The Journey of Digital Natives
Li Xiaoyu scrolled through the data on her tablet, her brow furrowing unconsciously. This was the quarterly report from the third year of the "Lighthouse of the Heart" program. The data showed that the coverage of psychological counseling services in universities had reached a new high, with the number of people seeking help increasing by 15% year-on-year. Normally, this should be a reassuring figure.
But her attention was focused on another set of data - the participation rate in offline group counseling activities dropped by 8%, while "social anxiety" and "alienation from reality" entered the top five types of problems that students sought help for the first time.
"This isn't right," she whispered to herself.
Professor Zhao, a senior psychology expert sitting across from her, pushed his glasses up and asked, "Did you discover this, too?"
"We've invested so many resources and established such a comprehensive service network. Logically, students' mental health should be improving overall. However..." Li Xiaoyu pulled up several more charts. "The growth rate of new problems like blurred self-identity and a lack of sense of reality has almost offset the gains we've made in addressing traditional psychological issues."
Professor Zhao sighed. "I've been supervising graduate students for over 20 years, and I've noticed this particularly clearly in the past two years. Some students can speak eloquently and clearly over email and on social media, their thinking sharp and their logic clear. But in face-to-face discussions, their eyes avert and their expressions fragment. One student even requested all guidance be provided via text, refusing face-to-face interaction."
Just then, Li Xiaoyu's assistant knocked on the door and said, "Secretary Li, we just received a referral. Supervisor Wang said we need your personal review."
The protagonist of this case study is Lin Yue, a junior at a key university, vice president of the student union, and champion of a campus entrepreneurship competition. In everyone's eyes, she is that "other people's child"—confident, outstanding, and promising.
But this referral report portrays another Lin Yue: she revealed in an anonymous psychological consultation that she spends at least three hours every day maintaining six different social media account personalities; when talking to people in real life, she would unconsciously think about "what text should be posted on WeChat Moments for this sentence"; she began to lose track of which were her real thoughts and which were opinions she performed to maintain her persona.
The most serious incident happened when she was suddenly unable to go on stage before an important entrepreneurial roadshow. It was not because she was nervous, but because she "didn't know which persona she should use to face the real audience below the stage."
When acting becomes instinctive, reality becomes unfamiliar.
Li Xiaoyu immediately decided: "I want to meet this child."
Li Xiaoyu first met Lin Yue on a bench by the campus lake. The girl, bathed in the sunshine, had a graceful smile and elegant manners, and no one could tell she was caught in the turmoil of her heart.
"Teacher Li, I know my question is ridiculous," Lin Yue began with a carefully crafted frankness. "In the eyes of others, I have everything and shouldn't have any worries."
"Trouble doesn't need a comparative form," Li Xiaoyu said gently. "As long as it exists, it deserves to be taken seriously."
As the conversation deepened, Li Xiaoyu saw the inner picture of a typical "digital native" -
Lin Yue has lived in a dual world since junior high school. In real life, she's the class monitor, known for her excellent academic performance and good character. Online, she's a beauty blogger with 100,000 followers. Each platform has a different audience and requires a different persona. Over time, she's mastered the art of switching between these multiple identities.
"At first, I just thought it was fun, but then I realized each 'me' could earn different kinds of recognition and love." Lin Yue's tone was as calm as if she were telling someone else's story. "Until one day, I woke up in the middle of the night and suddenly couldn't remember what I looked like. That feeling... was like standing in a maze of mirrors. Every mirror was you, but you knew they weren't you."
She began to fear deep relationships in real life because "online personas can be modified at any time, but once your real-life persona collapses, it can't be rebuilt." She even developed a comprehensive coping mechanism: preparing conversation scripts for different situations in advance, anticipating the other person's likely reactions and preparing responses.
"The scariest thing is," Lin Yue finally revealed a hint of fatigue, "I know it's exhausting, but I can't stop. Because if I stop, all the relationships and recognition that rely on my persona will disappear. Sometimes I wonder, am I the one managing the accounts, or are they consuming my life?"
This conversation had a profound impact on Li Xiaoyu. She immediately convened her team and launched a special research project on "digital identity and self-identity."
The survey results are worrying. Among the 5,000 university students surveyed:
78% of people said they would show different self-images on different social platforms
63% of people admitted that they were troubled by the huge gap between their online image and reality
41% of people said they often feel disconnected between their online and offline selves.
