Your Phone Isn't the Culprit Behind Your Anxiety
An expert interviewed by Sin Embargo points to social pressure; I point to the gaze you depend on.
At 1 a.m. the feed is still lit up. In an interview with Sin Embargo, an expert says the pressure of social media is feeding anxiety among young people. What if the culprit behind your anxiety isn't the phone?
The pressure, not the device
The word Sin Embargo uses is pressure, and that word does a lot of work. A screen alone doesn't distress anyone; it distresses you when it becomes a courtroom. The headline points to the pressure and not the device, and that's good news for anyone tired of being treated like an addict with no judgment.
I would add one distinction. Social pressure is the climate; other people's gaze is the root. We live waiting to see who's watching, who's commenting, who's saving our photo and who's scrolling past. The cell phone made constant a question that was already there: am I approved?
«Social pressure is the climate; other people's gaze is the root.»
I would also add a caveat: anxiety has medical, family and economic causes, and reducing it to screens would be another way of not listening to the person who suffers from it. Acknowledging the pressure doesn't excuse you from seeking serious help.
Two feeds, two cultures, one gaze
For a young Hispanic in Chicago, Mexico City or Santiago, the comparison comes double. In one feed are your cousins, grandma's birthday, church; in the other, classmates with different clothes, a different accent, different vacations. Two audiences, two verdicts, and the feeling of falling short with both.
There, anxiety isn't born from technology. It's born from living under a gaze you have to win over every morning. Proverbs 29:25 says it without anesthesia: "The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe" (ESV). The snare is exactly that: fitting your life to someone else's eye until you lose your own freedom of movement.
An identity you receive
There is a text that holds me up when comparison squeezes: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine" (Isaiah 43:1, ESV). Before any like, there was already a name over you. Scripture doesn't promise mass approval; it says you were formed in the image of God, and an image isn't priced in metrics.
From there comes a rest the feed can't give: the world keeps turning when you sleep, when you fail and when you don't post. God doesn't look at you to grade you; in Christ he looks at you with a Father's tenderness. That doesn't solve anxiety overnight, and I'm not going to sell you that formula.
What does steady the ground is seeking help: a trusted adult, your pastor, a mental health professional. If you are in danger, call the emergency services in your country; at findahelpline.com you can find the helpline that works where you live.
There is something the church has that metrics don't: people who know you by your name and not by your performance. A small group, an older brother or sister in the faith, a shared table. There you slowly learn to live under a different gaze.
One practice for this week: leave your cell phone charging outside your room for one night and see what shows up in the silence. Write down the first thing you feel and tell it to someone who knows you in person, not by profile. When the 1 a.m. question comes back, change it: instead of "who is watching me," try "who is holding me up."
