Upon coming across a reservoir of eye-opening knowledge, I have come to a rather daunting conclusion, something I had suspected all along, yet fell victim to regardless.
Social media is a parasite.
And it is burrowing its way into our brains, facilitated by content that fuels conflict and drama to improve engagement, which inevitably exacerbates and contributes to mental health and self-esteem issues. Your social media feed is meticulously designed to show you content that is likely to get you engaged, which is why, oftentimes, it highlights and optimizes the content that you disagree with in order to get you to interact with it and increase your screen time. This is a recipe for addiction, as it unconsciously fuels a need for drama and debate, as we find it within our natural individuality to stand up for our beliefs, even at the expense of another’s mental well-being. Cancel culture, online harassment, and cyber-stalking is all a result of chronically online culture. Since the internet has become a global tool, suicide rates have drastically increased in young people. You can only wonder why, but the answer seems obvious. To interact with people from a disconnected location creates a divide, and what forethought and altruistic beliefs one might have, completely dissolves online when the ego feels it is threatened- which leads to relentless harassment online, and a god-like superiority complex that fuels the need for cancel culture.
As many as 30 million Americans are addicted to the internet. A good majority of that is today’s youth. Quoting Netflix’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,”
“There are 2 industries that call their customers ‘users,’ illegal drugs and software.”
Social media is designed to be addictive so that they have more people to advertise to. On Instagram, television, streaming platforms, Facebook, etcetera, we are constantly force-fed advertisements. Social media is an addictive marketing scheme, it sells you products, conflicts, and wasted time.
To again quote Netflix’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,”
“If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product.”
It may not be widely discussed, but it is recognized by some that your cellphone actually listens in on your physical, personal conversations, in person, and through private messaging. While some might claim this is an absurd conspiracy, I implore that you, only in person, discuss with your friends a newfound interest. In no time a product that corresponds with this interest will be recommended to you on Facebook, Google, and so on. These websites sell your personal information to perfect a formulaic algorithm that will sell you your spoken desires.
Social networks utilize psychological tactics to keep you coming back for more. Every refresh, like, and click is a dopamine hit. Preying on human weaknesses, it targets your insecurities and sells you anti-aging skincare. Targeting your political views, it may show you a conservative opinion that ultimately enrages you. These inherently manipulative platforms are designed to be addictive by those working behind the scenes, and they are manipulative in the fact that they facilitate slight imperceptible changes in behavior and perception, making you even more impressionable. In being exposed to the trauma dumping, false information, guilt-tripping, and projections of strangers, a person’s reality is ultimately altered.
A phone is a world that detours people from real life, a device that is utilized as a means of escapism more often than as a tool for conscious creation. (Rather than egoic projection.) Notifications reel you in, detouring you from your present-day interactions. Picking up your phone becomes an unconscious tic, a toxic habit. It is toxic because it begins to override real-world hobbies and events, and because a mere post can change the trajectory of your entire well-being.
Although social media can certainly encourage newborn ideas and send self-help pages your way, most of the time the addiction of doom-scrolling overcomes any good intentions that some users may encourage.
Popular content is prioritized over originality because the algorithm focuses on trends over uniqueness- replaying the same soundbites and aesthetics repeatedly. It highlights and boosts only what they think will sell based on that niche’s popular hits, all tested and experimented with by the algorithm.
But what does social media do exactly? What was originally intended to keep people connected now keeps people divided, through polarizing political beliefs, a “problematic” interest in pop culture figures, and in general, differing perspectives.
Unfortunately, there is no perceived change in the future for social media networks, and we can only hypothesize the effect that it will have on the “Tiktok youth” and the generation raised by “digital babysitters.” The future rests in the hands of the analog thinkers, the creatives, and the deeply intuitive. Luckily, there are exiled members of the former tech community who have risen up and spoken against the way producers of social media are handling things. You can find out more about this in the documentary “The Social Dilemma” which inspired this blogpost in the first place.
I, for one, was raised on technology since I was a child, however, I now vow to quit social media in its entirety, except for logging on to a devoted art account to share the rare update on my big publications and releases, as a means of marketing. I have acknowledged its hindrance to my development and noted all of the time that I wasted away glued to the screen. Furthermore, I recommend primarily creative platforms to all artists, such as Substack, Medium, Shuffles, and so on. If you wish to keep your digital footprint of memories intact, change your password to something long and absurd and hide away that password far from sight, make it an absolute pain to log onto a network that will cause you more pain in the long run. Choose yourself. Choose your time. Choose your present and future. Record your life in the artistic form, instead of on a public platform for others to judge. Cultivate personal connections through text, phone calls, and in-person endeavors. Live your life to the fullest, and don’t spend the rest of your days glued to a screen, focused on fleeting drama and temporary news. In conclusion, I wish you all luck and advise you to think more about the intentions behind your usage of social media and encourage you to cut back on your screen time for the well-being of your own life. Au Revoir!