Plastic has been taking over our world for a while now.
You may not think too much about it, but plastic is a global crisis. A recent rundown in The National Review reveals that more than 8 million tons of plastic is regularly deposited in the ocean. It’s killing sea life, endangering coral reefs, and affecting the fish we eat because of the toxins they ingest.
So much for a happy, carefree day, right?
But there’s some good news on the horizon: Scientists have found a mutant bacteria that eats plastic.
Of course, this mutant bacteria isn’t exactly like the kind of mutants you see in movies and comic books. Although, I’ll admit I initially thought, “Good! Someone’s finally getting Storm to handle this whole climate change business.” How cool would that be?
The plastic-eating bacteria was first discovered in 2016 in Japan. Researchers studying plastic pollution — specifically polyethylene terephthalate or PET — discovered a colony of bacteria that fed on the plastic, breaking down strong chemical bonds as a means of survival. The bacteria back then, though, was eating through highly crystallized PET — the material plastic bottles are made of — at a slow rate. Researchers knew it would take a while for the bacteria to evolve into the environmental savior we need.
Scientists started studying the bacteria’s evolution and discovered they’d unintentionally made it stronger.
“It’s alive! It’s alive!” they screamed. That’s how I imagine the discovery of this mutated bacteria enzyme went, with all the blinking lights and klaxons of a superhero movie. That’s what happens in labs, right?
Well, that’s how it should have gone. Because this is exciting! After viewing a 3D model of the bacteria, scientists discovered that small modifications could make its enzymes much more effective. The BBC reports that PET takes “hundreds of years” to break down on its own, but with the modified enzyme, called PETase, the same process begins within a matter of days. The enzyme breaks down PET to its original building blocks, meaning that the plastic can be reused again without losing quality.A large blocked cube made up of plastic bottles. Image via Pixabay.
Here’s why this is important: You may think plastic bottles are recycled into new plastic bottles and that every bottle you drink from had a rich and beautiful life before it came to you, but that’s not true. In 2017, BuzzFeed reported that Coca-Cola sourced only 7% of its plastic from recycled material and only 6% of Nestle’s bottles were made from recycled plastic. The rest of all that single-use plastic being dumped is turned into other fibers like carpet and clothing.
This is because plastics degrade as they’re recycled. “Bottles become fleeces, then carpets, after which they often end up in landfill,” the BBC notes.
But PETase makes it possible to use PET in its original form over and over again.
We’re only at the beginning of this development.
On one hand, PETase could bring us closer to true recycling (producing much less plastic and using much less fossil fuel) than ever before. But the research has only started. The breaking down process still needs to be made faster, so it could be years before PETase or anything like it is used on an industrial scale.
While scientists keep working to make PETase a worldwide plastic problem-solver, we can all do our part by reducing our reliance on plastic. Little things — like a reusable bottle for the gym, keeping metal utensils at work, and reusable bags and totes for trips to the store — can help keep the Earth clean, save animals, and make us a little less reliant on mutants (er, mutant enzymes) to save the day.
In a small village in Pwani, a district on Tanzania’s coast, a massive dance party is coming to a close. For the past two hours, locals have paraded through the village streets, singing and beating ngombe drums; now, in a large clearing, a woman named Sheilla motions for everyone to sit facing a large projector screen. A film premiere is about to begin.
It’s an unusual way to kick off a film about gender bias, inequality, early marriage, and other barriers that prevent girls from accessing education in Tanzania. But in Pwani and beyond, local organizations supported by Malala Fund and funded by Pura are finding creative, culturally relevant ways like this one to capture people’s interest.
The film ends and Sheilla, the Communications and Partnership Lead for Media for Development and Advocacy (MEDEA), stands in front of the crowd once again, asking the audience to reflect: What did you think about the film? How did it relate to your own experience? What can we learn?
Sheilla explains that, once the community sees the film, “It brings out conversations within themselves, reflective conversations.” The resonance and immediate action create a ripple effect of change.
MEDEA Screening Audience in Tanzania. Captured by James Roh for Pura
Across Tanzania, gender-based violence often forces adolescent girls out of the classroom. This and other barriers — including child marriage, poverty, conflict, and discrimination — prevent girls from completing their education around the world.
Sheilla and her team are using film and radio programs to address the challenges girls face in their communities. MEDEA’s ultimate goal is to affirm education as a fundamental right for everyone, and to ensure that every member of a community understands how girls’ education contributes to a stronger whole and how to be an ally for their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, friends, nieces, and girlfriends.