More than half of the people believe that "maintaining an online persona is a tiring but necessary task"
"What we're facing isn't a traditional psychological problem," Li Xiaoyu said gravely at a project workshop. "It's an existential crisis unique to the digital age—the overly complex identity systems we've constructed in the virtual world have caused our real selves to become blurred or even disappear."
Zhang Wei, a young graduate student in the project team, added: "It's like a new kind of cognitive dissonance. And we've found that the more advanced students are, the more likely they are to fall into this dilemma, because they set higher standards for themselves and are more eager to be recognized in every area."
On the virtual stage, the most dedicated actors are often the first to lose themselves.
Based on the research findings, Li Xiaoyu's team quickly adjusted their intervention strategy. In addition to traditional psychological counseling, they developed a series of targeted workshops:
The "Digital Identity Exploration" workshop guides students to explore integrating their online and offline selves in a safe environment;
"Reality Connection Training" helps students re-experience the texture of the real world through activities that require full participation, such as group games and handicrafts;
The "Social Media Fast" challenge encourages students to engage in a phased digital decluttering and regain control of their attention.
Lin Yue participated in all of these activities. Change was slow and difficult. During her first reality connection training, she couldn't even complete the simplest "feeling the present moment" meditation, constantly tempted to reach for her phone.
“I feel like an addict,” she wrote in her diary. “There’s nothing urgent on my phone, but I just can’t stand the anxiety of being offline.”
The turning point came during a weekend outdoor sketching activity. That afternoon, the team went to the hills behind the school and was asked to turn off their phones and use only pen and paper to depict the scenery. Lin Yue fidgeted at first, her brush trembling in her hands.
But gradually, she began to notice some details that she usually overlooked: the mottled light and shadow of sunlight shining through the leaves, the gentle touch of the breeze on her cheek, the distant and rising and falling sounds of birdsong... When she finally calmed down and devoted her attention completely to painting, a long-lost sense of peace arose spontaneously.
"At that moment," she later told Li Xiaoyu, "I suddenly realized that it had been a long time since I'd done something simply for the sake of 'feeling'. Every time I experienced something, my first reaction was 'this can become material,' rather than truly experiencing it."
This experience became the starting point for Lin Yue's self-healing. She began consciously reducing her social media use and stopped forcing herself to participate in activities she didn't enjoy just to maintain her image. She even took the initiative to share her "less-than-perfect" side on WeChat Moments—the frustration after failing an exam, the struggles faced when making difficult choices, and her daily routine of going to the library without makeup.
Unexpectedly, these "imperfect" sharing actually earned her more genuine interactions. A junior student left a message saying, "Senior, seeing you also makes me anxious, and suddenly I feel that I am not so bad anymore."
Real vulnerability can sometimes connect people's hearts better than a perfect mask.
Three months later, Li Xiaoyu received a long letter from Lin Yue:
"Teacher Li, I still manage my social media accounts, but it's more like a job than my entire life. I've learned to immerse myself in reality when necessary, and retreat to the online world when necessary. I'm no longer a performer led by algorithms and traffic, but a navigator who has learned to switch freely between digital and real life..."
Lin Yue concluded the letter by writing: "Perhaps our generation is destined to live in two worlds, but it is important that we remember which world is the foundation and which world is the extension."
This letter made Li Xiaoyu think for a long time. She realized that simply opposing digitalization was futile. The more important task was to help the younger generation develop healthy digital survival wisdom—learning to establish a clear boundary between virtual and real life and maintaining the ability to make independent choices.
At the end of the project, the team compiled a report titled "Adolescent Self-Identity Development in the Digital Age," proposing a new perspective on the psychological dimension of "digital citizenship." This report was subsequently adopted by relevant departments of the Ministry of Education and became a key reference for developing guidelines for mental health education in the new era.
Li Xiaoyu also wrote down a new thought in her notebook: "As an entire generation swims in the digital ocean, our responsibility isn't to pull them ashore, but to teach them how to maintain balance in deep water, how to enjoy the convenience and excitement brought by technology without getting lost."
She knows that this will be the new mission of the "lighthouse of the soul" in the digital age - not only to illuminate the inner confusion, but also to become a navigator between the virtual and the real, helping every young soul to remain firmly anchored in their true self in the digital tide.
Because when you wear the mask of the virtual world for too long, your real face will feel unfamiliar. Their job is to help every lost digital native recognize and fall in love with their real self, which may be imperfect but is true.
When you wear the mask of the virtual world for too long, your real face will feel unfamiliar.
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