SELF-DECEPTION IS HAPPINESS​

An academic study, revealed Jan. 23 by Jornal de Noticias, shows that young people turn to social media to escape depression or, at the very least, to alleviate feelings of guilt, anxiety and frustration. Why? 

As the TikTok influencers say, it’s about being “delulu” (delusional). It means being out of your mind, achieving happiness by imagining something. It is self-delusion. In this context, the tiktokers themselves formulated a new maxim: “delulu is solulu”. In other words, self-deception is the solution… to happiness. So it is not surprising that political leaders who promise the world have more pull in social networks. The one who tells a story scores a point, at least in the polls. Self-deception is served in large doses to those who are hungry for change.

In the new digital world, happiness is often disconnected from our concrete reality. As young Alex Rae Smith, a self-described “mentor” at TikTok, explains, what people need is to mentally recreate their lives. “My challenge for today is to simply think of reality as you want it to be. If you do that for 24 hours, you’ll be amazed at the magic of the experience,” says Smith, who even has a master class on the subject on her website. The class costs $99, a very reasonable price for the amount of happiness promised.

Those who do not navigate this virtual world of young people cannot and should not ignore it. Pretending that it does not exist or that its expression is minimal is self-deception squared. Psychological addiction to social networks and to the concepts of happiness transmitted by them is no more or less serious than addiction to alcohol or gambling. How? By debating the problem and investing in media literacy. Therefore, we must discard censorship and go deeper into pedagogy.

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Pedro Araújo, a Portuguese journalist, is the deputy executive editor of Jornal de Noticias.

This article was originally published in Jornal de Noticias, with whose permission we reproduce it here. In this link you can see the original version in Portuguese.