Sheilla’s story is one of many that inspired Heart on Fire, a new fragrance from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection that blends the warm, earthy spices of Tanzania with a playful, joyful twist. Here’s how Pura is using scent as a tool to connect the world and inspire action.
A partnership focused on local impact, on a global mission
Pura, a fragrance company that recognizes education as both freedom and a human right, has partnered with Malala Fund since 2022. In order to defend every girl’s right to access and complete 12 years of education, Malala Fund partners with local organizations in countries where the educational barriers are the greatest. They invest in locally-led solutions because they know that those who are closest to the problems are best equipped to solve and build durable solutions, like MEDEA, which works with communities to challenge discrimination against girls and change beliefs about their education.
But local initiatives can thrive and scale more powerfully with global support, which is why Pura is using their own superpower, the power of scent, to connect people around the world with the women and girls in these local communities.
The Pura x Malala Fund Collection incorporates ingredients naturally found in Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Brazil: countries where Malala Fund operates to address systemic education barriers. Eight percent of net revenue from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection will be donated to Malala Fund directly, but beyond financial support, the Collection is also a love letter to each unique community, blending notes like lemon, jasmine, cedarwood, and clove to transport people, ignite their senses, and help them draw inspiration and hope from the global movement for girls’ education. Through scent, people can connect to the courage, joy, and tenacity of girls and local leaders, all while uniting in a shared commitment to education: the belief that supporting girls’ rights in one community benefits all of us, everywhere.
You’ve already met Sheilla. Now see how Naiara and Mama Habiba are building unique solutions to ensure every girl can learn freely and dare to dream.
Naiara Leite is reimagining what’s possible in Brazil
Julia with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
In Brazil, where pear trees and coconut plantations cover the Northeastern Coast, girls like ten-year-old Julia experience a different kind of educational barrier than girls in Tanzania. Too often, racial discrimination contributes to high dropout rates among Black, quilombola and Indigenous girls in the country.
“In the logic of Brazilian society, Black people don’t need to study,” says Naiara Leite, Executive Coordinator of Odara, a women-led organization and Malala Fund partner. Bahia, the state where Odara is based, was once one of the largest slave-receiving territories in the Americas, and because of that history, deeply-ingrained, anti-Black prejudice is still widespread. “Our role and the image constructed around us is one of manual labor,” Naiara says.
But education can change that. In 2020, with assistance from a Malala Fund grant, Odara launched its first initiative for improving school completion rates among Black, quilombola, and Indigenous girls: “Ayomidê Odara”. The young girls mentored under the program, including Julia, are known as the Ayomidês. And like the Pura x Malala Fund Collection’s Brazil: Breath of Courage scent, the Ayomidês are fierce, determined, and bursting with energy.
Ayomidês with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
Ayomidês take part in weekly educational sessions where they explore subjects like education and ethnic-racial relations. The girls are encouraged to find their own voices by producing Instagram lives, social media videos, and by participating in public panels. Already, the Ayomidês are rewriting the narrative on what’s possible for Afro-Brazilian girls to achieve. One of the earliest Ayomidês, a young woman named Debora, is now a communications intern. Another former Ayomidê, Francine, works at UNICEF, helping train the next generation of adolescent leaders. And Julia has already set her sights on becoming a math teacher or a model.
“These are generations of Black women who did not have access to a school,” Naiara says. “These are generations of Black women robbed daily of their dreams. And we’re telling them that they could be the generation in their family to write a new story.”
Mama Habiba is reframing the conversation in Nigeria
Centre for Girls' Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
In Mama Habiba’s home country of Nigeria, the scents of starfruit, ylang ylang and pineapple, all incorporated into the Pura x Malala Collection’s “Nigeria: Hope for Tomorrow,” can be found throughout the vibrant markets. Like these native scents, Mama Habiba says that the Nigerian girls are also bright and passionate, but too often they are forced to leave school long before their potential fully blooms.
“Some of these schools are very far, and there is an issue of quality, too,” Mama Habiba says. “Most parents find out when their children are in school, the girls are not learning. So why allow them to continue?”
When girls drop out of secondary school, marriage is often the alternative. In Nigeria, one in three girls is married before the age of 18. When this happens, girls are unable to fulfill their potential, and their families and communities lose out on the social, health and economic benefits.
Completing secondary school delays marriage, and according to UNESCO, educated girls become women who raise healthier children, lift their families out of poverty and contribute to more peaceful, resilient communities.
