Why do we accept toxic friendships in the digital age?

Why do we accept toxic friendships in the digital age?

Is the world just getting nastier or are we becoming more accepting of people’s nonsense? There seems to be a marked increase in behavioural toxicity, or so I felt. Perhaps I was being ‘sensitive’, that word so many use when you react to lines being crossed. Looks like there are others who share the experience…. Apparently, the digital age has both helped to identify toxic friendships and make us more prone to them, explains Silvina Joseph, a hypnotherapist, and wellness expert from the Jumeirah-based Wellness and Hypnotherapy Center. It has also lead to a lack of genuine connections that result in people feeling isolated and unsupported. With the ‘follower count’ prominent on Twitter, Instagram pages, there’s now a pressure to maintain these large number of friends, says Joseph. It creates an environment where toxic behaviours, such as trolling, bullying, manipulation, belittling and constant criticism are normalised and even encouraged. This kind of toxicity becomes the standard discourse, explains Natalie Hore, a certified life coach and the founder of Breathes Wellness, a wellness clinic in Dubai. “Once people are constantly exposed to these kind of behaviours, they just become desensitised to it, whether they’re affected by it, or not.” Most of