The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. — Andrew Brown

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.

Author: Andrew Brown

Insight: There's something unsettling about how true this feels now. We've all noticed the person (or been that person) scrolling through feeds at dinner, or spending three hours down a rabbit hole of videos that felt urgent while happening but leave nothing behind. The internet promises connection and knowledge and entertainment, but it delivers them in endless, frictionless streams that can hollow out your actual day without you quite noticing. What's tricky is that the internet isn't inherently pointless—it's genuinely useful for real things. But the structure of it, the way it's designed to keep you engaged, makes it weirdly easy to mistake activity for living. You can feel productive while accomplishing nothing. You can feel connected while becoming more isolated. The substitute happens quietly, not all at once but in small trades: real conversation for comment sections, actual hobbies for consuming content about hobbies, risk and failure for the safety of the curated and clickable. The harder part is recognizing when the internet has become your substitute rather than your tool. It's not really about how much time you spend—some people use it heavily for real work or genuine learning. It's about whether you're still doing the messier, slower things that actually shape who you are: struggling with something difficult, being bored enough to think, showing up for people who frustrate you. If you've stopped doing those things, the internet isn't really the problem. But it's an awfully convenient place to hide.