The positivity trap

Positivity is everywhere. Just scroll through your social media feed and you’ll come face to face with the Instagram highlight reel: upbeat stories of success and motivational quotes that tell you “happiness is an attitude”. The #goodvibes hashtag has racked up over one million posts on the photo-sharing app alone, but what happens when you encounter an experience that leaves you feeling … not so good? The impulse to cling to happiness in difficult situations, such as a global pandemic, is an understandable one, but this outpouring of relentless optimism is creating a spike in what has been coined toxic positivity.

Trend forecasting platform WGSN described the term in their trend report as “the concept that keeping positive, and only positive, is the right way for