How Technology Is Hijacking Your Mind

How Technology Is Hijacking Your Mind

Hijack 3:
Fear of Missing Something Significant

A “1% chance you could be missing something vital” warning is another method that applications and websites manipulate people’s perceptions.

It will be difficult for you to turn him off, unsubscribe, or delete your account if he manages to persuade you that he is a channel for crucial news, messages, friendships, or prospective sexual encounters because (aha, he wins) you might miss something extremely important:

  • Because of this, we continue to sign up for newsletters even when they haven’t recently provided benefits (i.e., “What if I miss a future announcement?”).
  • As a result, we remain “friends” with people we haven’t spoken to in a long time (“What if I miss something crucial from them?”).
  • Because of this, we continue to swipe through profiles on dating apps even though we haven’t really met anybody recently (“What if I miss that one hot match who likes me?”).
  • Fear of missing an important news story or falling behind what our friends are talking about on social media keeps us utilizing it.

But if we focus on that anxiety, we’ll see that it has no boundaries: whenever we quit utilizing anything, we always miss something crucial.

  • If we don’t use Facebook for the next six hours, we might miss out on special occasions (like an old buddy who is currently in town).
  • If we don’t swipe our 800th match on Tinder, we can miss out on some magical occasions (like meeting our ideal romantic match).
  • If we are not connected 24/7, we may miss important phone calls.

But living from moment to moment in fear of missing something is not how we were intended to live.

And it’s amazing how quickly we awaken from the illusion once we let go of that fear. The worries we expected to have don’t materialize when we unplug for longer than a day, unsubscribe from those notifications, or go to Camp Grounded.

READ:   Why Do Empaths Have Such a Strong Sense of Not Belonging?

What we don’t see, we don’t miss.

What if I miss something important? is a concern that arises prior to unplugging, unsubscribing, or turning off rather than after. Consider what would happen if tech companies understood that and actively assisted us in fine-tuning our relationships with friends and companies in terms of what we define as “time well spent” for our life, as opposed to what we might miss.

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