The Silence We Scroll Past

It’s 2:17 a.m. and I’m scrolling.

Not for anything in particular — just chasing numbness, one post at a time. I double-tap a picture of someone’s engagement ring, watch a friend’s vacation reel on mute, skip past a “just checking in” selfie with glittery eyes and a forced smile. I don’t pause, I don’t feel. I just… scroll.

And then I stop. Not because something surprised me. But because nothing did.

We’ve become so fluent in pretending that we don’t even flinch anymore when someone posts a sunlit picture with a caption that reads, "smiling through it." We throw a like, maybe a heart, and move on. But what are we actually seeing?

Silence.
A loud kind of silence.
The kind that hides behind perfectly timed selfies and trendy audio clips.

A few months ago, a friend of mine stopped posting altogether. No stories, no tweets, no birthday wishes for others — radio silence. I noticed… and I didn’t ask. I told myself, “People get busy.” But in truth, I was afraid to find out what that silence meant.

Weeks later, I ran into her — thinner, quieter, with tired eyes and a half-hearted smile.
“I just needed space,” she said, looking everywhere but at me.
And I nodded like I understood, even though I hadn’t even tried to.


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We scroll past so much.
A breakup hidden under a motivational quote.
A panic attack camouflaged as a “mental health awareness” repost.
A cry for help buried inside a meme that’s “just a joke.”

We laugh, we react, we move on — because pausing would mean confronting the truth: that maybe someone we know is drowning… quietly. And we didn’t hear them.

Social media has given us the power to connect instantly and the habit of disconnecting just as fast. We don’t ask, “Are you okay?” unless it’s trending. And even then, we want the answer to be easy. Quick. Positive.

The truth?
Most people won’t tell you they’re not okay — not directly.

They’ll post about insomnia. They’ll share a song that screams loneliness between the lyrics. They’ll upload photos where the eyes don’t match the smile. And unless you know how to listen between the scrolls, you’ll miss it.

I’ve missed it.

And I’ve done it too — posted when I was hurting just to feel seen, just to see if someone would notice the crack beneath the polish. Sometimes they did. Most times, they didn’t

I’m not saying we need to save everyone. We can’t.

But maybe we can see better. Maybe we can look beyond the filters and hashtags.
Maybe when someone posts at 3 a.m. about “not being able to sleep,” we don’t just like it — we text. Maybe when someone disappears for a while, we don’t chalk it up to algorithms — we check in.

Because silence isn’t always peace.
Sometimes, it’s a person waiting for someone to knock and ask, “Still there?”


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Tonight, I messaged that friend. Just a simple: “Hey. I thought of you. No pressure to reply — just here if you need someone.”

She replied, three dots blinking for a while. Then:
“Thank you. I didn’t think anyone noticed.”

And maybe that’s where healing begins — not in big gestures, but in small acknowledgements. In seeing people not just as profiles or pictures, but as stories still being written.

So the next time you scroll, pause for a second.

Look for the silence.
You might just find someone hiding behind it, waiting to be heard.