Flow State: What Social Media Gets Wrong About Being “In the Zone”

These days, if you scroll through social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, or even X (formerly Twitter), you would see an emergence of something called a “Flow State”. Where people are basically super invested/locked in the task they take up, and hence are productive. This isn't something new. There has been a significant rise in productivity culture, and social media always capitalizes on such phenomena, producing mass content on the same, through vlogs, short-form content like reels and short videos. Flow is shown as something that can be easily achieved, with the right tools, habits, or mindset. But in the process, a complex psychological concept is being simplified into a performance trend, blurring the line between deep engagement and curated productivity.

Flow: A Misunderstood Term

Flow as a concept was first coined by Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who described flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Instead of being just a state of productivity, ‘Flow’ state is actually a result of factors such as focus, internal motivation and one’s skills during challenging tasks. 

Csikszentmihalyi says that flow is achieved when the task done by the person matches their level of skills, i.e., a congruence in task difficulty and an individual’s abilities. If a task is too easy, for example, peeling stickers, then it can cause the person to feel bored, while if it is extremely difficult, such as solving a complex mathematical problem, then it can cause the individual to abandon the task. 

Where Social Media Gets It Wrong

While social media gets the gist of it, it fails to make the distinction between ' Flow’ and ‘Focus’, often using these terms interchangeably. Social media makes it look like flow is easy to achieve and control, which is not the case in reality. Productivity can not be directly controlled, given that it depends on factors like motivation, something that is oversensationalized. 

Motivation is an extremely integral process that can initiate, guide and help us achieve our goals. Intrinsic motivation in particular is relevant here, given that one’s interest in activities or tasks can help them to achieve and complete the same, hence achieving their goals. Motivation, hence, directly impacts the productivity of individuals, thereby affecting their ‘flow’.

Ultimately, Social media does influence how we understand concepts like “Flow”, especially in a hyper-aware world where productivity is constantly scrutinized and compared. When complex ideas are reduced to aesthetic routines or quick “hacks,” half-information can create unrealistic expectations and self-doubt. What Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described was a nuanced psychological state, not a trend to be performed. In a space flooded with “sensationalized narratives”, it becomes even more important to seek the full picture, because only by understanding the concept properly can we engage with it in a healthy and meaningful way.