LinkedIn: The Playground of Professional Pretenders
Dear Doctor, Can You Save My Dad from His LinkedIn Addiction?
We’ve spent years warning about the dangers of Instagram and Facebook—platforms that have been linked to comparison, anxiety, and unhealthy behaviours. Countries like China and France have restricted social media for children, backed by research that shows how these platforms harm mental health. But while we focus on saving young people from filters and curated lives, another threat is quietly wreaking havoc—this time on adults.
The real danger? LinkedIn.
It’s time we ask ourselves: Is LinkedIn truly helping us become the people we want to be? Or is it just fueling one of the biggest sources of suffering in the modern Western world—the constant chase to become something more?
The Trap of “Becoming”
The problem with LinkedIn isn’t just that it’s another social media site. It’s that it masquerades as a professional tool while feeding the same toxic behaviors we condemn on other platforms. But instead of chasing beauty, popularity, or likes, LinkedIn users chase status, success, and career validation—wrapped up in titles, promotions, and follower counts.
LinkedIn is where we try to become something:
A more successful version of ourselves.
Someone with a better title, more connections, and a shinier résumé.
Someone worthy of admiration and respect, measured in likes, endorsements, and congratulatory comments.
But this endless pursuit—this constant becoming—isn’t a path to fulfillment. It’s a treadmill that keeps speeding up, leaving users exhausted, anxious, and unfulfilled.
We talk about banning social media for kids, but who’s going to save the adults from LinkedIn?
The Performance of Professionalism
On LinkedIn, every interaction is a performance. Posts don’t come from a place of joy or genuine sharing—they are crafted to fit the algorithm, get noticed, and move us closer to that elusive something more. The “Humbled to announce” posts, the strategically timed promotions, and the self-congratulatory updates are all part of the game.
It’s not enough to get a promotion; you need to make sure everyone sees it. It’s not enough to develop a new skill; you need endorsements. And those endless reminders to congratulate people? They’re not about kindness—they’re about networking. We do it because it’s good for our careers, not because we care.
The result? Adults are stuck in a playground of professional pretenders, where everyone is performing “success”, whether they feel successful or not. It’s the same game we see on Instagram—just in a business suit.
Addiction Disguised as Ambition
Instagram is easy to criticize because its dangers are visible: teens obsessed with beauty filters and influencers flaunting unattainable lifestyles. But LinkedIn’s danger is harder to spot because it wears a mask of productivity.
We convince ourselves that scrolling LinkedIn is productive, and that endlessly checking notifications will somehow get us ahead. The platform is built to make us feel like we’re doing something valuable, even when we’re just mindlessly consuming other people’s successes.
But for many, LinkedIn has become an addiction—a constant need to check updates, compare achievements, and chase after the next milestone. Instead of living meaningful lives, we live to perform for the algorithm, hoping it will reward us with attention, validation, and opportunity.
It’s easy to dismiss this as harmless networking, but the consequences are real: burnout, anxiety, and a sense that no matter how much we achieve, it’s never enough.
The Modern Trap of “More”
LinkedIn taps into one of the most damaging beliefs in modern society: the idea that who we are now isn’t enough. It feeds the notion that happiness, purpose, and self-worth lie just beyond the next promotion or career milestone. If we can just become something better—more successful, more admired, more accomplished—then we’ll finally feel whole.
But that’s the cruel irony: the more we chase, the further away fulfilment feels. Success is always just out of reach, and the people who seem to have it all? They’re still chasing, too.
On LinkedIn, there is no finish line—only more. More achievements, more connections, more visibility. And with every step we take, the treadmill speeds up, leaving us exhausted, but no closer to the happiness we thought we’d find.
Who Will Save the Adults?
We worry about how Instagram affects young people, and rightly so. But adults are suffering, too—just in different ways. LinkedIn has become the professional version of the Instagram influencer trap, with adults chasing career perfection the way teens chase beauty and popularity.
We regulate children’s access to social media to protect their mental health. But who’s going to save the adults from LinkedIn? Who’s going to tell them it’s okay to stop chasing, that they don’t need to become someone else to be worthy?
Maybe it’s time we ask ourselves: Is LinkedIn really helping us become the people we want to be? Or is it just driving us deeper into a cycle of never-ending becoming?
Dear Doctor, Save My Dad
Picture this: A 10-year-old child looks up from the dinner table and says, “Dear Doctor, can you save my dad from his LinkedIn addiction?”
It’s a funny thought—until you realize how real it is. How many parents, partners, and friends are stuck on this treadmill, endlessly scrolling, chasing, and performing? How many moments of joy are lost to checking updates, sending congratulatory messages, or obsessing over career achievements that never seem to satisfy?
We think social media addiction is a problem for teenagers. But LinkedIn is quietly creating a generation of adults who are addicted to becoming—always chasing, but never arriving.
Maybe the real question isn’t how to become something more. Maybe the real challenge is learning how to be enough.