Centre for Girls’ Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
To encourage young girls to stay in school, the Centre for Girls’ Education, a nonprofit in Nigeria founded by Mama Habiba and supported by Malala Fund and Pura, has pioneered an initiative that’s similar to the Ayomidê workshops in Brazil: safe spaces. Here, girls meet regularly to learn literacy, numeracy, and other issues like reproductive health. These safe spaces also provide an opportunity for the girls to role-play and learn to advocate for themselves, develop their self-image, and practice conversations with others about their values, education being one of them. In safe spaces, Mama Habiba says, girls start to understand “who she is, and that she is a girl who has value. She has the right to negotiate with her parents on what she really feels or wants.”
“When girls are educated, they can unlock so many opportunities,” Mama Habiba says. “It will help the economy of the country. It will boost so many opportunities for the country. If they are given the opportunity, I think the sky is not the limit. It is the starting point for every girl.”
From parades, film screenings to safe spaces and educational programs, girls and local leaders are working hard to strengthen the quality, safety and accessibility of education and overcome systemic challenges. They are encouraging courageous behavior and reminding us all that education is freedom.
Experience the Pura x Malala Fund Collection here, and connect with the stories of real girls leading change across the globe.
Voltaire was an 18th-century French philosopher, writer, and one of the most important voices of the Enlightenment. His works challenged authoritarianism and championed freedom of religion and speech. His beliefs in civil liberties and individualism inspired American revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, helping shape the ideals behind the Declaration of Independence. Julian…
Voltaire was an 18th-century French philosopher, writer, and one of the most important voices of the Enlightenment. His works challenged authoritarianism and championed freedom of religion and speech. His beliefs in civil liberties and individualism inspired American revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, helping shape the ideals behind the Declaration of Independence.
Julian de Medeiros, a popular TikToker who also writes about philosophy on Substack, recently shared how Voltaire could tell whether someone was highly intelligent. His observation suggests that sometimes those who don’t speak know far more than those who can’t keep their mouths shut.
Signs that someone is highly intelligent, according to Voltaire
“Here’s how you know that someone is smart, like highly intelligent, and this goes back to a simple maxim from the French thinker Voltaire, who wrote, ‘Judge a man not by his answers but by his questions,’” de Medeiros said in a TikTok video.
“What he meant, and I think this is so important, is that the more intelligent someone is, the more they listen. The more they want to learn and grow each and every day. They have an innate curiosity,” he continued. “As Plato put it, ‘An intelligent person speaks when they have something to say, but an unintelligent person speaks because they have nothing to say.’”
An intelligent person also knows how to ask the right questions to learn as much as possible from the person they are talking to.
Studies show a deep connection between intelligence and curiosity
Voltaire’s thoughts on intelligence make a lot of sense. Curious people seek out new information. They ask questions, read books, take things apart, and make connections between ideas that may not be apparent at first. Studies show it starts early: infants seen as curious were more likely to grow up to be intelligent adults. Albert Einstein was a true believer in curiosity. He once said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious,” and was also famous for urging people to “never stop questioning.”
“[Curiosity] means trying to understand how things work, and then trying to understand how they can be made to work better. It means being curious about people and their backstories. It means using insights to build deceptively simple frameworks and models in their minds to make sense of their industry—and all the other disruptive forces shaping our world—so they can explain it to others. Then they continue asking questions about those models, and it’s those questions that often lead to breakthrough ideas.”
Ultimately, curiosity can be seen as a source of fuel and energy for the mind. You can have an incredible brain that’s great at storing and making sense of complex ideas, but without a constant stream of information and input, it’s like a sports car with no driver.
Lives are getting busier all the time, making it feel impossible to get everything on our to-do list done while still managing our overall wellbeing. Sometimes even 10 minutes of stretching becomes a herculean task. But the good news is: when it comes to mood regulation, you might only need to spare a measly 90…
Lives are getting busier all the time, making it feel impossible to get everything on our to-do list done while still managing our overall wellbeing. Sometimes even 10 minutes of stretching becomes a herculean task. But the good news is: when it comes to mood regulation, you might only need to spare a measly 90 seconds.
While the “90 second rule” might initially come across as a passing TikTok hack, it’s a concept coined by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroscientist who famously survived a severe stroke, which provided her a unique, firsthand perspective on brain function.
How the 90-second rule works
As Taylor explains it: “We’re only doing three things inside of our brain at any moment in time. We think thoughts, we feel emotion, and run physiological loops to what we’re thinking and feeling.”
