Kylie’s little brother Jacob is an odd boy with a particularly peculiar recent habit, namely that he has been pulling open the manhole cover in their family’s front yard and speaking his thoughts down into the darkness below.

Both curious and disgusted, Kylie finally questions her brother as he is in the act about why he does this, and he answers that “sometimes I get reactions.”

Disturbed and a little nervous, she asks what he means, but as the words leave her lips she sees a small red heart float up out of the dark.

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This is obviously a metaphor for living one’s life online. However, I think it’s also an explanation about why that happens, too. From a distance, talking to strangers online – or to nobody and hoping to find strangers – might seem like a weird or even unhealthy thing to do. But there is something powerfully magical about speaking something personal into an abyss and getting a positive answer.

If little red hearts floated up out of the literal sewers when you talked into them, lots and lots of people would be doing it.

People also tend to be an unfiltered version of themselves (or at least a differently filtered version of themselves) when they’re online. Finding community or at least commonality for the more vulnerable or unhinged parts of yourself is reassuring in a way that filtered life might sometimes fail to be.

HOWEVER… the explanation for why we might stare into a digital abyss is not an argument that the action is healthy. Is it healthy to stick your head over a sewer for hours at a time, every day? Probably not. Same is true with being *too* online. I’m not talking about purposeful internet activity. I mean doom scrolling and constant posting on social media. People need the standard issue traditional relationships humans have always had. If little Jacob from the story chases the little red hearts too much, he eventually starves elsewhere socially. Hopefully his sister pulls him away instead of joining him.

I am reminded of the following quote:

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

This quote from Harry Potter might well apply to its primary readers – the generation of people who grew up with the internet. Let that little red heart reassure you, but then go out and live your life, too.