Why does social media make me feel like everyone is succeeding except me?

Rabbi Landau teaches that “the same phone that makes you feel powerless proves actually how powerful you are.” You open social media: someone's business is exploding, someone is on vacation, someone's marriage looks perfect. Five minutes later you feel like everybody is succeeding except you.

“But think about what just happened,” he says. A few ordinary people you never even met changed how you feel about your entire life with one post. “And then you say, what power do I have? But you just answered the question.” Today you don't need a television station; you are holding one. One post can sell out a product, one video can change an election, and “one honest sentence can stop somebody from giving up.”

So the question is no longer whether you influence people. You do. “Your phone is not only a window into everybody else's world, it's your voice inside theirs.” Recalling the words “bishvili nivra ha'olam,” the world was created for me, Rabbi Landau asks: “What are you campaigning for?”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

The phone that makes you feel powerless is proof of how much influence one person can have.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Scrolling through other people's success leaves a person feeling that everyone is succeeding except him, and asking, “What power do I have?”

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the influence you feel from others is the strongest proof of the influence you have over them: you learned it from your own experience.

Deepest human truth

What should a person ask before posting?

Since “the world was created for me,” the question is not whether you have a voice in other people's worlds, but what you are campaigning for.

More questions from this teaching

• What should I think about before I post something online?