We're all connecting on social media but it seems that no one is connecting in face-to-face interaction anymore. We get addicted to craving the instant gratification of “likes” and “favorites” and we forget about real quality friendship and meaning in the world. It’s great that we can also find meaning on the internet but it’s disconnected from reality. It’s a facsimile or simulacrum of the real. By constantly having one's cellphone to their ear or their eyes in public, people are restraining themselves in the present moment, closing themselves off from the possibilities of interacting with other humans in a shared space, and limiting their potential physical contacts with humanity. We have bypassed the 'physical' reality for the 'virtual' reality enabled by modern technology.
In 2017, internet addiction has become a ubiquitous phenomena. Despite the over-optimism in the 1990’s about the internet and how its responsible use was going to revolutionize the planet, it has taken a disastrous turn. As philosopher Martin Heidegger warned us, technology has its unintended consequences. I like to hold two opposing views about technology simultaneously. One is the optimistic “utopian” view that technology connects us, helps us solve problems faster and ultimately makes the world a better place. Technology is supposed to unite humankind and bring us together (which it has in many ways made the world a smaller place).
On the other hand, there is the pessimistic “dystopian” view that technology divides us, creates more unnecessary or unintended problems, and makes the world a more miserable place. It has also divided us into increasingly smaller social “bubbles.” We’re creating political “echo-chambers” of thought where people segregate themselves according to their beliefs and worldviews. We’re becoming more susceptible to confirmation bias because we only wish to subscribe to media channels, forums and groups that we agree with. More and more people are becoming okay with the idea of limiting other people’s free speech rights (simply because they don’t agree with them), not realizing that this endangers freedom of speech for everyone. The President’s attack on journalists and the free press is certainly not helping, and is completely antithetical to what enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Jefferson sought for a thriving democracy. As Dan Carlin points out, we can’t even have rational political debate anymore because people can’t seem to agree on objective truth.
Our focus and concentration gets swept away by distractions from social media. Humans are prone to use any gimmick to help us ignore reality. We will rationalize anything to keep us from seeing the world and our minds for how things really are. Internet addiction is leading to shortened attention spans and vision/hearing problems. Continued use of cellphones and television causes neck and back problems. Our communication suffers as a consequence of social media addiction. We have phones with voice calling yet we choose to text instead. Meaning is lost in the process. The only communication that our brains recognize as real is face-to-face social interaction. With technology we are replacing real communication with artificial virtual “reality.”
People rarely speak to strangers in public anymore. People used to engage in small talk. Nowadays everyone retreats to their cellphones and everyone ignores each other when faced with an awkward moment of silence or seemingly uncomfortable situation in a waiting room. Via social media we have the ability to talk to people across the nation but we won’t talk to our neighbors. When I was in high school (graduated in 2008) the lunchroom was a place for socializing, joking and laughing. Now every scene of a school cafeteria that one sees on the television news depicts everyone looking down at their cellphone. It’s a microcosm of what is happening across America- we are surrounded by people yet we are all alone, segregating ourselves to our own personal digital worlds.
It’s no secret that social media becomes an addictive behavior, and the companies like Facebook know this and manipulate the user with its algorithms. Studies have shown that there’s a dopamine surge that occurs when we get a new message, comment or “like” on Facebook. After a while, our brains begin to crave this dopamine surge. Consequently, one may feel “down” when you log-in to find no new messages. It’s no surprise that people who frequently use social media feel more loneliness and depression.
Social media takes advantage of a primal need for social interaction and the social need for belongingness to a group. As evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson explains in ’The Social Conquest of Earth,’ for millions of years of human evolution we were part of a small tightly-knit band of thirty to fifty people. In our modern age, we lack this support group and thus seek out this network on-line, but it is insufficient for our needs as social group animals. As a result we are promoting individual self-interest at the expense of losing empathy and altruism. Without community and shared responsibility, humans begin to act out in unproductive and anti-social ways. Without social bonding and closeness, our self-esteem and self-worth diminishes.
Not to mention, social media brings up concerns over issues of privacy. Facebook and Amazon sells your information to Google who then sells that data to advertising firms who direct their products forcibly onto your computer and/or cellphone screens. This is an ethical dilemma because these companies can prey on our innate weaknesses and persuade us to buy things that we don’t need. How many of us have seen an advertisement on Facebook for a product related to what we were searching on Google? These companies don’t need to physically spy on you because they already know what you’re searching, what you’re sharing, what you’re watching and what you’re buying. We have unwittingly made a deal with the devil and received nothing in return. I fear that in the end the devil might just take our “souls.” We’ve bought into the myth that consumer culture will somehow give us what we want, but unfortunately we’ve been sold a false promise. As Zeynep Tufekci points out in her TedTalk, “we are the products being sold.” We have created for ourselves a surveillance society where we willingly give up our information and privacy to the highest bidder. We have created for ourselves the Panopticon that Jeremy Bentham predicted and feared. Many people fear that our world is looking more like the vision prophesied by George Orwell’s ‘1984.’
