By: Hawi Bussa
Every day, we wake up and reach for our phones before our eyes have even adjusted to the light. News, scandals, tragedies, trends—we scroll through them like they’re all of equal importance, each fighting for our attention in a never-ending loop. At some point, it all starts to feel the same. The heartbreak of war, the latest celebrity drama, a new AI breakthrough—it all blends into one overstimulating, numbing wave. And the worst part? We stop caring.
It’s not that we don’t want to care. It’s that we are exhausted. Our minds weren’t designed to process this much information, this quickly, at this volume. Every notification demands an emotional response, every algorithm pushes us deeper into a rabbit hole of opinions, outrage, and curated content designed to keep us engaged. But engagement is not the same as connection. And what happens when everything feels urgent? Nothing does.
I’ve caught myself scrolling past real tragedies—devastating earthquakes, displaced families, stories of injustice—and feeling nothing. Not because I don’t care, but because my brain has learned to protect itself from caring too much. This is the digital age’s silent epidemic: not outrage, not misinformation, but apathy. We are drowning in stories but starving for meaning.
Social media and 24-hour news cycles don’t just inform us; they overwhelm us, conditioning us to treat everything like background noise. One moment, we’re watching a genocide unfold. The next, we’re laughing at a viral meme. There’s no time to sit with emotions, no space to process. And so, our hearts become numb, not because we lack empathy, but because we don’t know where to put it.
So, how do we fight against this? How do we reclaim our ability to care when we are constantly overwhelmed? Maybe it starts with small acts of resistance. Unplugging, even when it’s uncomfortable. Being present with what’s in front of us instead of what’s being pushed onto us. Choosing depth over endless consumption. Caring doesn’t have to mean reacting to everything—we can choose to focus on what truly matters to us, give it our attention, and act on it in meaningful ways.
Maybe caring looks like pausing instead of scrolling. Maybe it means stepping outside of the digital noise and actually doing something, even if it’s small. Maybe it means letting go of the pressure to know everything and instead focusing on the one or two things that truly move us.
Because in the end, caring isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about choosing what to hold close, despite the noise. It’s about reminding ourselves that real change happens not in the endless consumption of information but in the intentionality of what we do with it.