I wanted, what felt out of reach. That contrast lived inside me for a long time, unseen and unspoken, because I assumed it was a personal failing instead of a predictable response.
The Illusion We All Participate In
Here’s the uncomfortable truth most of us already know but rarely sit with: most people aren’t lying on social media. They’re omitting.
No one posts the argument that happened five minutes before the smiling family photo. No one posts the panic attack that followed the “so grateful” caption. No one posts the debt, the doubt, the resentment, or the loneliness that lives between the moments.
And then we scroll.
We absorb someone else’s carefully chosen joy while standing knee-deep in our own unfiltered mess and think something must be wrong with us.
Nothing is wrong with you. You’re watching the trailer, not the full movie, and judging your life as if you’ve seen the whole thing.
Where the Harm Actually Starts
But comparison culture is only the most visible layer. It’s the part that feels personal enough to blame ourselves for.
What we don’t talk about as openly is how aggressively social media pushes—how often it ignores our boundaries, overrides our preferences, and wears us down through repetition.
I’ve fallen for it. More than once.
Sometimes it’s small, almost laughable in hindsight. Buying something I never needed because it was pushed so relentlessly it broke my resistance. A product that promised transformation and delivered clutter, now sitting untouched and quietly mocking me from the corner.
And sometimes it’s not small at all.
When I changed my relationship status to divorced, I didn’t go looking for dating apps. I wasn’t curious. I wasn’t browsing. I wasn’t asking.
They came anyway.
As soon as that word appeared, my feed shifted. Suddenly I was being sold connection, reinvention, desirability. I kept hitting not interested. Over and over again.
They kept coming back like a narcissistic ex does when they don’t respect no and only reach out when they want something from you.
That isn’t coincidence. It’s targeting.
Life transitions—divorce, grief, loneliness, instability—are treated as entry points. Vulnerability becomes a data point. Resistance is interpreted as hesitation, not refusal. The system isn’t listening to you; it’s studying how long it takes to wear you down.
When You Don’t Get to Choose the Tone of Your Day
This morning, before my girls woke up, I scrolled Facebook.
Within minutes, my feed served me another story of a U.S. citizen murdered by ICE in Minnesota.
That was the emotional temperature set for my day.
Not because I sought it out. Not because I was prepared to process it. Not because I had the space or capacity to absorb another tragedy before my children needed breakfast, comfort, and stability.
It appeared because the algorithm decided this would keep me engaged.
Social media doesn’t just sell products. It sells fear, outrage, grief, and urgency. It drops trauma into our laps without consent and calls it staying informed. It floods our nervous systems before we’ve even oriented ourselves to the day and then wonders why everyone feels exhausted, reactive, and hollowed out.
That isn’t awareness. It’s emotional hijacking.
Risk Feels Like Realness—But It’s Still a Choice
I do post with more risk now.
I say the quieter parts out loud. I let the cracks show. I name things that don’t fit neatly into a square with a caption limit.
Sometimes that looks like sharing a photo from what was, quietly, the worst year of my life. A picture that seemed harmless on the surface—me at the fair with a friend, smiling, present, fine.
What people didn’t see was that he was there to distract me while my life was actively falling apart behind the scenes. The photo wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth either. It was a fraction of a moment, stripped of context, because context doesn’t perform well.
Even honesty online is still a choice.
I don’t post everything. I can’t. No one can. There are stories that belong to the people living inside them, not to an audience. There are moments that need privacy, protection, and time to become something other than raw.
Authenticity does not mean exposure without boundaries. It means honesty with intention.
The Spell We’re All Under
There is something almost witchy about it, this collective illusion.
A modern glamour spell that feeds on attention and vulnerability. We know it’s curated. We know it’s filtered. We know it’s engineered to keep us scrolling.
And still, it gets us.
We still feel behind. Still feel late. Still feel like everyone else got a map and we’re improvising in the dark. The spell works not because we’re foolish, but because it’s designed to.
Behind every glossy post is a life just as complicated, just as human, and just as unfinished as yours.
Pulling Back the Curtain
I don’t want to burn social media to the ground.
I want us to stop blaming ourselves for reacting normally to something designed to manipulate us.
I want us to remember that what we see is a sliver, not the whole. That joy doesn’t require proof. That struggle doesn’t mean failure. That no one is thriving all the time—they’re just posting when they are.
And maybe, gently, we stop punishing ourselves for not looking like someone else’s best moment.
Because your behind-the-scenes is not a flaw. It’s where the real story lives.
And it was never meant to be compared, commodified, or exploited for engagement.
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