
You know how it goes.
You sit down, half-aware, with the screen glaring at you like the drunk uncle at a family reunion, telling you to “check this out, it’s important!” You scroll.
Thumb after thumb.
The endless parade of hot takes, blurry selfies, and the latest outrage about something that’ll be forgotten by next Tuesday.
Your brain? It’s like a junkie looking for its next fix, but each hit only makes you need a bigger one.
You think you’re in control. You think you’re choosing.
But you’re not. This isn’t choice. It’s a script written by the same guys who sold cigarettes to your grandfather—promise ‘em a little pleasure, then watch them rot.
Social media is designed to work you over. To train you to crave novelty like a dog chasing a goddamn bone, until you’re so distracted you forget what life used to taste like.
And you get good at it. Too good. Your brain starts morphing into mush, a carnival of dopamine running at full tilt.
The worst part?
You don’t even know what’s happening.
The Brain on Social Media:
Alright, let me break it down for you.
Imagine you’re that idiot who can’t stop pushing the elevator button even though it’s already lit up.
You’re standing there, pressing it over and over, thinking it’ll make the elevator come faster—like you’re actually doing something productive.
That’s your brain on social media. You’re repeatedly hitting the button, but you’re not getting anywhere. You’re not even moving. You’re just making noise.
The first hit is sweet though, right? A little buzz, a tiny jolt of dopamine from the screen. You think, “Hey, this is it, I’ve found it. This is the high I’ve been looking for.”
And just like that, you’re hooked. It’s like biting into that greasy pizza slice that promises to be your soulmate but leaves you regretting your life choices ten minutes later.
Social media is that pizza. It’s garbage, but it’s hot, it’s fresh, and it’s hard to resist.
“Look at me!” it screams. “I’m important! I’m relevant! This shit is REAL!”
But here’s the thing: none of it’s real. It’s all just empty noise. And somehow, you’re convinced it matters. You start thinking you’re “connected,” but really you’re just surrounded by a million people who wouldn’t even recognize you if you fell in front of them.
That dopamine hit isn’t connection—it’s just another distraction to keep you numb. Your brain starts turning to mush, and suddenly you’re too restless to sit with a novel for more than five minutes.
No, now the thrill comes from scrolling, from chasing the next shiny distraction.
That little itch in your brain?
It’s not curiosity anymore. It’s an addiction. It’s demanding faster, louder, more. The stories you read, the tragedies you pretend to care about, the memes—are they even real?
It’s all just background noise to the slow-motion disaster that is your life.
And the more you scroll, the more your attention span shrinks.
The world outside turns blurry, and you’re just sitting there, staring at a screen while life passes you by.
Now, let’s talk about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar for a second.
Esther Greenwood is stuck in a world of buzzing distractions, the same kind of crap that’s suffocating your brain every time you open Facebook.
But here’s the thing: unlike you, Esther actually gets it. She sees through all that hollow nonsense. She understands that all the flashing lights and shallow images are just smoke and mirrors, and it drives her insane.
That book doesn’t just describe depression—it throws you into it, wraps its fingers around your neck, and squeezes until you can’t breathe.
That’s what happens when you give yourself over to the scroll.
You stop thinking for yourself. You lose the ability to just sit with your own thoughts.
The world, that once beautiful, complex place, turns into a blurry mess.
And you know what’s worse? The silence starts feeling like torture.
You forget what real, deep, meaningful thought feels like. You forget what it’s like to breathe without a constant stream of notifications filling your head.
It’s not just your attention span that dies. It’s your soul. And by the time you realize it, you’re too far gone to turn back.

The Slow Poison
This isn’t just about feeling bad for five minutes. It’s deeper. It’s a long, slow poisoning that begins to eat at the edges of your ability to think.
Your brain, once sharp, begins to soften, like a loaf of bread left out too long. You get stuck in this cycle of never-ending noise, with no space to think. You’re a machine, feeding on images, opinions, fake news, and toxic memes.
