The Silent Epidemic: When Likes Define Our Lives
How Misha Agrawal’s suicide and my own mental health battle reveal the dark truth behind social media fame
We’re living in a world where the line between being liked and being loved is disappearing.
Just this week, I came across news that shattered something deep inside me.
Misha Agrawal, a young, vibrant Indian Instagram influencer, died by suicide.
The reason? As her sister shared, she felt worthless because her followers were declining.
That line haunted me.
Not because it was shocking—but because it was painfully familiar.
The Day My World Collapsed
I still remember the day I failed my CA Final exam.
It was 2015. I was known as the “genius kid” - a school and college topper.
But that day, my identity crumbled like a house of cards.
I had never failed anything in life before, and suddenly I was failing... myself.
It wasn’t just an exam result.
It felt like my entire life had collapsed.
Within months, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and severe depression.
Given my family history — my mother battled schizophrenia, my father was bipolar — the diagnosis hit like a thunderstorm.
And I? I was caught without shelter.
The Misha Agrawal Mirror
As I read about Misha, my heart ached.
What must she have been going through?
What kind of storm was she silently enduring while posting smiling selfies?
What was going on in her mind when she felt her life had lost value over some digits on a screen?
And the real question that kept echoing in my heart was this:
When did we start tying our self-worth to follower counts, likes, and comment sections?
The Real Pandemic: Comparison, Addiction, and Isolation
Let’s face it.
We're being slowly programmed.
Every scroll is a silent signal saying:
“You’re not enough yet. Try harder. Post more. Be more.”
Being a Coach, everyday I come across a lot of entrepreneurs, creators, working professionals, and ambitious women saying something like-
“I feel exhausted but can't stop scrolling.”
“I feel like a failure when I see others winning.”
“I’m losing sleep, peace, and joy… but gaining followers.”
This is not just a mental health decline.
This is a silent epidemic.
What Schools Should Have Taught Us
Why didn’t anyone teach us in school that our worth isn’t based on:
- Our grades,
- Our job title,
- Our bank balance,
- Our follower count?
Why didn’t anyone teach us:
- How to deal with failure,
- How to process shame,
- How to navigate rejection,
- How to handle being unseen in a world that only rewards the visible?
We need a new education system. One that teaches inner mastery before outer success.
The Path Back to Inner Peace
I had lost everything—my confidence, my dreams, my sense of self.
What saved me?
A psychiatrist who simply listened.
He didn’t try to fix me. He didn’t judge me. He just created a space where I could fall apart without fear.
That experience taught me something we all forget in our fast-paced lives:
Real healing begins when someone sees us without trying to change us.
We Need a New Kind of Education
Today, I help my clients the same way that psychiatrist helped me.
Not with fancy tools or hacks — but with presence.
With silence. With deep listening. With understanding.
Because in today’s hyperconnected world, we’re more disconnected than ever.
- Families dine together but scroll separately.
- Couples sleep on the same bed, yet live in different digital realities.
- Children cry for attention and we hand them smartphones — the new pacifier.
It’s not just dangerous.
It’s heart breaking.
Final Reflections: A Call to Wake Up
If you’re reading this and feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or empty despite all your achievements...
Pause.
Please hear this:
Your worth isn’t in your wins. It’s in your willingness to feel, fall, rise, and stay human.
Don’t measure your value by the world’s metrics.
Not by likes.
Not by followers.
Not even by money.
Measure it by the love you give, the truth you live, and the person you’re becoming — even when no one is watching.
Let’s Create a Movement of Realness
If this story moved something inside you —
If it made you pause, reflect, cry, or breathe a little deeper...
Then I invite you to do three things:
1. Share this story with someone who’s silently suffering.
2. Leave a comment — tell me what hit you the hardest.
3. Let’s start a conversation — not just with me, but with yourself.
Let’s stop running.
Let’s stop pretending.
Let’s remember that it’s okay to not be okay — and even more okay to ask for help.
Together, let’s build a world where no one feels worthless for losing followers.
Because you are not a number.
You are not your failures.
You are not alone.
You are human. And you are enough.
