I get my news from Instagram — is that bad?

This is exactly how politics feels now — too heavy to look at directly but too blatant to ignore, so we watch it through a meme filter. The country may be on fire, but at least we can vibe to an AI edit of Donald Trump singing ‘Saiyaara’, right?

It is not that young people don’t care. If anything, we care too much. Gen Z exhausts itself from caring about every issue, be it big or small. The constant churn of elections, communal tensions, Supreme Court showdowns and inflation anxiety is overwhelming when consumed raw. And so, Instagram reels have become the buffer between us and collapse.

Watching actual geopolitical brainrot on Instagram may be ridiculous and could even alter our brain chemistry, but it has now become strangely comforting and somewhat necessary.

Living in the meme-first news cycle

Meme culture has evolved over the years, but humour has always been a national survival strategy. India has always used comedy to process crises — from Raju Srivastava’s political mimicries in the early 2000s to AIB sketches during the 2014 Lok Sabha election wave. However, reels have accelerated this instinct into something more immediate and necessary. We don’t wait for comedies anymore. We edit and upload our own coping mechanisms in real time.

Every time something chaotic happens in the country, the meme format is activated faster than any news notification. Petrol prices spike? There is a ‘Jawan’ edit of SRK emerging from fire, except it’s with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Parliament breaks into a fight? Suddenly, ‘Arjan Vailly’ from Animal is trending, mixed in with jump cuts of MPs screaming. It’s funny because the alternative is having a mental breakdown.

Somewhere along the way, reels stopped being funny and became the first place where we actually find out that something is happening. The meme now arrives before the headline. If a scandal breaks in Maharashtra, it lands on our feed through a CapCut edit long before the refined, edited story lands on the front page.

Ever so often, I come across a niche, hyperlocal meme on Instagram, which prompts me to look up the context. Unknowingly, my Instagram algorithm forces me to be more politically aware in order to understand the joke. It’s hard to tell whether it is the FOMO (fear of missing out) on a trending joke or the journalistic drive that pushes me to be more aware.

Maybe the real shift is that we are not politically unaware, but just politically overstimulated. We use humour because it is the only format that doesn’t crush us. We laugh as a reflex, not because any of this is actually funny — but because it is the only way not to feel hopeless.

Scrolled too far?

There is a cruel irony to the way we consume heartbreaking news today via reels — it has to compete for our attention with lipstick shades and Zara hauls. The algorithm doesn’t believe in emotional pacing. It shows us a dead child from Gaza, and before the tears can form, we move on to what Komal Pandey is wearing at her friend’s sangeet or Anmol Raina explaining his gym routine. And without skipping a beat, our thumbs keep moving. Is it because we are turning heartless, or because the platform’s architecture is designed to dull us?

Reels have rewritten empathy for us. Millennials and Gen Z, allegedly the most woke generations, are now witnesses to suffering on demand — and yet we consume it with the same numb passion as a K-drama romance edit.

It’s like we’re in The Hunger Games, witnessing the world go downhill like the citizens of the Capitol, clapping along to violence and consuming death and despair like a reality show. When Suzanne Collins wrote it, it was meant to be a satire. Today, it feels like a prophecy; we occupy the same position, only our arena is a vertical screen.

There’s a parallel rise of “performance culture” attached to tragedy. People cry on camera, show “solidarity” with the cause that fits their aesthetic the best, place trending audio clips behind genocide, and call it activism. Grief is now filtered content for us, something to package beautifully in the hope of algorithm rewards. The platform now rewards performance and optics, not compassion and actual action. Slowly, we have begun to mirror it in real life.

Our capacity for shock is eroding, and with it, our tolerance of real emotions. What once required a headline now needs a drone shot of rubble with a crying mother and her ash-covered baby.

Leaving the algo behind

Maybe this is what it means to be young in India right now: to learn about patriotism through army edits set to AR Rehman remixes, to feel the urge for change through protest visuals with ‘Da Da Dasse’ playing in the background, to be educated and entertained at the same time. Reels have turned politics into pop culture, and whether we like it or not, it might just work.

We are more aware than our parents were at this age — not because we read policy journals, but because algorithms force-feed us Bihar, Gaza, Manipur and the Supreme Court.

We cope by laughing at absurdities, turning fear into memes and helplessness into dark humour. Because if we don’t laugh, we might have to face how terrifying reality is.

This generation lives at the intersection of hyper-awareness and emotional exhaustion. We know everything, yet we feel increasingly less. Maybe change begins by reclaiming the part algorithms cannot predict — the part that pauses, questions and cares. Reels can raise awareness, but only we can turn awareness into action. The scroll won’t save the world, but we still can.