I was originally paid for this article to appear on the now defunct Outloud Magazine website. It's another rough one. Showing off my ignorance both in retrospect AND at the time. This isn't here because I think it's good. I guess it's here just to show that I've hopefully improved? It does feel unlikely that anyone's even reading this, so what does it matter.
Millennials have grown up facebooking, tweeting, instagramming, and snapchatting. Social media is now a part of our day-to-day lives. Like videogames, rock music, and women wearing trousers, it is therefore the perfect target for demonization. If history has taught us anything, it’s this: if you don’t understand something; hate it, burn it, drown it, or kill it. Now I’m being just as ludicrously hyperbolic as social media critics, so let’s take a step back and try and find the truth in all this.
Ironically, it’s not uncommon to see an article about the dangers of social media appear on social media. Addiction is a common theme:
Are you spending too much time on Facebook?
Are you neglecting your real life to focus on getting more Twitter followers?
Is your sense of self-worth closely linked to your ability to use the correct hashtags?
While these clickbait-y articles play to readers’ paranoia, there is some truth behind them. Hell, I even looked at Facebook halfway through writing this sentence. This is because of the simple fact that we get a rush from getting a notification, or a new follower, or a like, or a favourite, or a retweet. It releases dopamine in our brains, which makes us feel good. And if it feels good, we develop and urge to keep doing it. Definitions of psychological addiction vary, but it’s generally accepted that an addiction is something that has a negative impact on our lives.
It’s also important to remember that you can be psychologically addicted to anything. If you’re spending too much time on social media, it’s easy to blame social media. Social media might not be the problem though, you might be too easily distracted, or you do have a problem with addiction, or you lack motivation, or your self-esteem is too closely entangled with your online presence. Don’t hate the game, hate the player. Unless you do have self-esteem issues, in which case: don’t hate the game, or the player, but realise that being aware of these issues is the first step towards improving your life. But that’s less catchy.
The same logic applies to the hysterical news articles that the Murdoch media regularly defecate into existence. It’s reported that a Daily Mail article (since deleted) called Facebook a “haven for paedophiles” and has been the subject of legal action from Facebook. A phrase like “haven for paedophiles” is so ludicrously sensationalist that it would lead you to believe that Facebook is essentially Tinder for perverts. I’m not making light of online abuse or paedophilia, but social media isn’t the problem. That’s like blaming pillow cases for the existence of the Ku Klux Klan.
Too often, the real issues go unmentioned. Privacy policies are difficult to sensationalise. We put a lot of data on our social media accounts – personal information, private messages, photographs, and it’s often unclear who owns that content once it’s been uploaded. If you delete it, does it ever truly disappear? The true effects of this problem still aren’t widespread, so people ignore it. We’re all guilty of clicking through privacy agreements because, in this instant, on-demand culture, no one is realistically going to read a legal document about their Facebook account. The truth about the liberal approach that social media sites take to using your supposedly private content, is disconcerting to say the least. A change in attitude to privacy is most likely to come as a steep learning curve when people don’t get jobs they apply for because their prospective employers have paid for their social media data, or when the media start humiliating celebrities with the embarrassing Facebook rants they posted when they were sixteen.
Then there’s the mob mentality that can take over when we’re sitting behind screens rather than being face to face. This is well documented in Jon Ronson’s book ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,’ in which the author explains how our relationship with social media has evolved. Initially, it was a democratization of power – Twitter could be used to shame those who would otherwise be out of reach of the general population. If someone wrote something homophobic or racist in a newspaper column, the internet let normal people fight back. But we soon became drunk with power, and the 140-character format doesn’t lend itself to nuance. We get caught up in polarized narratives in which there is no grey area, and in which the distance of the screen makes it even easier to dehumanize our victims.
While social media definitely isn’t Satan incarnate, and isn’t ushering in the brain-dead, ADD, paedophile apocalypse, it is a modern phenomenon that we are right to be wary of. Specifically, we need to be wary of the existing human traits that it can encourage and emphasise; addiction, the need for social validation, and the schadenfreude of destroying other people. It’s fine to criticize Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. but we need to be open to criticizing ourselves too.
Sources:
Daily Mail quote: http://www.alphr.com/news/security/356335/daily-mail-backtracks-on-facebook-paedophiles
So You Think You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_what_happens_when_online_shaming_spirals_out_of_control?language=en
Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/11/youtube-digest-november-6
Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/social-media-addiction-peak_us_56ab9360e4b0010e80e9c71e
Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-to-quit-facebook-addiction_us_56703c4be4b011b83a6c9a58
Vital Smarts: https://www.vitalsmarts.com/press/2015/03/societys-new-addiction-getting-a-like-over-having-a-life/
Medical Daily: http://www.medicaldaily.com/facebook-addiction-activates-same-brain-areas-drugs-how-social-media-sites-hook-you-320252
Computerworld: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3014439/internet/social-media-addiction-is-a-bigger-problem-than-you-think.html