Self-Care Reels: Are They Making Us Lonelier?

• Social media's 'self-care' mantras, like 'protect your peace,' may inadvertently lead to isolation by promoting a reductive view of human interaction.
• Counseling psychologist Sanskriti Seth highlights that these digital templates oversimplify complex human relationships, ignoring individual contexts and capacities.
• The online world transforms attention into currency, turning identity into a performance and replacing genuine presence with curated interactions, as noted by Erving Goffman and Martin Buber.
• True self-care involves understanding one's own capacity and building on it, rather than adhering to rigid, one-size-fits-all wellness templates.
• Reclaiming the capacity to love means viewing self-care as preparation for ethical presence and engagement, not an escape from responsibility, as bell hooks suggested.