The Internet Has Made “Keeping Up” Impossible

Author : Rinsha Mohammed | Published On : 20 Sep 2026

There was a time when comparison had a relatively small radius. You compared yourself with classmates, neighbours, colleagues, relatives or people you happened to meet in everyday life. Now, your reference group can include thousands of people you have never met, from completely different cities, careers and backgrounds. The best digital marketer in Calicut understands that social media has quietly expanded the number of people we can compare ourselves with, and that has made the feeling of keeping up almost impossible.

The best digital marketer in Calicut also understands that the problem is not simply seeing successful people online. It is the sheer variety of success that appears in the same feed. One person is buying a house, another is travelling, someone is building a business, someone else is getting married, another is becoming fitter, and another is constantly learning something new. There is no longer one standard of achievement. There are hundreds appearing at the same time.

This creates a strange situation where there is almost always someone ahead of us in something. You might be doing well academically but feel behind financially. You might be building a career but feel behind socially. You might have a good relationship but feel behind professionally. Even when life is going reasonably well, the internet can quickly present another area where someone appears to be further ahead.

The comparison is especially difficult because there is no natural point at which it ends. In ordinary life, you eventually leave school, finish a workday or return home. Online, there is always another person to compare yourself with. There is another achievement, another transformation, another holiday, another purchase and another person who seems to have figured something out.

Social media also removes many of the circumstances behind people's achievements. We see the result without necessarily seeing the starting point, resources, support system, failures or time involved. Someone's business launch might appear beside someone's graduation and someone's engagement, even though each event may have taken years to reach.

This can create the illusion that everyone is progressing simultaneously. In reality, people move through life at completely different speeds. One person may spend several years focused on education while another builds a career early. Someone may prioritise family while another prioritises travel. Another person may spend years figuring out what they actually want before making any major decision.

The internet makes these different timelines look like a single competition because they appear together on one screen. A person can scroll through several people's lives in less than a minute and unconsciously turn their separate achievements into one measurement of their own progress.

There is also a commercial side to this feeling. Many industries benefit when people believe that they are slightly behind. Fashion introduces new trends, fitness introduces new goals, technology introduces new devices and lifestyle content introduces new things that supposedly make life better. The feeling of being caught up is temporary because there is always another version of improvement waiting to be sold.

This does not mean every trend or purchase is manipulative. People genuinely enjoy discovering new products, experiences and ideas. The important point is that constant exposure can create an endless sense of unfinishedness. There is always something else to improve, buy, experience or achieve.

Perhaps the most difficult part of modern comparison is that there is no universal finish line. Even if someone reaches a goal they once considered important, the internet can immediately introduce a new standard. A person can achieve something meaningful and still feel behind because another person's next milestone has already appeared.

The alternative is not to stop caring about progress or ambition. It is to recognise that other people's timelines were never designed to be instructions for our own. Seeing someone achieve something can be inspiring without turning it into a deadline. Someone else's success can exist without becoming evidence that we are failing.

The internet has made comparison almost limitless because our social world is no longer limited to the people physically around us. We can now see an enormous range of lives, achievements and possibilities every day. That can expand our imagination, but it can also make “keeping up” an impossible task. Perhaps the healthier goal is not to catch up with everyone, but to decide which direction actually matters to us.