How Social Media is Dimming the Flame of Genuinity

How Social Media is Dimming the Flame of Genuinity

The Theatre of Screens

There was a time when thoughts arose from the soul like wildflowers blooming in untamed soil—raw, unfiltered, and deeply personal. They emerged from solitude, from long walks, from the quiet wrestle between the mind and heart. But in today’s world, before a thought can settle within, it is measured against the screen—reshaped, reworded, reimagined for a curated audience. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, what once emerged from within is now driven by what exists outside.

Social media, that infinite scroll of curated moments and manicured truths, has become the new mirror—not of who we are, but of who we wish to appear to be. In this strange theatre of pixels and performance, authenticity bends under the weight of validation. We begin to write, not to understand ourselves, but to be understood by others. We create, not from silence, but from noise. And in doing so, the originality of thought—once tender and bold—fades into the background hum of sameness.

Why does everyone sound the same now?

If you’ve ever wandered through different profiles, you might notice a subtle convergence. The captions echo one another, the aesthetics blend, the expressions repeat. It’s as if the collective mind has been distilled into an algorithm. The internet once promised a democracy of voices, but it has become an echo chamber—where the most applauded tones become templates for the rest. It rewards the agreeable, the digestible, the already-known. And so creativity, in its most daring form, recedes into the shadows. Why risk being misunderstood when you can be liked?

We have grown addicted to feedback loops. The ‘likes’, the ‘shares’, the digital nods of approval have become the modern applause, and every thought is now a performance staged for them. When did expression become a show? When did we stop writing to reflect and start writing to impress? There’s a quiet tragedy in watching a thought be diluted just enough to be palatable, just enough to not offend, just enough to blend in.

The Mask and the Mind

In the theatre of social media, everyone wears a mask. Not the theatrical kind painted with exaggeration, but one woven with subtle expectations—of beauty, of intellect, of success. It is not always false, but it is seldom whole. People now craft digital selves with the precision of sculptors, chiseling away at truth until only the desirable remains. Behind the mask, however, the real self waits—increasingly unsure of whether it is enough.

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once warned, “The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.” And perhaps this is what we are witnessing—an unremarkable yet profound loss of self, hidden beneath filters and trend-driven narratives. In trying to be seen, we are forgetting how to see ourselves.

Are we afraid to be original?

To be original is to risk standing alone, to offer something unpolished, vulnerable, and perhaps misunderstood. But in a space where virality is mistaken for value, who dares to be different? Original thought often arrives quietly—it is a whisper, not a spectacle. It comes from contemplation, not comparison. But contemplation takes time, and time is something social media consumes in greedy handfuls, leaving us scrolling through fragments of other people’s lives while forgetting to inhabit our own.

Creativity, at its core, is born from idleness and silence—from watching shadows dance across the wall, from listening to the wind, from asking questions without rushing to answer. But when every pause is filled with a flick of the thumb, when every silence is drowned in content, where is the room for imagination to breathe?

Reclaiming the Self

To live without constantly performing is a radical act today. To write without posting, to create without sharing, to feel without broadcasting—these are gestures of rebellion against a system that profits from our distraction. Perhaps the most authentic thoughts are the ones never posted, the ones written in margins, the ones that linger in the mind long after the world has moved on.

The screen is not the enemy. It is a tool. But when the tool begins to shape the hand that holds it, we must ask: who is the sculptor now?

So pause, if only for a moment. Disconnect not from others, but from the performance. Sit with your own unpolished thoughts. Write something only for yourself. Let it be awkward, let it be messy, but let it be yours. Because the most dangerous silence is not the absence of noise, but the absence of your true voice.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Now ask yourself—when was the last time your thoughts felt entirely your own?