How not to care online: Survival guide for staying human

Your heart is racing. Your jaw is clenched. That video someone sent you, another lie, another atrocity, another thing designed to make you feel helpless and furious, is playing on a loop in your mind. You want to respond. You want everyone to see how wrong this is. You want to do something.

Stop.

Your nervous system is under siege, and the people creating that content are counting on exactly this reaction.

When you see something online that makes you furious, your brain can’t tell the difference between that and actual danger. Your body floods with stress hormones. Your heart races. Your thinking gets cloudy. It’s the same response you’d have to a physical threat, except you’re sitting on your couch staring at a screen.

And here’s the thing: Constant exposure to this stuff doesn’t just make you angry. It actually changes your brain. When you’re always stressed, your body gets stuck in survival mode. You can’t think clearly. You can’t feel joy. You’re just running on empty, reacting to the next terrible thing.

Who are the people posting inflammatory content all day? Many of them are paid to do it. Or they’re so emotionally bankrupt that rage is all they have left.

You’re not like them. You have a life. Relationships. Projects. Things that actually matter. Every minute you spend matching their energy is a minute you’re becoming them. And trust me, you don’t want that.

The power move isn’t to engage. It’s recognizing you’re being played and walking away.

Pay attention to what drains you. Which posts make your stomach drop? Which accounts leave you spiraling? That’s your map. Once you know your triggers, you can spot manipulation in real time.

That video with the perfect headline designed to make you furious? That’s not an accident. That’s an algorithm. Someone, somewhere, knows exactly what will make you click. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

Think of it this way: Trolls are fishing. They’re using specific bait for specific people. Once you see the hook, you can choose not to bite.

Here’s your permission slip: You don’t have to watch disturbing videos to prove you care. You don’t have to engage with every lie to prove you know the truth. You don’t have to absorb every bit of manufactured outrage to prove you’re paying attention.

Not watching isn’t denial. It’s self-preservation. You can acknowledge something is wrong without letting it take up residence in your brain.

Some people treat consuming trauma like a moral obligation. “I have to bear witness.” But here’s the reality: Your mental health matters. Protecting yourself isn’t selfish. It’s necessary.

The lies will be there tomorrow. The trolls will still be trolling. The bait will still be baiting. That’s not changing. Getting upset about it is exactly what they want from you, and it accomplishes nothing except making you miserable.

You can’t fix the Internet by being angry at it.

Here’s a simple test: If something won’t matter in five years, don’t give it more than five minutes of your energy.

That person who’s wrong on the Internet? He or she won’t matter in five years. That obvious bait from an account created last week? It won’t matter in five years. Even some legitimately upsetting things won’t matter to your life in five years.

This isn’t about minimizing real problems. It’s about recognizing that most of what you encounter online is designed to waste your time and steal your peace.

Imagine you wake up with 100 points of energy every day. You need them for everything: family, work, friends, taking care of yourself, and causes you actually care about.

How many points are you burning on Internet outrage before you even get out of bed?

Most of us do this unconsciously. We scroll, we get mad, and suddenly we’ve spent 30 points on things we can’t control and people who don’t care. By the time we get to things that actually matter, we’re running on fumes.

What if you decide that social media gets 10 points, max? What if rage-sharing chat groups get zero? You get to decide where your energy goes. Stop giving it away to people who are deliberately trying to make you miserable.

You will get triggered. When it happens, try this:

Take two quick breaths in through your nose, then one long breath out through your mouth. Do it three times. It sounds too simple to work, but it actually calms your nervous system down quickly.

Or put your feet flat on the floor. Feel the ground under you. Look around and name five things you can see. This pulls you out of panic mode and back into your body, into your room, which is actually safe.

Check where you’re holding tension. Jaw clenched? Shoulders up to your ears? Notice it. Breathe into it. Let it go.

These aren’t magic tricks. They’re just ways to remind your body that you’re okay, even when your brain is screaming that everything is terrible.

If a platform consistently makes you feel worse, delete it. If certain accounts always trigger you, unfollow them. If group chats have become 24/7 outrage factories, mute them.

You control what you consume. Treat your social media feeds like your diet. If something makes you sick every time you eat it, stop eating it.

Once you stop burning your energy on outrage, something interesting happens: You have some left over for real things.

You can actually read that book. Start that project. Have that conversation. Support causes in ways that matter, with money, time, or skills, instead of just angry shares that do nothing.

You can create instead of react. Build instead of rage. Connect with actual humans instead of fighting with strangers.

This is where real change happens. Not in comment sections. In the quiet work of showing up for your actual life.

Don’t let algorithms steal your ability to feel good. Make time for things that recharge you. Laugh. Play. Go outside. Studies show that just being in nature lowers stress hormones and improves your mood.

Find moments of beauty, even when things are dark. This isn’t toxic positivity. It’s survival. If your life becomes all stress and no joy, you burn out. And then you’re no good to anyone, including yourself.

The lies, the bait, and the trolls are permanent features. You signed up for this the moment you created an account.

You can be mad about it, but being mad doesn’t change it.

Once you accept that this is how it works, you can be strategic instead of constantly shocked. You can engage with what serves you, and ignore the rest. You can decide that your peace matters more than winning arguments with people who aren’t listening anyway.

The most radical thing you can do in a system built on your outrage is refuse to participate.

This isn’t apathy. This is self-preservation. Most of what people post online isn’t about you. It’s about them. Their anger, their emptiness, their need for attention. When someone tries to bait you, you’re not a person to that someone. You’re a metric.

Once you understand that, it loses its power. You can scroll past without that hit of adrenaline. You can see manipulation for what it is and choose not to engage.

Focus on what you can actually control: your actions, your words, your choices, your energy. Everything else? Not your circus, not your monkeys.

The question isn’t whether you care. The question is: What are you caring about, and what is it costing you?

This isn’t about becoming numb or checking out. It’s about choosing your battles with enough self-awareness to actually win some of them.

The Internet will still be a mess tomorrow. That’s not changing. But you can change how much of your finite life you spend letting it control you. You can change where your energy goes. You can change what you let into your head.

Learn to not care online, and you might discover you finally have the energy to care, really deeply care, about things that actually matter.

Your relationships will improve. Your work will improve. Your mental health will improve. Your capacity for actual joy will return.

And the trolls? They’ll still be there, screaming into the void, wondering why you stopped listening.