Why doing nothing is the antidote you need

In an overstimulated world, the simple act of sitting alone with ourselves is rare, but for a busy mind, solitude is the perfect medicine

- Divya Naik

On most evenings, when he shuts the door of his Bengaluru apartment behind him, public relations consultant Nitin Narain enters a world many people today find unbearable: silence. There is no podcast filling the room, no Netflix hum, no reflexive scroll to drown out the day. “Even when the television is on, the volume is usually off,” he says. “There's something incredibly calming about a quiet room—it gives me the space to hear myself think. Silence doesn't feel empty. It feels like peace quietly wrapping itself around me.”

Narain has lived alone for a decade and calls solitude his “meaningful ritual”. Mornings are for easing gently into the day; evenings are for unwinding and releasing the weight of people, meetings, and noise. But his relationship with quiet is almost an outlier now. For many, solitude triggers unease, irritability, even panic. Silence feels like a void we must immediately fill. As younger generations grow more uncomfortable with being alone, psychologists note an alarming pattern: Our devices soothe us more than our own minds do.

WHY SILENCE FEELS UNCOMFORTABLE

“Excessive exposure to digital media has trained our brains to constantly seek stimulation from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed,” says clinical psychologist Kanika Jindal based in Delhi. “This makes it difficult to tolerate being alone.” Silence has become synonymous with an absence of validation, of distraction, of dopamine. And modern life reinforces this at every level. Jindal identifies three major forces behind solitude becoming unsafe:

Digital overstimulation: Our brains are conditioned to expect constant input. “Social media stories showing friends having fun while you sit at home intensify loneliness,” she notes.

Structural loneliness: Nuclear families, single-child homes, long work hours, and interstate jobs leave young adults without builtin companionship.