Toxic positivity on LinkedIn and why I don’t bother checking anymore

Stop telling me to have good vibes and all good things will come to me. I want to revel in my misery for just a second.

As a Millennial with a professional career, it naturally follows that I have a LinkedIn account.

This isn’t surprising — according to LinkedIn, over 740 million users from 200 countries are currently on the platform. Of these, Millennials make up the largest portion at 38%.

While the main point of LinkedIn used to be networking and finding jobs, it seems those purposes have taken a backseat. To what you may ask? Content. Loads and loads of user-generated content.

Which in theory is awesome — it provides LinkedIn with even more value and helps forge an easy introduction to someone you want to connect with.

Except, a lot of the user-generated content is chock-full of toxic positivity.

Toxic positivity is basically saying to someone “yeah you lost your job, house, kids and a kidney — but stay positive because it can only get better!”. It negates feelings of loss and hopelessness and makes you feel guilty for even feeling these things in the first place. It makes you feel like you should always be looking on the bright side, and even worse when you’re the bearer of toxic positivity, makes others feel like they can’t truly deal with painful emotions.

You see it all the time on LinkedIn — and often in copy-and-pasted posts that have been floating around for years. You know the ones — the person starts by telling you they lost their job five years ago and it’s the best thing that ever happened to them because now they make $5 billion a year selling dog clothes. *insert eye roll here*.

There are also mainstream culprits that contribute to this problem — people like Simon Sinek whose job title on LinkedIn is literally “optimist”. Now I’ve got nothing against optimists — I actually consider myself one if you can believe it. But I think there’s a threshold.

The last straw for me was when a friend tagged me in one of Simon’s posts where he said loving your job is a right and not a privilege. I had to text her and tell her I disagreed, which I don’t think she was expecting.

But the idea that loving your JOB is a RIGHT was totally bonkers to me. It’s the height of not only toxic positivity but an incredibly privileged way of looking at the world. To me, a right is freedom of speech, food, water and basic essentials. Loving your work isn’t a right. And to say it degrades millions of people doing what they have to in order to get by — who I would hazard a guess don’t all love the work they do.

I’ve taken a step back from LinkedIn for my own mental health because toxic positivity makes me feel bad for feeling anything negative. When inf act, negative emotions are part of life. Without them, the positive feelings wouldn’t feel as good!