Taylor claims that it takes about a minute-and-a-half for any feeling–be it anger, anxiety, or fear, etc.—to pass through organically. So our job is to allow that feeling to metabolize, essentially. And by the end of that process, your brain has a nice reset.
Taylor added that she even tries to “enjoy” whatever she’s feeling during those 90 seconds. “I will celebrate every time the wave of emotion hits me…and then it’s gone,” she says.
In an interview with Bustle, Djuan Short, LCSW, a licensed trauma therapist and founder of Dahlia Rose Wellness Center, added that another benefit of the 90-second rule is that it “interrupts the urgency” of everyday life, and suggests intentionally incorporating them into “high-demand days.”
“Most people are not exhausted because they are doing too much. They are exhausted because they never fully stop,” Short says. “In a culture built on notifications, deadlines, and visibility, even a brief pause can feel radical. Ninety seconds feels small enough to be possible, but meaningful enough to feel like something that belongs to you.
Have you used the 90 second rule? Want to learn more about how to relieve and re-set your stress? Head to the link in my bio to purchase my course The Mind Body Stress Re-Set to learn the tools and techniques to support you in times of stress #stress#anxiety#overthinking#mindset#mindsetshift#emotions#healing#selfgrowth
Catch the urge: Immediately recognize when you feel stressed, angry, or triggered.
Set a timer: Allow yourself exactly 90 seconds to feel the sensation without judgment.
Breathe and feel: Focus on where the emotion exists in your body (e.g., tight chest, hot face) and let it pass.
Release: After the 90 seconds are up, check in with yourself. Taylor explains that if you do happen to still feel lingering emotions after those 90 seconds, that means you’re rethinking the same thought, which restimulates the same emotional and physiological response. Recognize this in a mental loop and consciously choose to stop feeding the emotion.
At its core, the 90-second rule reminds us that many of our emotional reactions, while valid, are a cocktail of hardwired survival instincts and chemical processes. Learning to work with these sensations, rather than stuffing them down or being ruled by them, gives us power back in the only thing in life we do have control over: ourselves.
Most people assume that by the time you hit your 60s, you’ve reached the point of continuous mental and physical decline. The mind just isn’t as sharp, and the body becomes overtaken by inflammation, stiff joints, and brittle bones. However, a new study from Yale University says that, for the most part, this is only true for those who believe it.
A new study published in the journal Geriatricsfound that when researchers followed 11,000 participants over the age of 65 for up to 12 years, 45% of them improved in either the mental or physical domains, with some improving in both. About 28% improved physically, and 32% improved mentally. To determine whether the participants improved or declined, they completed a global mental performance assessment and a walking test.
“Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” lead author Becca R. Levy, an international expert on psychosocial determinants of aging health, said in a statement. “What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process.”
Older adults improve cognitive function, physical function over time, disproving common views of aging. Individuals with more positive age https://t.co/3xI8pAhqjt
— Reddit Journal of Science (@rsciencejournal) March 8, 2026
When it comes to aging, attitude is everything
The researchers hypothesize that the major reason some people show improvements is their beliefs about aging. Those who have a more positive view of the aging process were much more likely to show improvements in their mental and physical health. Those with negative views on aging were much less likely to show any improvement.
It makes sense because if you believe that you can improve after the age of 65, you’re much more likely to try. If you think that you can or cannot improve your health over the age of 65, you’re probably right.
“Our findings suggest there is often a reserve capacity for improvement in later life,” Levy said. “And because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level.”
Improvement after 65 requires regularly performing age-appropriate mental and physical exercises. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week, which can be divided into about 22 minutes a day.
Here are exercises that can help people age well:
1. Brisk walking
Studies show that walking is great for seniors’ mental and physical health and can help reduce the chances of developing cardiovascular problems as well as cognitive issues, including dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Resistance exercises, or strength training, can help prevent muscle loss and improve metabolic health. They’re also known to elevate mood and improve sleep quality. Examples of strength training exercises include light weights, squats, and standing push-ups against a wall.
3. Meditative movements
Mental and physical exercises such as tai chi and yoga have been shown to improve health in older adults. They are great for flexibility, mental sharpness, and muscle strength. The combination of mindfulness, breathing, and movement benefits both the body and mind.
Recently, adolescent girls have taken to social media to flaunt that they’re “2000s skinny,” while the women who lived through it are sounding the alarm. The days of people being encouraged to embrace their natural curves seem to be over, as many now strive to make themselves smaller. Wellness culture is morphing into something dangerous,…
Wellness culture is morphing into something dangerous, resulting in unrealistic body standards. Celebrities like Demi Lovato, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan were called fat when they were still adolescents in the early 2000s. Back then, it wasn’t uncommon to see hip, collarbone, and chest bones protruding on the red carpet—or even in a local high school.
