The Noise of the Net

Reclaiming quiet space

I was a guest teacher at a local sixth form college this week, where students said the ‘noise' of social media was one of the main things they didn’t like about it.

It’s a really good word to describe it— there is noise on so many levels. The stream of notifications, opinions, ads, and pressures to be always on, always responding, always seen.

The Noise of the Net is both energetic, emotional and cognitive. It occupies space in our minds, making it harder to hear our own thoughts, let alone our deeper intuition. And with the big increase of generative Ai content appearing online, are people even checking what they are posting? The students I taught this week were actually very anti Ai, with this being one of their reasons— this en-shitification of the internet, this additional layer of noise online.

We all know by now that much of the endless swirl of information, and many of the emotional triggers in content we see, are designed to keep us engaged and to keep us online.

Yet engagement isn’t the same as connection and many young people intuitively know this. Connection is one of the things we all instinctively love about social media. They know social media infiltrates their time and their minds, and they know that it isn’t always good for them, however it has a powerful spell, that keeps pulling them, and us, back in.

Imagine walking through a town where every shopkeeper shouts for your attention, where there are big bright billboards flashing right before your eyes telling you whats happening in real time all across the world… Strangers whisper their inner most and sometimes intimate thoughts into your ears… As you wander past your friends and colleagues having lunch, seeing what they had to eat, who they went to dinner with, or whatever they are working on… Now imagine never leaving that place—not even when you’re alone in your room at night.

This is something like the experience of social media - as we tap into it throughout the day, before bed, sometimes in the middle of the night and often first thing in the morning…

I’ve written many times about how we are consuming people’s energy as well as their content when we go online. Each post carrying an emotional and energetic imprint of some kind—be it joy, happiness, outrage or someone’s sadness— and we absorb this, often without realising. We are not prepared, or often warned, about the energy people share. And over time, we not only have information overload from all the posts we scroll past, but we can find ourselves in an energetic soup, a kind of psychic pollution from all that noise, which can cloud our own inner voice and clarity.

Reclaiming Quiet Space

I’ve been cultivating more intentional times of quiet and silence away from social media, including WhatsApp and other messaging apps. I’ve not achieved the optimum balance yet, but I’m getting better with time. Much like anything, much like going to the gym, I find the more I practice, the more I either crave it, or more things happen to show me just how important it is in my life.

Here’s a few things I’m playing with—

Digital Boundaries— Having regular quiet times. Muting notifications, putting phone in airplane mode, not having anything playing in the background. Allowing myself to sit in the stillness. I’ve also had periods of offline time forced upon me recently both from power cuts, and by the internet being down after one of the recent storms. This really helped me to move through some of the uncomfortableness of being disconnected. A little message came through, which I scribbled down…

Sit with the discomfort, sit with the disconnection, for this is all part of your initiation.

Energy Hygiene— I’m also trying to practice more intentional energy clearing after I’ve been scrolling. I’m clearing other people’s thought forms, emotions and energy… Anything I’ve felt or picked up that’s not mine. What’s in my energy net both digitally and literally? I imagine these thought forms, the emotions and energy of others leaving my personal energy field, no longer having influence over me.

Turning Inward— The magic and synchronicities that happen when I step away from the Noise of the Net and tune inwards to see what wants to be heard from inside, rather than outside of me, are often mind blowing. Our voice, our thoughts, our inner knowing, our creativity —these all need space to be heard. Spending time in nature, journalling (I’ve joined Louise Carron Harris

The New Earth Broadcast.

sunrise journaling group to cement this as a regular practice) alongside meditating, just sitting and being, have all been brilliant things to swap the scroll with.

The Hermetic Principle of Mentalism— I’ve been exploring hermeticism in regard to our digital wellbeing, as I find some of its principles very relevant. Hermeticism is an ancient philosophical and spiritual tradition based on teachings attributed to Hermes. I love its pursuit of self-mastery, enlightenment, and unity with divine wisdom. There is a hermetic concept of Energy Follows Attention, which suggests that if our minds are filled with digital noise and clutter, that this is what will expand in our reality.

If we curate with intention, reclaim quiet time and spaces, our minds, over time, will feel clearer. Redirecting our attention can shift our experience both online and offline entirely. Just as social media algorithms amplify what we engage with, our minds amplify the thoughts and energies we focus on. When we direct our attention towards clarity, creativity, and genuine connection, we can reclaim our power from digital noise and overwhelm.

In the same way I recently took time to sit in a quiet temple in Egypt to receive guidance and wisdom, building time and space into our everyday lives in this digital age, in order to be able to hear our own wisdoms, away from the Noise of the Net is more important than ever.

Social media and digital communications I think will always be noisy, especially in the digital town square which so many of us visit throughout the day.

The digital domain is powerful and it is becoming ever more so.

Cultivating and reclaiming quiet is where we can find balance.

In finding balance, we will step into our own power.

Perhaps the real question isn’t how do we quiet the noise?

Instead how do we amplify the quiet?