Social media has transformed the nuances of society in the last decade. Since Facebook launched in 2004 we’ve all become entranced in a world of likes, shares, tags, tweets, posts, snaps and a re-contextualized meaning of the word “Friends”.
Somewhere along the line in this wild journey society became addicted. Gaze into any coffee shop on the street and you’ll see an army of fixated eyes, endlessly scrolling. It’s a little sad to think it’s the norm, but it’s not entirely our fault.
Years of social engineering in Silicon Valley have found the perfect way to hold our attention for longest in order to put advertisements before us, allowing a company like Facebook to be worth $500 Billion today. Not bad for a free service.
These sites are kept like a well-oiled machine, with every button and menu given the most delectable sound or animation for our brain to say “Give me more of this” (see; the Facebook Like button).
It’s the short bursts of happiness that opening one of these services delivers that makes it so compelling. Seeing the colorful likes pour in when you post a photo to Instagram is a potent validation of oneself, but it can easily become an obsession.
It’s not long in the world of self-love and likes that you start to get the itch. When you’re blessed by a spare moment and you feel the overwhelming urge to check your feeds. You might not even know you’re feeling it. It becomes hard wired quickly. Taught by the machine to scroll.
All too familiar is the scene of friends in each other’s company, not one head lifted from their LCD panels, with words only spoken intermittently. The perpetual flow of outing pictures and celebrity gossip have created a new kind of escapism to indulge in; one that lives in the real world, but in a polished, unattainable way. Life has become a spectator sport, and it’s turning us all mad.
This madness has been verified too; a study by The Common Sense shows that teens spend nearly 9 hours in front of screens daily, a worrying chunk of that is social media. Combine this with a study by US Health & Human Services in 2016 that found a direct link between prolonged social media use leading to a higher chance of depression in young people and you have a cesspool of despair.
And what is it all for? Hardly memorable is that meme your friend tagged you in a week ago. When it comes down to it we’re being shaken for cash by these advertising giants, their business models reliant on the relationships between people and our incessant attention to tap, click and swipe.
This isn’t me calling on the world to shut down their accounts, but more of a call for mindfulness. Next time you pick up your phone to check Twitter, ask yourself why. If you can rationally agree with yourself that you’re about to get value from your choice, then enjoy it.
But should you find yourself reaching for the black mirror in moments of shared boredom, set it down, and be present. Living in the moment can be fun when we do it together.
