Your Brain on Social Media
How an exploitative business model has culminated a complete reliance on technology
GROUND RULES
The core problem with social media is that its users do not typically use it with intent. Most of the time, we sit scrolling mindlessly. We gravitate towards social media for the same reasons we enjoy other forms of entertainment like movies, sports, or gambling—unpredictable, pleasurable stimuli.
It is built into our DNA to desire interaction, validation, and reassurance. In fact, it is essential to our survival. We are social creatures, but social media hijacks our innate limitations and exploits the neural circuitry by disrupting the natural flow of rewarding experiences.
Platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat deliver artificial "rewards" right to our pockets. Every buzz, beep, or ding has the potential to ignite a "happy chemical," otherwise known as dopamine, and send the brain positive signals. When we are exposed to a constant stream of artificial hits of happiness, our baseline levels of happiness never reset, and sink further and further below their normal levels. It is no wonder that, in a generation full of social media guinea pigs, there are record anxiety levels, depression rates, and suicides.
THE TRUTH ABOUT DOPAMINE
Most people associate dopamine with feelings of happiness and pleasure—and that is absolutely true—but the neurochemical also plays a significant role in the anticipation of pleasurable stimuli. That means our brains are filled with dopamine—not only when we see a meme, a video of a puppy, or a friendly update from a family member—but also when we think we will one of those things. If you press a button to get a candy bar, after 10 times, you will start to get excited just by pressing the button.
After considering dopamine’s complete role in the brain’s reward system, it is clear why social media is not only intoxicating but also toxic. Those who spend a lot of time on social media have brains that spend a lot of time releasing dopamine. Without it, they would feel as if something were missing. Much like Pavlov’s dogs, we have been trained to expect rewards from our phones.
SOCIAL MEDIA’S SHIFT IN MOTIVE
Social media was not always a place for soliciting old armchairs, dirt bikes, and old kitchen appliances. When I first created a Facebook account, circa 2012, I wasted most of my time messaging the same friends I had just seen that day at school and playing games like DrawSomething or looking at memes on iFunny.
Back then, there was still some sense of autonomy over what the social media experience was like—my feed was not a place for the daily news of the world; I was not constantly bombarded with explicitly personalized advertisements; and I was not exposed stories, TikToks, reels, notes, or bitmoji locations. Instead, my scroll felt limited to the group of friends I chose to interact with. Facebook in 2012 served a distinct purpose—it was a place that made you feel like you were still hanging out with the friends you had just seen at school. Unfortunately, it no longer serves that purpose. It is imperative to our existence.
Number of Users on Facebook (2008-2022)
Such a monumental shift in such a short time can make it seem like something is not real unless you can show it to a person on a screen. Just a decade ago, we were listening to music on MP3 players and iPod nanos. Since then, however, app developers and smartphone engineers have developed a product that eerily resembles a technological opiate.
SOCIAL MEDIA’S EXPLOTATIVE BUSINESS MODEL
Here are some of the “hot-button” words I have come across while doing research for this post:
· fractured attention
· intermittent reward system
· compulsory interaction
· strategic persuasiveness
Even if you do not know exactly what each of these terms means, they do not have good connotations. Social media apps have one goal in mind—to profit off of our engagement. Specialists, known as "attention engineers," work constantly to come up with new ways to incentivize clicks and incite interaction. They use invasive marketing features like the "close friends list," time-sensitive notifications, and measurements of engagement to gauge the things we like the best.
“Here’s how Facebook engineers your attention. Facebook algorithms choose and schedule content and ads optimally. Based on your media use, cookies, browser history, and myriad other factors, they present you with the most engaging content at the best possible time. For example, if I (Facebook) track enough data to know you consistently use Facebook every morning between 0700 and 0900, and I correctly identify you hate mornings and love puppies based on your previous posts and browser history, I will recommend a cute viral puppy video at 715. You consume the video, and it makes you feel good. You only had to watch one ad, but your morning is better now! But wait…the video auto-plays. Now, you find yourself watching a funny cat video compilation. And then an ad. And then another video!”
—J.Z. Conger of OverTheHorizon
So, even if it appears that your phone is listening to you, there is likely a much simpler rationale at work—you spend time talking about what interests you, and you also spend time looking at what interests you on your phone. So your phone, like a sneaky 007 agent, listens, tracks, and uses the stuff you do on your phone to give you a new Netflix suggestion just after you finished telling your friend you needed a new show to watch. Do they have every right to do that? Great question!
WHAT IS IN MOST COOKIE AGREEMENTS
Yes, I know, most of us will never read the fine print. But cookies are a new kind of fine print. A cookie is a digital file that is stored on your computer’s hard drive and collects information when your are using a specific website or platform that uses cookies to optimize their content and user experience. There are two types of cookies:
(1) session cookies- these are cookies that become inactive when the user closes out of the website/platform
(2) persistent cookies- also known as a “stored” cookie, it continues to collect your data and information even after you’ve closed out of the website.
Can you guess which of these cookies social media uses to target advertising and optimize content?
FINAL WORDS
So where do we go from here? Is the answer to trade in our data-consuming smartphones for iPod shuffles and old LG flip phones? It is important to remember that we are all figuring out how to handle this tech revolution in real-time, together.
The most crucial resource we have in fighting the battle against these companies demanding more and more of our attention is to recognize that our social interdependence has been substituted for a dependence on semi-transient, invasive technology. Our attention is the most valuable thing that we have, and, as of now, we do not spend most of it on own accord.
It does not matter what language you speak, how intelligent you are, or (yes), even how many likes you get on Instagram, the tricks of social media work on everybody. Failing to acknowledge this fact will only lead to having an increased inability and unwillingness to cope with the world around us. If we always have the comfort of falling back on technology to make us feel better, it will lead to a massive, drastic disregard of long-term consequences—we will continue to spend more money when we make more, continue to slack off more when work is going better, and continue to scroll more when we see the things we like. The complex relationship that we share with our phones is unlike anything that has ever existed before. We must be mindful and grounded in our values.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Courses offered at Stanford for mining massive data sets
“I Lost My Mom to Facebook”—Patrick Miller