Conscious Consumption: Guarding Your Mind and Spirit Online
an image from Jamie Roth’s created Tarot Deck
My coming to awareness around social media
I’m a big fan of Tik Tok. That is a platform through which I have learned more about the goings on around the world than any other platform I have used for 20 years. However, early in 2024 I started to realize that it's also extremely emotionally pulling. That app pulls me into laughing my head off, crying deep guttural cries, and enraged to the very core of my being. It also gives me anxiety. Then at another point in the year I realized it makes me tired. Really tired. To the point that I’ve learned I can use it to get myself tired enough to go to sleep.
The other thing I’ve noticed is how reliant I have become on reading the comments (on any platform), in order to first, .get more information and insight, but surprisingly for second, to decide how I feel.
That second one was a bit astounding to me once I realized I had fallen into that trap. I’ve considered myself to be a free thinker for most of my life. I have not been someone that is dependent on other people’s opinions for a very long time. But I realized that I had fallen prey to needing to know what everyone in the comments has to say before deciding how I feel, or my own opinion. In full transparency I started noticing how often I would see a meme or reel and have a strong reaction to it, but then go read the comments and be swayed in another direction. I would even ‘like’ or ‘heart’ a post, and then unlike it after reading comments.
Until my own internal guidance spoke up and said: WTF Jamie?! You are perfectly capable of coming to your own conclusions. Wake up!
Shared story from a client: not just social media, but media channels as well.
Meanwhile I have a long time client/student/friend that shared with me that she realized Fox news had the same hold on her. She was a big Trump supporter the first two times, and an avid Fox news watcher. One day her internal voice (her gut/intuition) got really loud and told her to turn it off. And she listened to her intuition and turned off Fox news. She said she had the most mind blowing experience in which she felt like her brain came back on line. Her thoughts became her own again, and she realized how infiltrated into a cult she had been through Fox news. She felt entirely differently after quitting it. Her own senses came back alive, and her mind became her own again.
I share these stories because I’m going into the year 2025, less invested in any type of media that is meant to emotionally pull me in for engagement. Any media intended to grab you and hold onto you, without a doubt, also has subliminal, (and outright) messaging, and it’s very important to recognize how you are being affected by it. The primary reason for any media is to keep you attentive, so as to lock you into its viewpoints and create masses of sheeple, and then people who are asleep at the wheel of life.
Create awareness and intention around your media.
Take some time to be fully present with the media sources you consume.
Pay attention to how they make you feel emotionally, mentally, and physically, both during and after engaging with them. If you notice that a particular app or channel leaves you feeling drained, emotionally unstable, or stuck in a cycle where it's hard to step away, it may be a sign that you need to limit your use of that app or avoid it altogether.
Not all the media I use causes me the same feelings as TT. I have found which media is more safe, and peaceful for me to use. And I’ll never get rid of social media entirely, I don’t find that to be a realistic goal moving forward in life. But I can and will always curate my algorithms carefully and be conscious of how each app affects me. I want my mind to be my own.
Let’s all become more aware of how media is affecting us, how we may be unknowingly trapped in it; causing us to be less present in our mind-body-spirit. Let’s take back our personal sovereignty of thinking for ourselves. In doing so we will recreate the community connections we so desperately need in order to heal humanity.
