An athlete on the Tour de France knows most winners cheat and the instance of cheaters in the standings clusters densely toward the top.
To even qualify for the game with cheaters, you need to either be a standard deviation better than they are without their cheat, or compromise and also cheat, which in turn legitimizes their tactics.
Social media exacerbates nascent mental illness by creating this same double bind for young people, where to "succeed," in life by getting access to cliques and networks, school placements, job opportunities, and investment opportunities, you need to "play the game," which today means to fabricate an image of performative conventional success and the perception you are a viable centre of attention.
They know it's wrong, everyone else knows it's probably wrong, but the whole exercise is a temporary suspension of disbelief in exchange for lottery style rewards, provided by sponsors.
Good news on both fronts is you can enjoy riding bicycles or any other sport, and indeed life, without the often horrific and spiritually hollow compromises of elite competition, which social media seems to approximate.
The greatest irony is that it is in more humble and private pursuits where most of the real stories of courage, dignity, and personal triumph that people only fake in performances on social media can truly be found.