In that era, teen girls—much like their favorite young celebrities—were developing eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Raven-Symoné has said she underwent two breast reductions and liposuction before the age of 18 due to fat-shaming. Lovato, Taylor Swift, and Lohan have also shared that they struggled with eating disorders earlier in their careers.
Teen girls were doing all they could to make themselves as small as possible because that was suddenly the beauty standard. Now it’s back. The trend is catching on, in part thanks to wellness influencers who stress “clean eating” to achieve physical and mental fitness. Advice about keeping daily calories under 1,200 or doing juice cleanses to maintain a low weight is showing up in the algorithm.
In a video uploaded to social media, a very thin woman poses for the camera. The text overlay on the video reads, “If you think 800–1,200 calories a day is starvation, just know that the 2000-calorie diet was made up by the elite who prey on kids.” James Cappola, a fitness coach, responded to the video by calling out the dangerous misinformation and warning about the risks of anorexia and orthorexia.
Personal trainers, nutritionists, dietitians, and Millennials are among the chorus shouting into the void. But it may be too late. With social media, fear-based nutrition advice, and the re-emergence of heroin chic converging, orthorexia is on the rise.
Orthorexia is a relatively unknown eating disorder that has not yet been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition as an official diagnosis. The National Eating Disorder Association describes the disorder as an obsession with healthy eating. “People with orthorexia become so fixated on so-called ‘healthy eating’ that they actually damage their own well-being and experience health consequences such as malnutrition and/or impairment of psychosocial functioning,” the association explains.
The warnings from older adults and experts online don’t seem to stop teen girls from showing off their extreme thigh gaps. When a new video of a girl getting down to a size 00 goes up, a Millennial adjusts her messy bun and shares the war stories of her adolescence.
In a TikTok video, wellness entrepreneur Autumn Clayman says, “Everyone is getting freakishly thin online. This trend needs to stop. This trend needs to stop. We’re right back to early 2000s skinny—it’s freaky. It’s scary, and people aren’t considering what this trend is going to do to their bodies long term.”
After disclosing that she used to struggle with an eating disorder, Clayman shares her concern about people going to extremes to be thin. She then explains how extreme undereating is “disrupting their hormones, bone density drops, they go through mood issues, so more anxiety, depression, thyroid slows down, fertility drops, chronic stress, gut and digestion issues, skin issues, blood sugar issues, just all the things.”
A man who goes by the name Brandon Ruins Everything on TikTok explains something younger people may not know about the trend: “People are talking about bringing back 2000s skinny, and I don’t think y’all realize that 2000s skinny isn’t a body type. It’s a goalpost that keeps moving. You will never be skinny enough to be 2000s skinny.”
Getting healthy and being comfortable in your body are admirable goals. The way you do it—and the reasons you’re doing it—matter. Changing your body to fit a trend can lead to unhealthy expectations and behaviors, as concerned voices have pointed out. Hopefully, the ultra-skinny trend fades as quickly as it returned.
Even the coolest of the cool cannot escape the occasional social faux pas. Whether it’s putting your foot in your mouth at a dinner party, tripping in public and spilling coffee on yourself, or screwing something up at work, we all mess up from time to time. The good news is that every mistake is an opportunity to recover. This begs the question: What’s the best way to react when you’ve made a mistake?
Historically, people have thought that the best way to respond to a mistake is to express honest embarrassment. Feeling sheepish about your mistake is a great way to show others that you understand social norms and simply fell a bit short on this occasion. You blush, cast your eyes downward, and whisper a small “My bad” or “Sorry about that,” with a shrug of your shoulders.
What’s the best way to respond to making a public mistake?
However, research shows that the best way to recover after screwing up publicly is to laugh at yourself. A new study from the Cornell University SC Johnson School of Business involving 3,000 participants found that laughing at yourself can make you more likable than showing embarrassment.
“Our findings suggest that people often overestimate how harshly others judge their minor social mistakes,” said study co-author Övül Sezer, PhD, of the Cornell University SC Johnson School of Business, according to Neuroscience News. “For minor, harmless blunders, laughing at yourself can signal social confidence, reduce tension, and communicate that the mistake was accidental.”
Why is it better to laugh at yourself than to show embarrassment?