“The medium is the message,” wrote Marshall McLuhan. The ways in which we communicate now with social media affects the way we think about ourselves, society, and our place in society. The technological interfaces that we use influence the way that we behave, whether we know it or not. We have all witnessed firsthand the horrors of Instagram addiction: self-aggrandizing, unbridled narcissism, attention-seeking, “look at me” mentality. This is a consequence of celebrity worship and a new perverse attraction to fame. We have created an unobtainable standard for people to live up to with the images of men and women portrayed in our popular culture.
People get addicted to checking their Instagram feed multiple times per day to see what their 'following' posts and to see how many new 'likes' they have. These devices and apps give us the illusion that we are more connected and know more about what’s going on in the world, when in actuality it erodes our closeness and trust with people at the interpersonal level. How often are you trying to have a conversation with someone, but they’re busy checking their Instagram feed and not listening to a single word you're saying?
Another seemingly benign neurological addiction is Netflix and YouTube bingewatching. Studies show that bingewatching leads to impaired cognitive development in young adults. Also, people are more likely to bingewatch an entire season of a show if they are lonely and depressed. These factors are also the case with pornography addiction which is an increasing phenomena among men. The human brain has a predisposition to be fascinated with images and sounds. We are a visual and auditory species. With movies and television, we are dulling the mind by bombarding it with such intense stimuli, over-stimulating the visual cortex. We are desensitizing our minds to graphic images of sex and violence to the point where it has become “normal” (which I would argue it is not psychologically normal). It is no wonder that people are unhappy, despite having more advanced technologies and more widespread access to knowledge than ever before. No wonder patients are overprescribed with antidepressants and pain relievers (which has directly led to the current opioid crisis). Many of these epidemics in our society are self-induced. We feel unfulfilled because we cannot possibly satiate the monster of our own creation.
Since I have laid out a list of social problems here, it is practical that I present a solution to the modern social media and entertainment addictions: books. Books are the nutritious brain-food which increases our knowledge and ability to navigate the real-world, as opposed to the internet and social media which is like unnutritious junk food for the brain. Reading improves memory. It also makes one a more interesting person. We have forgotten that learning can also be entertaining. It is not required that media to be visually stimulating for it to be beneficial, although quick “soundbites” have become the trend with overstimulation and shortened attention spans. Taking a break from social media and reading a book instead is a sure way of recharging the brain’s neural capacity and bringing more fulfillment and enjoyment in your life in the long-term. Just like we must exercise our muscles with a daily workout routine, we must exercise our brain muscles in order to stay cognitively alert and healthy into old age. We must remember that boredom and sitting with one’s thoughts is good too because it causes one to reflect on one’s self, to contemplate life and generate new ideas.
To me, the most troubling new occurrence is that parents are no longer reading to their children. Two-thirds of American parents do not read to their children. It is imperative to the future of our children (and the future of our society as a whole) that we read to our children. Books activate the imaginations of developing humans. I would argue that its neglectful not to nurture the minds of maturing adolescents with stories and non-fiction books alike.
Community is also important. Join a local community organization or find a group of like-minded individuals, even if you only meet once a week or once a month. It is important to socialize and share ideas with people off-line, not just on social media. It’s important to learn how to have civilized discussions and rational debates with people that you might not always agree with 100% of the time. We get an incorrect view of how people behave by limiting ourselves to interactions on the web. It’s too easy to isolate ourselves in this digital era.
In more ways than one I suspect that American society is shooting itself in the foot. I worry that we have become complacent and are now witnessing the decay of our civilization. This decay is imperceptibly slow but it will eventually catch up to us. We are fooled by the delusion that technological progress will magically grant us with prolonged health and mental well-being. Unfortunately it does not seem like the American education system is going to pick up the slack either. We could sit idly and blame the politicians but -needless to say- the American people elected those in power, so we have no one to blame but ourselves. We must all take responsibility for our failings. We must find solutions that address the root causes of our problems. No one has an excuse to not work towards making this world a smarter and better place.
