We look at social media differently. At the same time, a few of the detrimental effects listed here also apply to us. So no matter which social media service you invest yourself in, please exercise caution and common sense. Your health is worth it.
The bulk of this analysis is adapted from the podcast, Twenty Ways Social Media Can Wreck Your Life, by Laura Bolton.
Social Media…
1. Makes us reactive.
We’re encouraged to approach life the way children do: with little control and scant understanding. Our responses are not calm and measured. We do not act, we react—emotionally, subjectively and without delay.
2. Damages our health.
Depending on the intensity of the content and our own sensitivity, social media causes trauma through the conflict and strife we read, see, hear and internalize. Connecting the dots, this stress response elevates cortisol and depletes magnesium which contributes to a host of degenerative effects in our physical and mental health.
3. Strains our authenticity.
The online version of ourselves (the image we portray and maintain) comes in conflict with our “real” version (who we are in real life apart from a screen). The stronger the dichotomy the tougher the strain is to bear. We become fragmented. The temptation to live in our online world becomes stronger as we realize there’s little to no accountability.
4. Promotes unnecessary comparisons.
We start experiencing “not enough syndrome” when we compare ourselves to others whose lifestyles are shoved in our faces. This comparison is urged on us to induce us to feel inferior when our ordinary lives fall short of the purportedly stellar accomplishments of others. Their status is simultaneously held up as a goal to attain and used as a weapon with which to beat us down when we don’t measure up. We forget that pleasing and honoring ourselves is the only standard we need to have.
5. Competes for our time.
The only commodity we cannot redeem is the amount of usable hours in a day. Time once spent is gone forever. Social Media consumes the time we could have invested in worthy endeavors like starting a business, running a household, fixing a relationship or relaxing with a favorite hobby.
6. Drains our energy.
While not physically taxing, the amount of emotional drive we give to Social Media depletes our limited tank of mental reserves. Often, we squander our focus on things that may have happened to people we will never meet living in places we do not understand. Using our emotional energy this way is wasteful.
7. Diminishes our communications.
We find ourselves texting in lieu of writing, where our ability to convey thoughtful sentiment becomes degraded in practice. Rarely can a meaningful exchange take place when the content is under constant threat of censorship or when the medium is too constrained to facilitate thoughtful, lengthy and spontaneous dialog.
8. Intensifies cheap gratification.
We participate in a manufactured digital culture that reinforces our conditioning to wait for nothing and pay for nothing. We no longer esteem things of value because value implies cost and costly things aren’t usually made instantly.
9. Distorts our worldview.
A contrived substitute world is offered in place of the real one and we’ve learned to live with the imposter. Things in this false world are taken as truth. All of it is designed to manipulate our thoughts, emotions and conclusions to conform to a worldview of someone else’s choosing. It’s calculated and curated to cause us to act the way others want us to act, and most of the time we cannot see the puppet strings.
10. Creates cheap dopamine.
Dopamine, sometimes thought of as the “reward” chemical or the “pursuit” chemical, is active at both events. The pursuit of endless scrolling in order to be rewarded with an interesting post is addictive. Endless dopamine dumps reinforce this behavior, post after post, scroll after scroll. This teaches us to feel good about getting nothing done.
11. Damages our focus.
We cultivate miniscule attention spans. Sound bites, eye bites; if it’s too concise to matter then it’s served up to us. The majority of people cannot concentrate on anything through the avalanche of distractions designed to keep them glued to their device. Frankly, some can’t read and digest sentences such as these because they’re not short enough.
12. Contains subliminal messaging.
Whether it’s Facebook enticing you to buy product X by saying your friend just bought product X (when you know good and well product X is not something your friend would ever buy); or the emotional, somber and defeatist post that makes you feel awkward; or defensive and overly bitter posts; or mad selfies—the subterfuge is endless.
13. Trains us to follow.
We are conditioned to the behavior of being a follower or a mimic in lieu of leading and acting as a sovereign free agent who exercises personal agency. There is no autonomy. Egotistical manipulation ensures there’s only the collective. We risk nothing by learning to say only the things that earn us likes, smilies and hearts. This is a codependent lifestyle, where we perceive our own value insofar as others show their approval of us. We become overly sensitive when total strangers withhold their affirmation.
14. Overstimulates us.
We jump from reel to reel, video to video, post to post and topic to topic. It’s organized chaos, and our brains find this difficult to process and navigate. Most of it is unimportant, but everything still screams equally for our attention. This erodes our ability to prioritize and discern.
15. Is a mirage.
Most content isn’t original; it’s copied from one author to another to another. It’s regurgitated, seldom corroborated and blindly believed because it came from a trusted friend when the original source is unknown. Exposure to information like this makes us delusional.
16. Urges more consumption.
We’ve become parasites whose only goal is to gorge ourselves on a never ending diet of intangible tawdry tripe. We succumb to FOMO and consume for the sake of consumption itself because what we take in has little social and intellectual value.
17. Stifles creativity.
Original thought is discouraged. Someone else’s content is in our head, not our own. Critical thinking is abhorred by the masses who’ve been trained to conform. We let ourselves be molded by outside influences and do not tap into our own creativity, imagination, inspiration or originality.
18. Encourages screen time.
Excessive screen time degrades our health. Blue light from our devices (phones or monitors) and EMF from our smartphones affects us detrimentally, especially given the following stats:
• The average person spends 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media every day
• The average American checks their mobile device 159 times a day
• 46% of Americans watch more user-generated content on social media than movies and television on streaming services
19. Dehumanizes us.
It erodes our ability to connect with one another as humans. We’ve become less compassionate. We’ve learned to live, work and play in a synthetic digital world, so how do we determine the difference between an artificial bot account and a real human account? This damages how we relate to others. Face to face interpersonal connections are alien. Impersonal dialog is the norm. Our smartphone tethers us to the digital world, replaces our identity and makes us think we don’t know who we are without it.
20. Makes talk cheap.
When we’re given freedom of speech without freedom of reach, we’re taught that what we post doesn’t matter because there’s no certainty anyone will see our message. This undermines the fundamental point of communication: We speak to be heard. If nobody can hear us it doesn’t matter what we’re allowed to say. From the start, our dialog is throttled, but we’re told we can easily lengthen our built-in leash by throwing money on the table to “boost” our reach. This just shows there never was a level playing field. While anybody can speak, money makes conversation louder. Anyone who doesn’t pony up the skins will be stifled. The value of content in conversation no longer matters. Past generations used to be taught you don’t speak unless you have something to say. Today, every demographic talks incessantly but has little to say, and the only reason you hear them at all is because they paid for it.
Social media has now become digital eugenics, where it is a mental and emotional manipulation and behavioral modification tool. It’s used to form People who think in lockstep with the news of the day delivered by government curators who have (not so secretly) coerced and co-opted media services that were once private.