Laughing at yourself shows that you are socially confident and downplays the mistake in others’ eyes. Plus, people who can laugh at themselves are seen as warmer and more competent. The humor serves as a “reset button,” de-escalating the collective feeling of awkwardness.
On the other hand, when people appear embarrassed and apologetic after a mistake, others often see their reaction as excessive. This can come across as inauthentic or socially awkward. Often, people exaggerate their level of embarrassment to show that they understand what they did was inappropriate. Ironically, in trying to take the sting out of a cringeworthy moment by appearing embarrassed, they actually end up looking more awkward.
“What’s interesting is that embarrassment was often perceived as excessive,” Sezer said. “Observers tended to think that actors who displayed embarrassment were feeling more embarrassed than the situation warranted, while laughing signaled that they recognized the mistake was minor.”
Beyond the social situation itself, feeling embarrassed can be bad for our mental health.
“Some people can shake off their embarrassment when they make a mistake or violate a social norm,” Psychology Today noted. “Others who fear the disapproval of the group might be consumed by shame.”
The researchers added an important caveat to their results: If you are going to laugh off an embarrassing moment, it must be harmless. If your actions hurt someone, laughing things off can backfire in a big way, making you appear selfish and uncaring. “What’s important is calibrating the reaction to the seriousness of the mistake,” Sezer said.
We’re all bound to make a mistake from time to time. The good news is that every mistake presents an opportunity to recover and potentially make ourselves look even better than before. The key is to give your ego a rest and have a big laugh at your own expense. Most likely, people will find you more likable because you had the confidence to let your guard down.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Introverts make up one-third to one-half of the population, but our conversation norms—both online and off—are designed for extroverts.
Susan Cain, author of the bestselling book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, calls this phenomenon the “New Groupthink.” It’s a culture that favors constant collaboration and rapid-fire replies over stillness and deep thought. We live in a world that measures contribution by the number of messages sent, and it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind when you go silent.
But what if this isn’t about falling behind? What if silence is just a different way of engaging? If you’ve ever wondered why you go quiet in group chats, consider these 10 signs you might be an introvert.
Unlike their extroverted counterparts, introverts take time to think about their responses before firing off a text. Photo credit: Canva
As Cain describes in her book, introverts “listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation.”
In a group chat setting, this internal processing means you might mentally prepare a response, revise it, overthink the timing (can’t be too quick or too slow, right?), and then decide the conversation has already moved on without you. The perfect response you crafted vanishes before you hit send.
2. Surface-level banter drains you
For introverts, not all conversations are created equal. You might find endless small talk, quick memes, and emoji reactions tiresome, and yearn for messages with more substance. That’s because introverts crave depth—a meaningful exchange that explores an idea, a feeling, or a genuine problem.
How would you react in this situation? I already interact too much with some of my coworkers on a daily basis so please leave me out the group chat. Thanks #groupchat#introverts#workgossip
Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that serious conversations are more enjoyable than people expect, yet we consistently underestimate others’ interest in them. For introverts, this inclination toward depth isn’t a personality quirk—it’s a fundamental part of how they communicate.
3. You observe everything
If you’re quiet in the group chat, it doesn’t mean you’re not paying attention. Introverts are sharp readers of context: they notice shifts in tone, track emotional undercurrents, and pick up on what’s not being said as much as what is. This ability to observe and accurately synthesize group dynamics is one of the most underappreciated traits in online communication.
Introverts are sharp readers of context—everything that’s not being said. Photo credit: Canva
Psychologist Daniel Goleman found that empathy is a core component of emotional intelligence, and that quiet people often exhibit greater empathy because they listen more deeply. So while you may not be contributing messages to the group chat, you’re still playing an active role—picking up on subtle cues, like a shift in someone’s tone.
4. Group chats drain your social battery
Group chats require a lot of mental and social energy as you process multiple conversations, competing personalities, shifting group dynamics, and implicit social cues all at once. That’s an enormous cognitive load, especially compared to one-on-one conversations, where your focus can be directed toward a single person without all the noise.
If you feel overwhelmed, muting the chat might not be a bad idea. You need to manage—and maintain—your energy well.
5. You refuse to break the silence with noise
You won’t send a message just to be seen. While some group chat members are happy to drop a fire emoji or send an “lol” to stay visible, introverts tend to hold back unless they have something substantial to contribute. They’re committed to authentic communication.
Blake Griffin Edwards, a licensed marriage and family therapist, explains it this way: “Introverts must think it out before they are able to talk it out very well.”
As a result, your communication style is built on intention rather than impulse. You may send fewer messages, but when you do, they’re more meaningful.
