The Antidote to Internet Brain: Doing Real Things

A few weeks ago, I posted on social media about how the word trauma has undergone concept creep. Once reserved for major or chronic disruptions, trauma is now commonly used to describe everyday occurrences. Some ​researchers​ suggest its widening use may have a negative impact on mental health.

But this article isn’t about that research, or the word trauma. It’s about what came next, and what it teaches us about the world today. The comment section to Steve’s post was inundated with opposing viewpoints. Many people were claiming that the post could cause serious harm, or worse yet, even lead to someone dying. These folks argued that simply raising the question about whether or not “trauma” was being overused was, in effect, minimizing people’s experiences. These messages were reactionary, angry, and held little room for discussion.

But there were also numerous messages from teachers, coaches, and therapists who all said some version of the following: “Yes! Kids and young adults use medicalized terms—such as trauma, anxiety, depression, OCD—to describe everyday experiences all the time, from not being selected to start this week's soccer game to getting a B instead of an A on a test.” This cadre of messages wasn’t vilifying kids, nor were they dismissive; they struck a tone of yes, and. “I see this sort of overuse and concept creep…and we need to find ways to acknowledge people’s pain, support them, and cultivate their resilience.”

This stark divide illustrates a significant problem of our times: the growing tension between the logic of a virtual, often hypothetical online world and the reality of the physical one.

In 1964, the media theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” It argues that the channels through which we communicate fundamentally shape the message itself. It’s not just about the content we consume, but about how the structure of the medium—its speed, its reach, its incentives—alters our perception and behavior.

The architecture of the internet, with algorithms that reward outrage and incentives that encourage snap judgments, sends a powerful message: the world is a binary place of good versus evil, us versus them. Nuance is a bug, not a feature.

The real world, however, is messy. It demands holding multiple ideas at once. Missing out on the state championship can be devastating for a young athlete, but it’s your job as a coach to put it in perspective. Bad things happen to good people, but if we default to extreme safetyism and try to live in a bubble, we kill resilience. Things can be hard and feel awful, but that doesn’t necessarily make them traumatic: feeling anxiety before the first day of school is not the same thing as experiencing sexual violence, undergoing war, or losing your leg in a car accident.

Unlike the virtual world, the real world takes work. You can’t scream at someone face-to-face without being seen as a jerk or a crazy person. Even if you vehemently disagree with the person sitting across from you, you still have to treat them like a human being.

On the internet, meanwhile, everyone will be saved by a single particular diet. A magic supplement or routine will cure all your ills. Your side is good; the other side can be written off as crazy. We’re one click away from finding our tribe that will validate what we believe and reinforce it daily.

It’s no wonder that so many of us are overwhelmed by angst and outrage. As our medium increasingly becomes a reactionary online world, we increasingly become reactionary online people. Recent ​surveys​ show the average person spends over 10 hours per day on screens. If our brain is constantly living in a world that is reactionary, tribal, and shallow, how do you think it’s going to respond?

The solution is simple, but that does not mean it is easy. We need to change our medium. We need to shift our center of gravity from the digital to the physical. To spend more time in the real world with real people. And when engaging in the digital, which we all do. I mean, here we are—we need to select for nuanced outlets and communities where people work in good faith; where even if we strongly disagree with someone, we know their point of view wasn’t contrived for outrage or clicks.

When you talk to real people and do real things in the real world, you get to experience life in all its complexity. This is a far cry from the shallow two-dimensional reality of the internet. You break down stereotypes and understand that when you have skin in the game, most challenging problems aren’t as smooth as this or that. They are messy and full of subtlety.

It’s also precisely why a bunch of keyboard warriors freak out at a post raising a genuine question about overuse of the word “trauma,” whereas psychotherapists, coaches, and teachers—in other words: people who confront the messy reality of helping others in the real world every day—are far more measured and wanting to engage in meaningful discussion.

Of course, this is just one example. You see it in sport, nutrition, leadership, fitness, art, music, and just about every other domain. Those who have experience in the real world tend to be more insightful than those who are terminally online. But perhaps the greatest benefit of doing real things in the real world is that it protects you from all the bullshit. It’s harder to fall for the marketing bros' latest hack when you’ve spent hours in the gym or at the desk working on the craft they are peddling a magic solution for. It’s harder to fall into a tribe of angry lunatics when you have real friends in the real world who will call you out, instead of fake friends online who validate everything.

The antidote to the internet of everything is to prioritize its opposite: doing real things, in the real world, with real people. It’s okay to be on the internet, but you probably don’t want to be of the internet.

– Steve