There’s nothing real about it. Nothing authentic. And that’s what fiction used to offer: realness. It demanded your full attention, no shortcuts.
Take Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground”—here’s a man in hell, a man who knows exactly what’s happening to his mind.
He’s stuck, like all of us. But while we drown in Facebook and Twitter (excuse me – X), he drowns in his own thoughts. He can’t stop analyzing the goddamn world until he loses grip on it entirely.
He knows the truth: “Man is what he eats,” but in the case of social media, “Man is what he scrolls.” We eat all the garbage, all the distraction, and when we’re done, there’s nothing left but a bitter taste in our mouths.
Fiction, real fiction—the kind that smacks you upside the head and doesn’t let you off easy—gives you a chance to break that cycle.
It forces you to stop and think. But you have to want to stop, and most of us don’t.
Most of us would rather keep scrolling, keep feeding that hungry beast.

The Slow Burn of Fiction
And yet, here’s the trick: Fiction is the only place where you can reclaim your humanity.
It’s the antidote because it gives you something deeper, something richer.
The brain may want quick hits, but the soul craves depth. You read a novel like “Crime and Punishment,” and suddenly you’re not just scrolling through your life, waiting for the next sensation to hit you.
You’re submerged in a world that feels real because it’s ugly, it’s dirty, and it’s painful.
Raskolnikov, that tortured bastard, is a mess, but he’s alive. He’s wrestling with the truth, and it hurts, but it’s a kind of living that doesn’t require likes.
And when you crack open “Moby-Dick,” when you sink into that goddamn whale, you realize something that makes your social media addiction seem like a distant memory.
You’re surrounded by the void, but instead of running from it, you stare right into its black abyss.
You realize that it’s not the whale you’re hunting—it’s the meaning you’ve been avoiding, the meaning that social media tells you doesn’t matter.
It’s right there, underneath the surface, quiet and still. Fiction forces you to confront it.
How the Brain Responds
So what does fiction do to the brain? Well, for one, it gives your mind room to breathe. When you read, when you really read, you’re forced to pay attention to details, to linger on the small stuff.
You can’t just swipe left on the passage you don’t like. Your brain is active, engaging, struggling with the text. And when you’re done, you have something.
Something real. Something that sticks with you, unlike that fleeting sense of satisfaction from the last viral tweet you liked.
Social Media | Fiction |
---|---|
Immediate gratification | Builds long-term emotional intelligence |
Surface-level interaction | Deep, immersive engagement |
Erodes attention span | Rebuilds focus and patience |
Constant noise and distraction | Quiet, focused introspection |
The result?
When you put the phone down after an hour with Dostoevsky or Melville, your brain doesn’t feel fried. It feels sharper. More connected.
A Moment of Darkness
But let’s not kid ourselves. The real problem isn’t just the mind rotting away in front of a screen. The real problem is the question of why. Why do we do it?
Why do we choose to consume mindless trash instead of the rich, bitter fruit of great fiction?
The answer is simple, and it’s fucking bleak: We’re afraid. We’re afraid of the silence that comes with being alone with our thoughts.
We’re afraid of facing the void that life sometimes seems to be.
We’re addicted to the noise, the distractions, because in the noise, there’s no time to feel the weight of our existence.
The choice between fiction and social media isn’t just a matter of taste. It’s the choice between confronting the abyss or running from it.
Most people will run. Most people will stay on the scroll, because at least for a few seconds, they don’t have to feel the world collapse around them. But it’s a collapse nonetheless.
A Glimmer of Hope?
Here’s the thing: It doesn’t have to be this way. The future isn’t set in stone. The good news? You can stop. You can make a choice.
You can pick up a book and dive in. Sure, you’ll feel uncomfortable at first.
The silence will feel like a weight on your chest. But give it time, and you’ll find that it’s not the silence that’s killing you. It’s the constant noise that does the real damage.
So the question remains: What will you choose? The endless scroll, or the hard, messy truth that comes from a well-worn novel?
Don’t be a pussy.
Put the phone down.
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