The Dark Side of Social Media
The way people live their lives and interact with each other has taken the biggest shift. Having immediate access to information, instant connectivity to people, and globalized voices are wonderful gifts. Social media has become a key part of the modern lifestyle. It brings us closer and makes our lives easier. It seems at first that there's nothing to worry about and everything is fine until it's not.
I recently watched the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma" and there's no way I will let the chance to make content about it pass. This documentary greatly shows the bad effects of social media on its users and even on the world. Indeed, social media is a great and helpful tool, but like everything else, there are downsides to using all those platforms. So let's now dive deeper into the dark side of social media.
Understanding the Downsides of Social Media
First, social media is not inherently bad. I'm not here to demonize social media and say you don't need to use it at all. However, it can ruin your life and you don't even know it. There are tons of videos on YouTube that talk about how social media is affecting our mental health and our life. You can see many people share their stories saying that quitting social media is the best decision they ever made, simply because it made them happier and for some, it cured mental health issues.
But why do they really feel that way? The short answer is they become free from seeking validation, free from social media addiction, free from comparison, free from unnecessary information, gossip, and drama, free from what others expect to see from us. They have a more productive life, enjoy the present moment, and are not constantly distracted by their phones. The long answer is that our brain is not static. The human brain can adapt to change, even in adulthood. The organization of brain circuitry is constantly changing as a function of experience. In Neuroscience, this is called neuroplasticity.
This brain plasticity is associated with changes such as memory and addiction. We can easily be addicted to certain things, and this is where all the social media platforms are good at. They use your psychology against you. They want you to get hooked and stay on those platforms for the longest time possible. Have you ever wondered why social media is free? Simply because we are its product. Without social media users, they cannot generate income. So, they make it so addictive by studying human psychology and knowing how their users can stay on for the longest time because staying longer on those platforms means more money.
The Addictive Nature of Social Media
All social media platforms are not just biologically addictive, they're also designed to be addictive. The like button, reactions, scrolling, notifications, tagging, comment sections, stories, and posting are just some of the many features they make that let you get hooked and stay on longer. And the amazing part is, they know what you want. We are not seeing the same things when we are using all those platforms. What you see is based on the recorded details of your previous activity. All your actions are being tracked so they can manipulate you to stay longer by providing you with the things you want to see. The more videos or information that you are interested in, of course, it will let you stay for a longer period and thus make you addicted. This means more money for them.
But that's not all. Spending too much time on social media is not only making you an addict, but it also rewires your brain and affects your attention span. Neuroscientists found that positive interactions, such as someone liking your photo, positive comments, notifications, and so on, trigger the same kind of chemical reaction as gambling and drug use. When you get likes, comments, notifications, or even just scrolling, your brain releases the Feelgood hormone called dopamine. This is a hormone and neurotransmitter which is an important part of the brain's reward system.
Social media is a dopamine booster that we can always check back on whenever we want. It provides instant gratification with minimum effort through a few clicks. Coincidentally, the brain rewires itself which makes you crave likes, interactions, and attention. Also, it makes your brain prefer instant gratification from your phone over the hard tasks, leaving you unmotivated, addicted, and distracted.
The Psychology of Validation
But what really is the reason why we post, share, comment, or anything on social media? Is it the likes, comments, attention? Well, it's all a part of it, but that's not really it. It is the validation. Social media is all about showing off your life. What you post is the reflection of what you want others to see, whether you want to be seen as pretty, intelligent, funny, cool, friendly, or rich. That gets validation with the likes, comments, and attention you get.
Most people love to talk about themselves most of the time. In fact, on average, people spend 60% of the time in conversation talking about themselves, and it jumps to 80% in terms of how we use social media platforms. According to a study conducted at Rutgers University, it seems that people's favorite topic is themselves simply because it feels good. When you post something on social media, especially about yourself, the underlying agenda is that you want validation. And if you get the validation you want, it will boost the release of dopamine in your brain, because the brain's reward centers are most active when the subject is yourself. Then again, leaving you addicted, anticipating the next validation-seeking, and creating the unending social media habit.