6. Group chats can feel overwhelming, even for good writers
Here’s a paradox many introverts recognize: writing often feels more natural than speaking. Text removes the social pressure of real-time performance, giving you space to choose your words carefully. Yet despite being text-based, group chats can still trigger overstimulation.
The problem lies with pace. A group chat doesn’t move at the same speed as a thoughtful email chain or a journal entry. It’s fast and unpredictable—like a live conversation—which creates the same timing pressures introverts face in verbal group settings. Hans Eysenck’s foundational theory of introversion suggests that introverts have a higher baseline level of cortical arousal, meaning they reach sensory overload faster than extroverts when external stimulation—like a flood of notifications—keeps escalating.
7. You tune into how others are feeling
You’re not just reading the words in a thread—you’re reading between the lines. As an introvert, you probably notice delicate emotional shifts, like a person’s messages becoming shorter, a joke that falls flat, or silence from someone who’s usually chatty. This emotional sensitivity is a strength, but it can also make group chats feel more burdensome than expected.
Emotional sensitivity can feel like a burden in group chats. Photo credit: Canva
In The Mirror, Katie Oborn observed that introverts “pick up on unspoken emotions and subtle shifts in conversation and tone.” That level of awareness means introverts are often the first to notice when something is off.
8. You don’t bend to the pressure to perform
Group chats carry an implicit social pressure: respond quickly, be entertaining, stay visible. For emotionally independent introverts, that pressure can feel crushing. People who resist the pull to perform in group settings often have a strong internal compass about what matters to them and why. They won’t chime in for the sake of it, and they won’t be dragged into drama just because the group demands a response.
9. Constant notifications break your focus
For introverts, great thinking often happens when you’re alone. There’s research to support this: studies consistently link solitude to improved emotional regulation, creativity, and decision-making. When a group chat keeps pinging you—interrupting a reading session, the workday, or a quiet moment—it fragments the kind of deep focus and flow state introverts depend on.
Studies from Microsoft Research confirm that instant message notifications slow task performance and make it more likely you’ll lose your train of thought. For introverts, who need more time to process information, these interruptions can be even more costly. The “ping” of a phone notification can disrupt deep focus.
Scroll through your messages, and you might notice a pattern—either in yourself or in your introverted friends. Long periods of silence often lead to a single, valuable message that adds meaning to the conversation. That’s what strategic participation looks like: waiting for the right moment, then contributing something meaningful.
Embracing your strength
For introverts, hanging back and staying quiet in a group chat isn’t withdrawal. It’s a form of meaningful participation that favors observation, thoughtful processing, and intentional engagement over simply making noise.
If you recognize these signs in yourself and want to start engaging more on your own terms, these small shifts can help:
Try preparing your thoughts before or at the start of a lively group conversation.
Remember, writing is your natural way in. A thoughtfully crafted message at the right moment can carry more weight than a dozen impulsive replies.
Feel free to set notification boundaries without guilt.
When you’re ready to chime in, trust your timing and insight.
As Susan Cain reminds us, being the loudest in the chat doesn’t mean having the best ideas. The quietest voice may actually be paying the closest attention—and when their words are shared deliberately, they can shift the entire conversation.
Go ahead and pull up the paper emoji on your iPhone. The little white page, the one that looks completely blank from a distance. Now zoom in.
There’s a letter in there. It’s addressed to someone named Katie. It’s signed by someone named John Appleseed. And it has been sitting inside that emoji, invisible to most people, since iOS 5.
Instagram user Ella (@el_michelle1) posted a video zooming in on the emoji in December 2025, and it spread rapidly, racking up millions of views from people who could not quite believe they’d been sending that little icon around for years without knowing what was written on it. As LADbible reported in its coverage of the discovery, the reaction split neatly between people who immediately recognized the text and people who absolutely did not.
Those who recognized it knew it right away. The letter contains the full text of Apple’s “Think Different” campaign, which ran from 1997 to 2002 and became one of the most celebrated advertising moments in the company’s history. It reads, in part: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.” The letter ends: “Take care, John Appleseed.”
Per Emojipedia, which documents the design details of every emoji across platforms, the text has been embedded in Apple’s paper emoji since the icon was introduced. It’s not just the paper emoji, either. As Creative Bloq noted, the same hidden text shows up in Apple’s notebook, memo, scroll, and clipboard emojis, and the receipt emoji contains a partial reference with the words “misfits,” “square pegs,” and “round holes” listed as line items.
