I may have found what will finally wean me off social media. It’s this “things I’ve learned” trend. Take, for example, advice that will supposedly “change your brain chemistry”, courtesy of someone who is definitely not a neuroscientist. Or “my nutrition rules”, from a dewy, gen Alpha sylph who doesn’t realise what they actually have is a teenager’s metabolism. Or “45 things you need to understand” about a place from someone who has spent 45 minutes there. Endless lists of the bleeding obvious: eat intuitively, embrace nature, exercise compassion, remain curious, be childlike, contact friends, put down your phone, put your head in a blender.
OK, not that last one, but it’s how this stuff makes me feel. I don’t know what to call it – expertise overload? Advice pollution? A bottomless pit of wisdom brain rot? – but authoritatively delivered life advice dominates what I see online, from Substack (the online home of cosy, bookish elders) to TikTok (the opposite). It’s not just my algorithm or demographic: men, young people, pregnant people and new parents all get inundated with advice, albeit with different slants.
