You open Instagram to kill five minutes. An hour later you put the phone down, and you feel emptier than when you picked it up. Not rested. Not entertained. Just... drained, and a little behind. Like our lives aren't quite where they're supposed to be. It's subtle, easy to miss, but it's there, and it affects us more than we realize.
But why? Why do we feel that way?
There are a lot of theories. Here's one that resonated with me, and I think it explains a lot.
In the past, we had TV shows that took us inside the house of a rockstar, an NBA player, a famous actor. We enjoyed seeing the big house, the two pools, the fifteen bedrooms. And it didn't really get to us. We'd think, okay, it's Michael Jordan, of course. We didn't compare ourselves to those people. They were so far beyond our reality that the comparison never crossed our minds.
Now, on social media, we see regular people showing off a lifestyle we don't have. And these people feel closer to us, so the comparison feels real. They're showing the best of what they've got, obviously. The trips, the houses, the parties, the life we'd like to have. Enough to plant a small doubt. Is that what my life is supposed to look like?
Before, you compared yourself to your inner circle. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But now it's like you have a thousand neighbors, each one showing you their perfect yard, while you're still trying to grow your own. You're not being compared to a few people anymore. You're being compared to a thousand.
So we feel the emptiness. We feel like we're not there yet. Like we need more to be happy. The bigger house. The sports car. The next promotion. The life that always seems to be somewhere else. It's no surprise so many people end up depressed. It's like life is constantly reminding you how shitty your life is. Every month. Every week. Every day.
We all know it's a fantasy. But knowing doesn't free us from its consequences. It's a human flaw: we compare ourselves to the people doing better, never the other way around, instead of being grateful for what we have. And that's where the damage begins.
It's hard to see it happening. Scrolling these feeds has become so normal that it doesn't feel like a choice at all.
But it is one. Opening the app is a choice. Staying is a choice. So why doesn't it feel like one? Because choosing is a muscle, and most of us never trained it. The brain reaches for what feels normal, not for what makes us better, and the muscle that picks the harder thing has gone soft from never being used.
This isn't a piece about solutions. It's about naming the problem. There's plenty we can do about it, but sometimes, before jumping to solutions, you have to step back and understand what you're actually dealing with.