Oct 1, 2026 · 18 min · 8 segments
Brogan Garritt-Smith spent years making a weekly interview podcast called Getting There, asking more than a hundred people how they got where they are. Then she stopped, came off social media and the…
Brogan Garritt-SmithHostYoung people in the UK are spending so much time online that for 18 to 24-year-olds, it works out to almost 100 days every year.
One study that actually tracked young people's phones found that the average teenager was receiving 237 notifications every single day.
And we're surprised that they can't hear themselves think or that they can't stay focused on a task.
So when this is the environment that our children are growing up in, and to be honest, the environment we're living in too, I mean, how many times have you opened up your phone and you've got a notification, and you forgot what you opened it up for in the first place? But when we've been consuming so many notifications and so much information, it made me think, who or what is shaping who we are becoming? Because somehow, despite being more connected than ever, we have never felt more disconnected, and I don't just mean from each other.
I mean, I think we're becoming more and more disconnected from ourselves.
We're drifting so far away from our own desires, our own dreams, our own ambitions, our own wishes, and it's almost like they're in somebody else's hands.
Because we are being convinced that we should all want and aspire to the same things.
We have been convinced that happiness is just one more purchase or one more bloody ice bath away.
We have been fooled into believing we can eat as many supplements as we can get our hands on, and that means we will be healthy.
And along the way, we have been tricked into believing we will be happy when we lose the weight, when we get the job, when we get more money, when we find someone to complete us.
And as I look around me, I see everybody desperately looking outside, products to fix them, relationships to complete them, something else to make them happy, when really what we need to start doing is turning within.
Because think about it, AI tells us what to think, algorithms tell us what to want, advertising tells us what to buy, culture tells us what success should look like, and social media is telling us how we should look.
Young people in the UK are spending so much time online that for 18 to 24-year-olds, it works out to almost 100 days every year.
One study that actually tracked young people's phones found that the average teenager was receiving 237 notifications every single day.
And we're surprised that they can't hear themselves think or that they can't stay focused on a task.
So when this is the environment that our children are growing up in, and to be honest, the environment we're living in too, I mean, how many times have you opened up your phone and you've got a notification, and you forgot what you opened it up for in the first place? But when we've been consuming so many notifications and so much information, it made me think, who or what is shaping who we are becoming? Because somehow, despite being more connected than ever, we have never felt more disconnected, and I don't just mean from each other.
I mean, I think we're becoming more and more disconnected from ourselves.
We're drifting so far away from our own desires, our own dreams, our own ambitions, our own wishes, and it's almost like they're in somebody else's hands.
Because we are being convinced that we should all want and aspire to the same things.
We have been convinced that happiness is just one more purchase or one more bloody ice bath away.
We have been fooled into believing we can eat as many supplements as we can get our hands on, and that means we will be healthy.
And along the way, we have been tricked into believing we will be happy when we lose the weight, when we get the job, when we get more money, when we find someone to complete us.
And as I look around me, I see everybody desperately looking outside, products to fix them, relationships to complete them, something else to make them happy, when really what we need to start doing is turning within.
Because think about it, AI tells us what to think, algorithms tell us what to want, advertising tells us what to buy, culture tells us what success should look like, and social media is telling us how we should look.
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