Choosing Meaning Over Meltdowns

This man deserves so much recognition. Who, you ask? Viktor Frankl, the man survived the fucking Holocaust. He watched his pregnant wife, his parents, and his brother get murdered by Nazis. He endured starvation, disease, and daily brutality in concentration camps. And when he got out, instead of spending the rest of his life consumed by rage and despair, he wrote one of the most profound books about finding meaning in suffering ever created.

You cannot handle a bad day at work without posting seventeen Instagram stories about how “done” you are with everything.

This is not meant to minimize your problems. Life in 2025 is genuinely hard in ways Frankl could not have imagined. But it is meant to highlight a fundamental truth that social media has obscured, your response to suffering is a choice. And that choice determines whether you become a person of depth and resilience or just another screaming voice in the digital void.

Frankl observed something remarkable in the camps, that the people who survived were not necessarily the physically strongest. They were the ones who found meaning in their suffering. The ones who could look beyond their immediate circumstances and hold onto something larger, a purpose, a responsibility, a reason to keep going.

Meanwhile, we live in an age where people have emotional breakdowns and absolutely lose it because their coffee order was wrong, and they share every micro-trauma with their 847 followers like it is breaking news from a war zone.

The Doomscrolling Death Spiral

What are you actually doing when you “doomscroll?” You are not staying informed. You are not being a responsible citizen. You are engaging in a form of digital self-harm, willingly subjecting yourself to an endless stream of outrage, disaster, and chaos that you have zero power to control.

Your brain was not designed for this. For most of human history, if something bad happened, it was either happening to you directly (and you could respond to it) or it was happening to someone in your immediate community (and you could help). Your nervous system evolved to handle acute, local stresses, not the chronic, global bombardment of every tragedy happening everywhere on Earth, delivered in real-time to a device in your pocket.

When you scroll through Twitter or TikTok or whatever fresh hell the algorithm is serving you, your amygdala, your brain’s alarm system, starts firing like it’s under attack.

But there is no tiger to fight, no cliff to run from. Just an endless parade of things to be angry and afraid about, most of which you can do absolutely nothing about.

This is what psychologists call learned helplessness. You become conditioned to believe that you are powerless, that the world is chaos, that suffering is meaningless. It is the exact opposite of what Frankl discovered in the camps.

The Meaning-Making Machine vs. The Outrage Engine

Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Social media algorithms have figured out how to hijack that fundamental freedom. They do not want you to choose your attitude; they want to program your attitude. They want you angry, scared, addicted, and constantly checking for the next hit of dopamine or cortisol.

The algorithm does not care about your mental health. It does not care about your relationships. It does not even care if you become a better person. It cares about engagement. And nothing drives engagement like outrage. Nothing keeps you scrolling like fear. Nothing makes you share content like the feeling that you are part of some righteous crusade against the forces of evil.

You think you are using social media, but social media is using you. It is turning you into a content-generating machine for other people’s profit, and the fuel it is using is your own psychological well-being.

The Existential Vacuum of the Timeline

Frankl identified something he called the existential vacuum, that is the feeling of meaninglessness that comes when people lack a clear sense of purpose. He argued that this vacuum is often filled with neurosis, addiction, and destructive behaviors.

Sound familiar? Social media is the ultimate existential vacuum. It creates the illusion of purpose (you’re “raising awareness,” you’re “fighting the good fight,” you’re “staying informed”) while actually draining your life of real meaning.

Think about it, seriously. When you are doomscrolling, what are you actually accomplishing? Are you solving problems? Are you helping people? Are you building something meaningful? Or are you just consuming an endless stream of other people’s opinions about problems you cannot solve, offered by people who are also just consuming an endless stream of other people’s opinions?

It is a feedback loop of meaninglessness, dressed up as engagement with the world. It is intellectual masturbation without even the satisfaction of an orgasm.

The Stoic Alternative: Control What You Can Control

The Stoic philosophers, particularly Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, had a simple framework that would solve about 90% of social media-induced anxiety, focus on what you can control, accept what you can’t.

You cannot control:

What politicians or people say or do

Whether other people agree with your views

Global events happening thousands of miles away

Other people’s responses to your posts

The algorithm deciding who sees your content

Whether the world is going to hell

You can control:

Whether you pick up your phone

How much time you spend scrolling

What content you choose to engage with

How you respond to what you see

Whether you let social media determine your mood

What you do with your actual, physical life in the real world

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” He was dealing with plagues, wars, and political upheaval. He did not have Twitter, but if he did, I guarantee you he would have muted half the platform and spent his time focusing on what he could actually influence, his own thoughts, actions, and character.

The Buddhist Path: Right Intention in the Digital Age

Buddhism teaches the concept of Right Intention, that is the commitment to develop wholesome mental states and to avoid harmful ones. Social media is designed to cultivate the exact opposite: envy, anger, attachment, and delusion.

Every time you open Twitter to “see what’s happening,” ask yourself: what is your intention? Are you seeking to understand? To learn? To connect meaningfully with others? Or are you just feeding an addiction to stimulation, outrage, and the illusion of being important?

The Buddha taught that attachment is the root of suffering. Social media is an attachment factory. It makes you attached to likes, shares, and comments. Attached to being right. Attached to being seen. Attached to being validated by strangers on the internet who do not know you and do not actually care about your well-being.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, would probably call social media a form of false refuge, which is, something we turn to for comfort that actually increases our suffering. True refuge, he taught, comes from mindfulness, compassion, and present-moment awareness. Social media offers the opposite: mindlessness, judgment, and escape from the present moment.

The Frankl Test: Is This Creating Meaning?

Here is a simple test, inspired by Frankl’s approach to meaning-making: before you open social media, ask yourself three questions:

Will this help me serve something larger than myself? (Not just make me feel important, but actually contribute to something meaningful.)

Will this increase my capacity for love and compassion? (Or will it make me more angry, judgmental, and divided from others?)

Will this help me become the person I want to be? (Or will it feed the worst parts of my personality?)

If the answer to all three is “no,” put the fucking phone down.

The Alternative: Choosing Your Own Meaning

Frankl did not just critique meaninglessness; he offered an alternative. He argued that meaning comes from three sources:

Creative values (what you give to the world)

Experiential values (what you take from the world)

Attitudinal values (the stance you take toward unavoidable suffering)

Social media offers cheap substitutes for all three. Instead of creating something meaningful, you share memes. Instead of having real experiences, you consume other people’s highlight reels. Instead of developing wisdom about suffering, you rage-post about injustices you can’t do anything about.

But you can choose differently. You can:

Create something real instead of just consuming content

Have actual experiences instead of living vicariously through others

Develop genuine wisdom about handling difficulty instead of just venting about every minor inconvenience

Always Choose the Path of Frankl

Viktor Frankl found meaning in the most meaningless circumstances imaginable. You live in an age of unprecedented freedom, opportunity, and comfort. If you cannot find meaning without descending into digital meltdowns, the problem is not the world. It is your approach to the world.

Stop letting algorithms dictate your emotional state. Stop mistaking outrage for engagement. Stop confusing scrolling for living.

Choose meaning over meltdowns. Choose purpose over posting. Choose presence over the endless digital distraction.

Frankl would have looked at our social media-obsessed age and seen an incredible opportunity. We have all the tools we need to create meaningful lives, connect with others, and contribute to something larger than ourselves. We are just choosing to use those tools to make ourselves miserable instead.

The concentration camp could NOT take away Frankl’s freedom to choose his response to circumstances. So, do not let social media take away yours.