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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Rudeness online is loud, cheap and rewarded, so it fills the space out of all proportion to how common it is. The trouble is that we generalise. After a while you walk into real situations already braced for hostility, and end up avoiding people who were never going to be unkind to you. When you catch yourself concluding that people are broadly awful, it helps to ask where the sample came from.
Do not sit with them unless they start to talk of other things, or else you yourselves will become like them (Quran 4:140). What you sit among is described as shaping you, which is worth remembering about a feed.
النساء
وَقَدۡ نَزَّلَ عَلَيۡكُمۡ فِي ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ أَنۡ إِذَا سَمِعۡتُمۡ ءَايَٰتِ ٱللَّهِ يُكۡفَرُ بِهَا وَيُسۡتَهۡزَأُ بِهَا فَلَا تَقۡعُدُواْ مَعَهُمۡ حَتَّىٰ يَخُوضُواْ فِي حَدِيثٍ غَيۡرِهِۦٓ إِنَّكُمۡ إِذࣰ ا مِّثۡلُهُمۡۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ جَامِعُ ٱلۡمُنَٰفِقِينَ وَٱلۡكَٰفِرِينَ فِي جَهَنَّمَ جَمِيعًا
As He has already revealed to you [believers] in the Scripture, if you hear people denying and ridiculing God’s revelation, do not sit with them unless they start to talk of other things, or else you yourselves will become like them: God will gather all the hypocrites and disbelievers together into Hell
Qur’an 4:140read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review across 21 countries brought together what is known about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and short form video use and their effects on health, sleep quality, body image and mood, using narrative rather than statistical synthesis. Narrative synthesis means findings are summarised rather than pooled, so the strength of any single effect is hard to pin down. It does support taking the mood related effects of these platforms seriously.
Behera N, Khuntia S, Pandey K, Shankar S. (2025). Impact of Social Media Use on Physical, Mental, Social, and Emotional Health, Sleep Quality, Body Image, and Mood: Evidence from 21 Countries-A Systematic Literature Review with Narrative Synthesis.. International journal of behavioral medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
You judge people by the examples you see most of, and online the harshest voices are the most visible.
For some people the online part is not a side issue sitting next to the depression or the anxiety. It is one of the things holding them in place.
Pick one series and watch it together on the same evening each week. The point is not the programme. It is that something puts the two of you in the same room on purpose.
One gentle way to name it: those are being used as words to play with, and they were never really words for playing with. Said kindly, it lands without anyone being told off.