How Social Media Affects Our Health
Humans Are Social Creatures
We are hardwired to be social and that has helped our species survive. Our eyes are worse than most birds. Our speed is slower than most predators. Sharks can detect electrical signals & crocodiles can detect pressure changes. Dogs have more than 100 million sensory receptors in their nasal cavity, whereas we have 6 million. Physically, we are mostly inferior. Instead, we have cooperation, communication, emotions, and opposable thumbs.
Back then, the hunters and gatherers worked together to survive, which led to organized societies. Today, most people live in communities and work in companies. Procreation, economy, and war all require teamwork. Pillars of society (math, science, arts, politics, law, etc.) all rely on social networking. Our history shows we survived because of our social skills, so what does that mean for our future?
Enter The Information Age
The 21st century is otherwise known as The Information Age, where widespread technology was supposed to solve poverty, disease, violence, and others. We certainly haven’t seen the end of those problems, but technology has helped in tackling parts of those problems while also creating other problems. Our world is more challenging to navigate.
The internet connected more people than ever before at insane speeds. What used to take months to deliver news to someone across the ocean has decreased to mere seconds. Despite all this connectivity, many people feel lonely and starved of genuine human connection. We post about the good times on social media to compete for likes & shares, while the struggles remain buried. We take people’s posts at face value without understanding their validity. We post body-positive images, while ignoring the stigma around emotional & mental health.
Making People Feel Is Power
Some people are masters at evoking emotions for likes & shares. They understand that storytelling is a skill that can be learned and it is a tool as old as time. Aristotle believed a speaker can gain credibility through storytelling if they have wisdom, virtue, & goodwill. John F. Kennedy convinced the American public to put a man on the moon by making people feel and putting them through emotional transcendence. Skeptics became believers. Believers became evangelists.
Social media works in a similar manner. The posts that receive a large share of attention pique your curiosity and try to add value to your life through storytelling techniques. They receive lots of shares not because we care about the people we are sharing it with, but because we care about the thing we are sharing. People like and share internet content not for others, but rather to define themselves, and for how it makes them look and feel. While there are cases where we see a post and believe the information could benefit a friend or loved one, the majority of times we share on social media because we are selfish.
The best social media accounts understand which emotions to trigger within their audience and which content we will be most selfish with. It’s not all fame & glory for those influencers either. They may lack a close-knit group that genuinely cares about them. They may even feel anxious and insecure about maintaining their status as influencers. Social media is at a point where most participants (both producer & consumer) feel addicted because it’s a quick fix for our need of human interaction, but we also feel empty afterward.
Is It Bad?
No, it’s not all bad. We survived as a species because of our social skills and it is the reason we continue to make progress in all pillars of society. The Information Age has given us so much content at blazingly fast speeds in a short amount of time. It amplifies the best and worst of human nature, and like every challenge we face, we will leverage the best parts and learn from the worst parts.
I do believe social media is useful, but I also believe it is up to each one of us to moderate its consumption. I tried ignoring social media for 3 days and documented how I felt throughout that experience. It was hard, to be honest, but it gave me the needed experiment to retrospect on how social media has changed day-to-day habits and how it should be used from here onwards.
