Young: Dependence is the modern-day default setting

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We live in a time when answers are always just a click, text or voice command away. Though this should feel empowering, it’s starting to feel more like a trap.

Before making even the simplest decision, people reach for someone else’s perspective: a friend, an Instagram poll, a therapist or artificial intelligence — contacting multiple friends, multiple therapists or multiple voices until the choice isn’t even close to being internally guided anymore.

In a way, it makes sense; we grew up being told choices matter. What you post online could affect your future job. What college you pick shapes your career. What you wear or say changes how people perceive you. With so much pressure, why wouldn’t people double-check? Multiple reinforcing opinions feel like insurance.

But that insurance has a cost. The more we look outward, the less we trust ourselves. Suddenly, independence feels risky, and decision-making becomes a group project. Philosophers have been warning us about this for centuries. Socrates kept repeating “know thyself.” Kierkegaard said the “crowd” is where the self gets lost. Both were reminding us of the same thing: The loudest voice in your life has to be your own.
“It’s not the decisions we make that matter most; it’s having the courage to make one, live with it and keep moving.”
Now, advice itself isn’t destructive. Asking for it shows humility and openness. We all need teachers, mentors and friends to give us new perspectives. The problem is when advice becomes the default. When every instinct is second-guessed in favor of someone else’s perspective, we start believing that our own judgment isn’t legitimate. Instead of weighing other voices alongside our own, we start to rely on them as if they’re more legitimate than our instincts.

So why do we do this? Fear. Fear of being wrong. People today are obsessed with optimizing everything; there’s always a “better” option. That makes mistakes feel heavier than they should. Asking for advice spreads out the responsibility — if I mess up, at least it wasn’t only my call. But the truth is that failure is unavoidable. Mistakes are one of the best teachers we’ll ever have.

And maybe that’s the point. It’s not the decisions we make that matter most; it’s having the courage to make one, live with it and keep moving.

I’m not advocating for people to stop asking for advice. Community, support systems and outside perspectives are invaluable. But maybe people need to practice looking internally first, analyzing themselves and figuring out the answers they need based on their own morals and values — no matter how small the decision. Maybe they need to sit in the discomfort of not knowing the perfect answer and make a choice anyway.

If independence means anything, it’s trusting that our voices matter more than the chorus of the others we’re surrounded by. Because at the end of the day, no one else can live our lives for us. And when we let constant input become the default voice of reason, we risk losing the very thing that differentiates us from the masses.