We live surrounded by screens, followed by thousands on social media, interacting constantly with the people around us, but when it really matters, we feel lonelier than ever. In a world where everything is shared, emotions, traumas, wounds…It’s hard to tell what’s genuine connection and what’s just emotional noise.
Generation Z, the one that grew up with notifications and likes, has become an expert at showing everything… except what truly matters. They speak about what hurts without filters, but do they feel understood? Or are they just hoping that someone on the other side of the screen says “I see you” instead of just “I’m looking at you”?
In this universe where everything moves at high speed, even feelings seem to rush. Some experts are already warning us: what many young people believe is vulnerability might actually be something else. Something that could be pushing them away from true love without them even realizing. Are our youth really aware of what they’re exposing themselves to almost every day?
What is floodlighting?
Surely you’ve messaged a friend with a “hey, how are you?” and immediately followed it with what you really wanted to say. That’s floodlighting, a term coined by expert Brené Brown. It refers to sharing too many personal details too soon in a relationship. It’s not true vulnerability, but rather an overshare of intimate information that can put the forming relationship at risk instead of strengthening it.
For Brown, being vulnerable is not the same as emotionally oversharing. But is this maybe a protection strategy? We show ourselves as we are to see if the other person is willing to stick around and accept us with all our “flaws,” or if, instead, they’d rather just swipe on to the next person.
Why is giving too much too soon a problem?
Maybe because many people feel overwhelmed by the oversharing, or simply because they’re not at the same level of commitment to process so much personal information about someone else. That makes the moment of intimacy confusing and even uncomfortable. In her 2013 book The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections, and Courage, Brown explains it well: perhaps the people who overshare aren’t fully aware of the impact of their behaviour (you can watch her TEDTalk by clicking here)
An emotional trap?
Instagram, TikTok, and similar platforms have normalized sharing publicly what we used to keep to ourselves, or talk about in therapy. The line between public and private has completely disappeared. It does make people seem more authentic, no doubt about that, but it also exposes them more to the “dangers” of life outside these platforms (real life). So when someone practices floodlighting and doesn’t receive the validation they expected, intrusive thoughts begin, thinking something must be wrong with them. But no, it just means the other person wasn’t ready to handle that much.
Personally, I like to use the metaphor of water bottles. Maybe you, as a person, are a jug that can hold 30 litters of water, that’s just your nature. There will be others who are 0.5-littre bottles, or maybe 100-liter barrels. So when you pour your water into another container, and it can’t hold what yours can, it overflows, right? The same happens with people.
How can we avoid floodlighting?
The solution isn’t to stop talking about what hurts, but to know how, when, and with whom to do it. Therapists or professionals are the right spaces for that, not hundreds of strangers commenting “you’re doing well, sweetie” like we often see on social media.
And even if it sounds cliché, we have to let things flow and build gradually, understanding that not everyone is ready for the kind of person we are and that there’s nothing wrong with us.