The name “John Appleseed” is Apple’s longstanding demo persona, used across its software and marketing materials for decades. As for Katie, nobody outside Apple knows for certain. The name varies slightly across emoji versions, appearing as “Kate,” “Katie,” or “Dear Katie” depending on which icon you’re looking at.
It’s worth noting that Apple isn’t the only platform hiding things in its emoji designs. As Emojipedia documents, Samsung’s version of the clipboard emoji was once addressed “Dear Samsung,” and Facebook’s clipboard features what appears to be a small table of first names and dates, possibly birthdays.
The response to Ella’s video captured something genuine: the strange pleasure of discovering that something you’ve looked at hundreds of times contained a message you never noticed. “Attention to detail is insane,” one commenter wrote. Another said: “I love when developers leave such tokens of their own in the things they built.” A third simply wanted to know: “Who is Katie?”
Apple, characteristically, has not said.
You can follow Ella (@el_michelle1) on Instagram for lifestyle content.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
As workers struggle to land good jobs and employers struggle to find ideal candidates in the ever-changing job market, a new trend is emerging. Many applicants are turning to artificial intelligence to give them an edge—with mixed results at best. Because interviews are one of the most stressful parts of the job search, it’s become common for folks to input questions into ChatGPT to find the “perfect” response. However, a former recruiter warns that this is a bad idea, noting that you end up “sounding so fake” when using it.
Former recruiter turned career coach Madeline Mann showed an example of why ChatGPT shouldn’t be used to answer written interview questions. In a TikTok video, Mann shared a ChatGPT response to the question, “Why did you leave your last role?” ChatGPT replied with the following:
“I decided to move from independent work to a team environment so I can build deeper lifecycle expertise and learn from a strong mission-driven leadership team.”
It is common to use AI to help write your job interview answers, but often they are sounding too verbose and not human. If you are reading your interview answers from a script, you are likely to be rejected in the job interview and not get the job offer. Here is an example of how to sound more normal and like a coworker during a hiring process. Follow for more job interview tips, and job search strategies! #jobsearch#jobsearchtips#jobinterviewtips#jobinterview
Did that sound like something a human would say? Mann argued that ChatGPT used so much professional jargon that it sounded like a robot wrote it (because it did). Mann said that in interviews, it’s best to “sound like a coworker.”
“If you do not already sound like their coworker, they will have trouble picturing you as their coworker, and they won’t give you the job offer,” said Mann.
Mann said that a better response would be a quick and simple: “After freelancing for X years, I really missed being on a team.” She said that a reply like that is sincere, direct, and more like how a person would normally speak to a coworker. She added that if you were to use AI for interview responses, you should edit them down and remove any “bungle” to “talk like a person.”
Upworthy spoke to AI pros, business leaders, and recruiters about using artificial intelligence for job interviews. The majority arrived at the same conclusion: If you choose to use AI, it can be a useful tool for interview preparation. However, it shouldn’t sub in to do the actual interview for you.
“AI can be a useful tool for preparing for an interview,” said Megan Sweeney, public relations director at the American Staffing Association. “However, at the end of the day, the interviewer still needs to know you’re capable of doing the job.”
“If a company requests written interview questions, then using AI as a starting point is fair game in my book,” said Russell Taris, an expert on how managers can best use AI in the workplace. “The key statement, though, is ‘as a starting point.’”
“Candidates should use AI to organize their thoughts and firm up their language, but the examples and experiences need to be their own,” said Taris. “Managers can now tell right away when someone submits a response straight from ChatGPT without any editing. Smart candidates use AI the way you’d use a good friend who happens to be a great editor.”
Authenticity is key
“The problem is being authentic,” said Magical Brands CEO Mark Coffie. “Candidates who prepare and deliver scripted, overly polished answers tend to fail when asked questions spontaneously. You can use AI to outline your ideas but speak and answer questions in your own voice. That’s different from reading something generated. Interviews are a testing of judgment, communication, and problem-solving…Technology cannot substitute for that.”
“Using AI to pressure test your answers ahead of time can truly benefit candidates,” said Taris. “Run your ‘Why did you leave your last role?’ answer through it and ask it to poke holes, or practice your ‘greatest weakness’ answer until it’s specific and honest. The best answers I hear in interviews aren’t the most polished; they’re the ones where the candidate clearly thought it through beforehand and can go deeper, if needed. AI is one of the best prep tools available right now, and most candidates aren’t taking advantage of it.”
“Using AI for interview prep is helpful, but you will be the one being evaluated,” concluded Sweeney.
