The Happee Times
Invest In Your Happiness
June 2023
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Does Insta'gyaan' Make or Break You?
“Studies have found out that women with long hair are more likely to be successful. This conclusion was derived from the fact that maintaining long hair requires self-control.”
Don’t tell me you believed that! Whatever the length of your hair, it is most likely that you had started pondering, consciously or subconsciously, on this statement as soon as you read it.
I was on my phone, scrolling through reels, just like other days, and came across this video. The creator had presented a statement similar to the one above and I, having short hair, internally went “oh!”. What he said next was eye-opening. To begin with, he revealed that his “studies have found” statement wasn’t true, so don’t worry. Then he went on to explain how we tend to come across multiple similar statements on social media throughout our quality time on our phones and don’t really question them.
You might be thinking, “let’s stop reading this article, just another one bashing social media. I know about the downsides and I do give a thought to what content I consume”.
And you know what? I believe you. I believe that you choose the content you consume and choose what to take or leave. But your unquestioning servant doesn’t.
I have an unquestioning servant? It’s always there, listening and carrying out our commands. It never questions whether something is good or bad, right or wrong, it just does what we tell it to.
Let me dial it back a little and clarify. I’m talking about your subconscious mind. All the information around us that is coming in through our senses, the sound of the fan or the advertisement on the tv playing in the background is being paid attention to, by our subconscious mind. That also shows that every reel we watch is being paid attention to by our subconscious mind and getting processed and stored somewhere or the other.
You can think of yourself as a computer and your subconscious mind as a hard drive. Everything you hear, see, and feel is getting fed in it. All the information we come across, random perspectives, or narratives are all brushing upon your brain.
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Instagram started as a way for people to share their life and connect with others but now, it has become a pool of gyaan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not using that word just in a negative connotation. Some accounts on Instagram, run by experts, provide invaluable information and learning, be it about finances, health, technology, or travel.
The issue hits when every other account starts pouring into this pool of gyaan because too much gyaan, leaves no space for application. If only I had a rupee for every time I saved an informative reel “to use later” and never went back to it.
Kisi ne sahi kaha hai “Insta ka gyaan is instant gyaan, jiska koi instant application nahi hai”.
This gyaan has its own way of taking over, teaching us how to eat, how to sleep, how to exercise, how to work, how to spend our free time, how to react, how to carry ourselves, etc. They try to guide all our life choices and make us question our decisions, lifestyle, and daily habits. It’s normal to feel exhausted after being exposed to this constant information. It also leaves little space for us to form our own perspectives.
There aren’t many ways to and it isn’t even humanly possible to investigate each of these narratives before we believe them. And that sounds dangerous, considering the amount of misleading information that is circulating. You might’ve come across videos romanticizing concepts like silent treatment, and toxic relationships whereas in reality there is nothing romantic about them. They’re plainly huge red flags.
This is incongruence with floodlight attention, focusing our attention on a large amount of information that is of little to no benefit. What we require is spotlight attention, limiting our attention to a few primary pieces of practical information that we’ll actually utilize in our lives.
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I’m in no way encouraging anyone to stop using Instagram. It has indeed become a part of our lives and that too in the most valuable sense. It helps us to share our talents and cheer for others’, keep up with our loved ones or people we idolise, know about the changes happening in the world, gain knowledge, skills, etc.
It might’ve been where you found this article from!
This information and the hacks about a variety of fields stand important when we move away from just saving them and actually using them. Some of them are great but get lost within these other narratives.
The key takeaway here is to be mindful of the time spent scrolling. Don’t believe everything you come across and most importantly, don’t feel the need to apply everything you see. Instagyaan is generalized gyaan, don't internalize it. In future, if you do come across information that feels new and usable, evaluate it for yourself and see what works for you.
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