But what if you don't get the validation you want? Then the opposite will happen. Seeking validation through social media is so easy. It can be done with just a few clicks and then you're feeling good about yourself. However, your brain eventually rewires to make your self-worth be dependent on the likes and attention you get, and that's dangerous. If getting validation feels so good, not getting validation can cause loneliness and depression. According to the American Psychology Association, mental health disorders increased significantly over the past decade. Depression and suicide greatly increased since social media became mainstream and part of everyone's life. This is scary. More and more people have their mental health declining.
How Social Media Affects Mental Health
How social media affects our mental health can be caused in several ways and can affect people to a different degree. Human beings are social creatures, and social media is made for us to be socially connected. We need other people in our lives to thrive and survive. We need to connect and interact with others to ease some pain, stress, anxiety, or depression. Social media was intended to keep us connected with each other. Ironically, for many people, the opposite has happened. Many people rely solely on social media to connect. While it has some benefits, it is never a replacement for real-world human interaction. The face-to-face interaction is the one that triggers the release of hormones that reduce stress, make us feel better, and be more positive.
Relying only on a virtual connection on social media can actually make you feel lonely, isolated, depressed, or even disconnected from the real world. This is often experienced by people who have low self-esteem. Having low self-esteem has many causes, and social media can contribute to it. Maybe you know that social networking sites create a platform for bragging. It is a place where you see everyone's perfect self-presentation that consists of mindfully selected pictures, information, and life events. It is a perfect place to represent themselves in ideal ways and it triggers us to compare ourselves to them.
Humans have a major drive for social comparison, and it is made easy and accessible 24/7 through social media. People often compare themselves to others' perfect but manipulated lives, and it causes people to feel inadequate, have low self-esteem, and have poor self-evaluations. Another thing is the doom scrolling, which is defined as the act of consuming an endless procession of negative online news to the detriment of the scroller's mental wellness. Many people often scroll and read continuously about bad news and negative posts, even if it is depressing.
There's this idea that people tend to have, that if they know everything, they're not missing out. And this will lead you to fall into doom scrolling. We must admit, that not all that you see on social media is helpful because some are mentally harmful and some are nonsense. If you are constantly bombarded and paying the most attention to negative content, of course, it can contribute to depression. We can think about it this way: in the body's perspective, there's this famous phrase that says "You are what you eat." But from the brain's perspective, we can say "you are what it consumes."
As I said earlier, our brains are constantly changing. It will change as it adapts to new information, experiences, or anything you're putting into it. If your brain changes, of course, your behavior changes. Unlike the products that we buy from the supermarket, social media has no manual instructions or rules on how to use it or how it needs to be used. It's all up to you how you want to be using it, and that's the problem. People get abusive and use it for cyberbullying. Many people get deprived of sleeping by using it mindlessly. Many people fake their profile and information, and social media is used to spread information and fake news.
Social media and the internet made it very easy for anyone to publish content on websites or social media profiles, and many people rely on social media for news and information. However, you can't always trust what you read on social media because false information is spreading six times faster than true information, according to a research study. The spreading of false information is done for a variety of reasons. It can be by promoting an ideology, creating confusion, a political agenda, or making money. It is a profitable business for online publishers simply because popular news means more ad revenue. The more people click on that page, the more people see the ads on that page, the more the ads are seen, the more they generate money.
But the news and information are not the only fake in social media. There can also be fake relationships, fake intentions, or fake personalities. Social media is a world where you have the ability to control what you want to be seen by others, crafting your identity here, even if it's not real. Lies in the human nature of wanting to be accepted by others. We want to impress, to be approved and liked by people, even if we don't know them or like them in the first place.
Conclusion
Social media is a massive world. It cannot be taken away from people. It will continue to grow and impact people's lives. It has become a regular part of our lives for over a decade now. Social media is not really that bad. All I said in this article are the negatives of it, but of course, there's a positive side to this. The negatives of social media can be detrimental to people's lives, and you have to understand that although it is so addictive, still, the power on how you use it, how often you use it, or whether you will still use it is in your hands. If you want something to change, make a change yourself.
