All we owe eachother

Like most people my age who are lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) enough to own a smartphone, before going to sleep I spend a little time scrolling through TikTok. It doesn’t matter if screens before bed are bad for you, if the content is totally brainless (mostly cat videos, in my case), or if my time would be better spent reading a book. Sometimes all you need is a little bit of unhealthy scrolling. It’s impossible not to notice, at least for me, some slightly worrying trends in these sessions of cognitive shutdown, two apparent extremes. On one hand, the hyper-individualistic “I don’t owe anyone anything” attitude, which totally erases any idea of community (a concept more necessary than ever); on the other, an almost pathological urge - though I’m no doctor - for trauma dumping.

Individualism and independence on Social Media

At some point in life, it’s true that we need to figure out how much we let ourselves be influenced by others: their opinions, their presence in our lives. We have to figure out who uplifts us and who brings us down, who deserves space and importance and who doesn’t. All fair points. But this idea of completely cutting ties with any form of mutual responsibility - often packaged as some kind of mental and emotional growth hack, a trick to becoming a better, more enlightened version of ourselves - is incredibly harmful. In reality, we do owe each other things. We owe each other respect, empathy, and mutual care, and care for the community we live in. We owe each other kindness without always expecting something in return. We owe each other the bare minimum to live well together, side by side, striving not just for ourselves but for everyone. Especially in a time like this, when the far right is winning, capitalism already has, and we are losing. We’re losing our ability to communicate, to understand our place in an increasingly fragmented society, to use our privilege for someone other than ourselves, to carve out meaningful free time with others. To educate future generations, to become better than we were. We are alone, and the world is burning from multiple angles. What do we have left, if not each other?

Trauma dumping: a race to the bottom?

At first glance it seems like the opposite, but really, it's a natural reaction to this growing loneliness and declining ability to engage with life and community: the rise of trauma dumping. You know what I mean? Sometimes, under a video where someone shares an experience (positive or negative), someone else comments with their own, and it’s usually awful, devastating, worse. Often, the commenter goes into painful detail that makes a casual viewer (and the original creator, who probably didn’t expect to become the passive listener of hundreds or thousands of strangers’ deepest traumas) deeply uncomfortable, torn between wanting to offer comfort and thinking, “Sure, but I was talking about me.” So why do we do it? Because we like to complain. Because we’re caught in a silent, ongoing competition over who has it worse, seeking shock, comfort, or maybe just someone to listen. Maybe we do it because we have no one to talk to, and leaving a comment on TikTok feels more communal than a diary and way less intense than going to therapy, or even having a real conversation with a friend or family member. Because we don’t always know how to.

The desperate need for nuance

A lot of things can be true at once. We need to stop being people pleasers, but we also need to hold onto our empathy. We need to understand which relationships are worth nurturing, watering, sustaining - and which ones we should let wither or cut off entirely. We need to prioritize ourselves, our wellbeing, our careers, our dreams - without losing sight of our community, which is vital to our own wellbeing too. We need to open up to others without turning everything into a competition, and respond with real, honest listening. If it sounds hard, it’s because it is. But that’s what makes us human. And that’s okay.