How To Destroy Yourself

Last year, a close friend recommended that I read 1984 by George Orwell.

Oh.

My.

Gosh.

When I read the novel, what unsettled me most was not the Party’s overt brutality, but how quietly it succeeded. Control was not enforced solely through violence, but through language, convenience, and compliance. Citizens were not simply told what to think—no of course not, that would have been too easy. Instead, they were slowly stripped of the ability to think at all.

For me, this is why Newspeak is the most terrifying, nightmarish element of 1984. It was not designed to persuade, but to erase. By narrowing language, the Party narrowed thought itself. Rebellion became impossible not because it was punished, but because it was literally unthinkable. Without the words to articulate dissent, dissent could not exist.

A few days ago, inspired by a tweet, I asked ChatGPT how it would destroy America’s youth. This was its response:

America’s youth aren’t destroyed by violence but by a system designed to slowly hollow them out: constant noise replaces reflection, comparison replaces self-worth, and productivity replaces purpose. Education trains obedience instead of curiosity, art becomes empty content, and connection is reduced to performance rather than community. Young people are kept endlessly distracted, isolated, and exhausted—not because they are weak, but because their imagination, empathy, and idealism threaten the system. The true danger is not rebellion but apathy, as a generation taught to stay busy and visible slowly forgets how to think, hope, and choose for itself.

Huh.

That’s terrifying, because it’s already real. The apocalypse has come.

The normalization of inhuman standards has been multiplied by excessive social media use (Substack included, I fear). Teens and adults alike become content living through screens, allowing a handful of influencers to act as proxies for authentic memories and personal experiences. Life becomes something to observe rather than participate in.

People move too fast and try to fill the void they feel with cheap, instant dopamine instead of pursuing meaningful connection. There is a loneliness epidemic, one that was only intensified by the pandemic. We forget that humans are not meant to live alone; we are a tribal species, and we cannot flourish in isolation.

ChatGPT’s line that “connection is reduced to performance rather than community” feels especially accurate. As a teen in 2026, nearly every relationship I see, and many that I experience, feels fabricated at some level. “Fake it till you make it” isn’t just advice; it’s a lifestyle, and an incredibly difficult one to escape.

At times, I’ve found myself caring less about finding people who love me authentically and more about finding people who are willing to be seen with me, who tolerate my presence. I am lucky to have truly amazing friends, but genuine relationships are terrifying. The moment I allow myself to be seen, it feels like I’m handing someone a knife and bracing for the inevitable pain. It feels easier to become who others want me to be. Easier to compress myself into the version that fits.

I hate to break it to you, but the easy road rarely leads to the ideal summit.

By refusing to be seen as you are, you turn that knife inward. Instead of risking betrayal or rejection, you inflict isolation upon yourself. It feels safer only because it offers the illusion of control—but what it really offers is silence, compression, and slow self-erasure.

And with that self-erasure, we welcome the erasure of what makes us human with open arms. That is what makes the rise of artificial intelligence so disturbing (yes, I know, another article about AI; I’m sorry, but it kinda feels like a rite of passage at this point). No government mandates its use. No authority enforces it. Instead, people adopt it willingly, even gratefully. AI does not burn books or ban essays; it writes them for us. In doing so, it quietly hollows out the cognitive process that language is meant to sustain. Every day, I watch students outsource their thinking, and they are not just avoiding work—they are forfeiting the mental muscle required to reason, question, and create.

What emerges is a generation fluent in output but impoverished in understanding. Essays appear sophisticated, yet the writers cannot define their own vocabulary or explain their own arguments.

We have created our own version of Newspeak for ourselves, yet what Orwell missed is that the language doesn’t come from censorship but convenience. The mass of people want to get through life as easily as possible, with as little effort as they can get away with. But the minute we stop trying is the second we stop living. The minute we stop struggling for words, is the minute we stop searching for meaning. And when that meaning flits away, so does dissent, originality, and depth.

The danger is not that machines will think for us, but our eager willingness for them to.

If we are not careful, we won’t need the Party to limit our language and narrow our thoughts. We will do it ourselves, then write a thank you note after.

The youth is crumbling, it is being destroyed right in front of our very eyes. But that can’t be a fact we think about and move on. The issue has to be addressed. Because as corny as this sounds, we need to fight for our livelihood. It is a fight for our life. Time is slipping through our fingertips and we simply wave goodbye. This is not a problem for the future, this is for the future. If there is no fight against the decimation of what makes us human, then what makes us better than artificial intelligence. And fighting back doesn’t require rejecting technology, it requires refusing to let convenience replace thought, connecting, and language.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk :)