The Twisted Side Of Social Media & Our Society Ft. Marya Javed

Today I sit down with Marya Javed, a filmmaker and writer, and we go deep into the things that are usually whispered about. We talk about growing up as an army kid, the quiet grief of a marriage ending, the strange pressure of being a content creator who no longer feels like herself, and what it really means to start over in a new country alone. This conversation is not about easy answers. It is about the small, hard, honest moments that shape who we become.

The gift and the cost of moving every two years

Marya was born in Rawalpindi and, like many army kids, spent her childhood moving through small towns all over Pakistan. She describes it as a crash course in adaptability. “You realize very quickly that you have to make friends fast and adjust fast,” she tells me. “As a child you are not just changing schools, you are changing cities, changing a house, changing weather.”

That skill has stayed with her. She does not get freaked out in a new environment. But there is a flip side. She looks at people who have known their friends since grade one and feels a quiet absence. “I don’t know where my childhood friends are,” she says. “I don’t have any.”

I relate to this deeply. For me, moving around taught empathy. You meet all kinds of people from all kinds of places and your bubble never really forms. Marya agrees. She says that access to different cultures, economic backgrounds, and social norms came early, and it shaped the way she later wrote characters and told stories. You cannot develop a bubble when your life is too diverse for one.

The nerd who wanted to try everything

Marya was always a self described nerd. She loved math, she loved biology, she loved art, she played the piano, she stitched Barbie clothes and set up pretend restaurants in the garden. She was good at many things and deeply interested in all of them. That sounds like a blessing, but she points out a quiet struggle that parents of such children might miss. When a child gets As in ten subjects and loves all ten equally, finding direction becomes its own challenge.

She tried a business degree at NUST, then an MSC in Economics at LUMS, only to realize that research and academics were not where she wanted to be. She joined the corporate sector, first at Procter and Gamble in Karachi and later at Telenor in Islamabad. She speaks about those years with real gratitude. “Every young person should go to the corporate sector for at least a year in their life,” she says. “It teaches you the discipline of waking up every morning at 7am, going to work, coming back, even if you do not like your boss.” It taught her how to live alone in a city like Karachi when it felt unsafe, and it taught her to value things like Ramzan at home with family.

When a marriage ends and society does not let you grieve

This is the part of the conversation where the air in the room shifted. Marya got married, moved to Lahore, and eventually that marriage did not work out. She is careful and kind in how she speaks about it. “Nobody gets married with the intention of it not working out,” she says. “A marriage not working out is not a reflection of how good or bad a person you are. Sometimes with the best of intentions, two people who are good human beings do not work out.”

I wish the whole society could take a deep breath and take that in.

She describes the chronic unhappiness that seeps into your soul like a slow drip. The every day exhaustion you drag yourself through. The occasional breakdown on a friend’s call, followed by waking up the next morning and deciding you will do this. And then the impossible decision of when to walk away, made a hundred times harder by a society that treats being married as the biggest privilege a woman can have.

“Our one single definition of success for women is not a successful marriage, just a marriage. Any sort. As long as you are in it, you are good,” she says. She has seen people develop serious chronic illnesses, anxiety, depression, all from staying in unhealthy marriages, but as long as they have something to show for it, society calls it success. The twisted logic of “staying together for the kids” gets called out plainly. A child thrives in a safe, happy environment. A child is not neurologically trained to understand marital relationships, and often internalizes the tension as their own fault.

Marya was lucky. Her parents never put that pressure on her. But she receives messages from girls stuck in unhappy marriages who cannot leave because the noise from their own home is too loud. Her advice is practical and hard won. Financial independence helps. Work that inspires you helps. A sense of purpose bigger than your personal relationships will carry you through. And a belief in a power above that understands your intention and your motivation. She also says something we do not say enough. If you need six months to grieve, take it. Making a rational decision does not mean you will not cry. Processing what was good for you is still painful, and that is part of healing.

The quiet identity crisis of a content creator

Marya stepped into television almost by accident, through a Facebook audition post. She acted, realized the vanity business was not for her, and found her real calling behind the camera. She made seven short films in three years, wrote and directed, and built a presence as a content creator. But then something shifted.

“I have changed as a person. I have evolved as a person,” she says. The four step punch she used to have in her content was gone. She would push herself to do a fashion shoot and could feel that the spark was missing. For the past six months she has given herself space to accept that she is not that person anymore. “Letting go of who you were is a lot harder than letting go of anything else.”

I know this feeling intimately. After I had my baby, it was like a nuclear bomb went off in my entire being. Everything I had become was gone. I grieved my old self, and my work, which was so tied to my identity, went quiet. Marya and I sit in that shared recognition. You cannot push the voice to come back. The more you panic, the longer it takes. You have to be still enough, and sometimes bored and numb enough, for it to return naturally.

She talks about shutting down a business or stepping back from content not as failure, but as one of the bravest decisions a person can make. “It was a very rational decision, again a very emotional one, but a rational one where I knew that this thing was no longer serving me in the ways that I needed it.” Letting go of something that looks good to the eye and to society, because you know you need yourself more, takes a hundred percent conviction. It is excess baggage, and you have to lighten the burden to move forward.

The twisted side of social media and why I tell women to guard their vulnerability

Marya is on the fence about social media now, and her reasons are hard earned. She learned that you get used to the constant admiration, and you only realize it the day it flips. “Till yesterday I was the sweetest, nicest, kindest, smartest, prettiest person alive. Today I wake up and I am a monster.” If you have gotten used to the praise, the pushback will bring you down badly. Her first lesson is stark. Distance yourself from the admiration just as much as you distance yourself from the hate. Do not take the positive comments too seriously either.

Her second lesson is about conviction. The times she got most affected by what was said on social media were the times her own conviction was lacking, or her sense of identity was weakened. And then she says something that might surprise people. She tells women, especially, not to share their vulnerabilities online. “There are tons of people who are waiting for that moment, for your moment of weakness, to attack you. There is a very sadistic pleasure that people get when they see a woman climb up to a certain point and then hurt.”

She learned this the hard way, by projecting her own empathy onto others and discovering that the world does not always reflect it back. She is not coming from a jaded place, she insists, but from a realistic one. Use social media for a purpose bigger than adoration. And as an audience, be picky. You always had the choice to switch the channel. If someone’s content is not resonating, mute them, unfollow them. The power to filter the noise is with you.

Moving to Turkey and learning to laugh at a locked door

In her journey of redefining who she is, Marya moved to Turkey. She wanted to be in a space where nobody knew her, where she had no preconceived notions attached to her, where she had to reintroduce herself to everyone. It has been one of the toughest things she has ever done.

She gives me small, vivid examples that say everything. The bathroom sink clogged and she realized she could not just call a male family member to fix it. She had to chase a mouse back into the fireplace and tape it up, and she left that ugly tape there for three months as a reminder of an obstacle she overcame. One night she came home late, realized she had locked her key inside, and stood there at midnight with nobody to call and nobody to trust. A year ago she would have cried and panicked. That night she sat outside and laughed at herself first. Then she started thinking of solutions, even absurd ones, like asking a neighbor if she could sleep in their car.

She learned the language. She developed a huge appreciation for the life we have back home, despite all its problems. The simple act of ordering coffee in Urdu felt like a gift. “You realize that you have so much only when it is not there.” The experience taught her what she is capable of, and it taught her a deep, quiet gratitude for the small things that matter.

Why this conversation stays with me

Marya is a filmmaker who has told every story she wanted to tell so far, and she is still a huge believer in Pakistani cinema. She is writing now, for herself and for others, and letting the next chapter unfold without forcing it. But what I will carry from this conversation is not just her professional journey. It is the way she speaks about marriage without bitterness, about failure without shame, and about reinvention without a glossy filter. It is the permission she gives to grieve what is lost, to sit in the quiet when your voice is gone, and to trust that it will come back when your vessel is full again. I hope you listen to this one when you need a friend who tells you the truth, kindly.