Instagram, Addiction, and Spirituality: Remaining Human in a Social Media World

With the era of technology dominating people's lives, they have become disconnected from the Earth and from each other. The increased popularity of spirituality in conjunction with the selling of it on Instagram has disconnected people from their humanity and created an addictive process around one's spiritual life, something that is usually used to heal addiction. This threatens human beings' connections to themselves, to others, and to the Earth. This thesis uses heuristic and alchemical hermeneutic research methods to elucidate how the usage of spirituality as a sales game on Instagram increases spiritual bypassing and spiritual narcissism while threatening humanity at its deepest core by bringing people's spiritual lives to an addictive platform. The result is a collective call for shadow integration, deeper understanding of the individuation process, and an acceptance that humans are attachment based creatures in need of relationships that nurture vulnerability, connection, and intimacy