Freeze! FBI! Mark Is The Suspect!
Facebook & Instagram (FBI) have the same owner Mark Zuckerberg. From our previous blogs about how we should unfriend Mark (as he was jumping from scandal to scandal) and how Facebook is not cool anymore but we are not here to diss him (no, not today!). I think we have established that we don’t approve of his ways long before this feature. Anyway, not so honourable mention of the recent #10YearChallenge of uploading your 10-year-old photo and a recent photo to see the difference. It looks like a normal challenge, right? Wrong! Have you ever wondered how data can be mined and used to train facial recognition algorithms for age progression and age recognition? If you were to train a system about how people age and look after a certain amount of time, isn’t this the easiest way? We have already exposed a lot of our personal data that can be used against us.
No, this is not just another article about how Facebook and other social-media is hell-bent on ruining our lives and storing and selling our data and how hopeless we are. We, as a community (people, public, humans, homo sapiens, etc whatever you prefer), are slaves of the new technology. I am not denying that I know it, you know it, we all know it. But, my question is, why is it so hard for us to break-up with our social media accounts?
Break-ups are hard. I get it. Not only because we loved that person and admired them, but also due to the comfort and convenience of being in a relationship. We become accustomed to a certain way of living and breaking that regular routine requires courage and determination. Same goes with our break-up with social media, cigarettes and alcohol (and other addictive substances). Interestingly, social media is highly addictive (an addiction neglected by most and considering it harmless), secreting high dosage of dopamine with every like, comment and text.
We get anxious if we don’t check our social media in the same fashion we feel restless if we don’t smoke. Our body practically craves for it. There are two types of people; one, who demonise social media and applaud when you quit, others, who love social media, think you’re stupid if you are quitting and suggest you to use it less (if you’re so keen on quitting). When you are compulsively checking social media and you try to quit it, there’s always someone saying, why can’t you just control it? Why do you need to quit? And asking other such questions.
Social media is designed to be addictive, creators want you to be glued to their app as long as possible. As they poured millions of dollars into predicting what humans find addictive and how they can better craft their app to get you to use them for as long as possible. To track this, you can use Google Pixel’s Digital Wellbeing feature, which provides you with a breakdown of how you use your apps and the time you spend on them, moreover, you can also set limits to your daily usage. This is an Android Pie only feature and fellow Android Pie users can download the app using this link.
It is true that social media is messing with our attention span and affecting our ability to learn deeply. When we unlock our phones and open Instagram, it stimulates many of our senses. We can hear the notifications, feel the phones in our hands and every time we touch a tab we open ourselves to new notifications from our friends (visual sensors). Each page-refresh exposes us to newer content leading to a lot more dopamine secretion. Our brain learns to love or loves to learn the attention we are receiving online, consequently, leading to another dopamine hit. This creates a positive feedback loop, as we repeat this cycle we strengthen the connection and addiction in our brain.
It also creates a lot of fake relationships, for example, your school friend might be a changed person now and you haven’t met him in a long time. But tagging him/her in the memes will give you a false sense of connection, hence, creating a simulation of a relationship.
The Internet encourages us to run place to place and link to link, it was designed to be addictive and reward shallow and hurried thinking. You are exposed to a distracting environment and influence your opinions about what others think of you.
The fear of missing out when you leave social media, the fear that makes you check your phone time to time, is the key element that keeps you hooked. I can narrow it down to three things: connections with others, news and the third is your voice. You have a voice you can share. It is true that you might feel disconnected when you’re not on it. But hey, we logged in and chose it.
My suggestion, try being off of social media for a few weeks and see the positive effects it generates. You’ll be on a path to discover yourself even more and have some free time left to do something productive.
