Are you being Influenced?
Hi Reader, What’s on your mind?
Influence, a nifty little term for quite a complex function, it generally means “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or is considered as an effect itself.” Change in behavior, character, and even the development process of an individual is classified as having been influenced in some way. A human mind is active 24/7 hours even as we sleep our subconscious keeps running and our brain cells activity even so low helps maintain our bodily functions. The human brain has no master, it lives on for the sole purpose of providing decisions for your body and how you react given a situation. The brain learns what it can, and optimizes the given instruction in a situation and reacts as trained. ‘Training the Brain’ just the sound of it puts a picture up in your mind of us attempting a test, right? Our minds have associated words like training, testing, learning, examinations, and other education-related words with tests and books and pages after pages of sheets filled with inks. This is exactly how influence works, over the years we have always understood education to end up in exams which if we get through we feel happy, if we don’t we feel sad. Release of hormones based on whether we pass or fail or if we have passed how better were we then others causes your brain to make you happy or sad which feedbacks into the brain as a time when you felt happy and reinforces the idea that passing with flying colors makes us happy. This is the influence in its most basic form.
Influence at its very core is a time and again reinforced notation which changes the behavior of an individual. Just like a reminder you put in with alarms we set for doing a set of work at a given time, influence does the same with the brain. It reinforces the ideology/behavior time and again in different or same formats and the make-believe starts becoming true to us. Influence as a word can be used in both positive and negative contexts. The problem does not start with influence as a word being used in a negative context but with influence used in negative contexts. Since influence can change behavior negatively or positively and is broadly based on the method of reinforcement; Therefore, it requires a medium to propagate.
Propagation of Influence
A medium is required to propagate influence/ideas. Propagation of an idea or assert influences through a medium requires a bit of understanding of how the human race works. A question on the identity of a person changes when asked individually and in a group with his/her peers and also changes drastically when asked in front of their parents/elderly. The need to give a similar answer to the group the person is part of comes through common sufferance(also, known as ‘Herd Mentality’) while individual answers come from singular experiences and raise conflict of opinions in human behavior. Humans want their way of life to be accepted by society they try to assert dominance over others with different ideas or who have been influenced by some other ideologies. Hence, one medium of influence/ideologies is society. The acceptance drives reinforcing hormones being released and makes one happy. Influence exists in every place where society or a group of people co-habitat.
The Internet is one such place. With over 4.13 Billion internet users, the society of the world is on-line and on the go to accept/reject ideas and ideologies. The influence of the Internet has been huge since its invention. The Internet as a stand-alone tool had a great impact/influence on lives. Internet paved the way for giants in influencing space and create a business out of capacity to influence and the demand to be influenced.
Yes, if the sub-title wasn’t enough to hint. The giant mentioned is social media which has people attached to their screens scrolling through, hours and hours of content containing ideas/ideologies/influences is a giant that has prioritized the influence game and made significant financial gains with providing a platform to propagate ideas and influence people with those ideas.
Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are quite large in terms of the user base. The exertion of influence, through these mediums, has reached insane levels. A whopping 2.45 billion users are on Facebook, Facebook a platform which has multi-dimensional functionalities works on two very important ideas.
- You see stuff that you want to see and you like.
- You see stuff what people with enough influence and money want you to see.
The algorithm pushes content which is either more liked/commented/shared. The content shared starts forming influence and as soon as a person likes a post they like, the algorithm registers and finds the likes and interests of people who liked either that post or something similar and finds their interests which are then proposed to the person. The shared interests reinforce the mind that society accepts this idea. This is how influence in form of interests is exerted over on unsuspecting people.
The problem is not in shared interests although. Finding people who have similar thinking is a great feeling and the sense of security about your ideas is a nice add on. The underlying problem lies in the vested interests of some people who understand the influence game and propagate ideas and ideologies which undermine the very essence of human life or laws or are outright heinous in nature. The influence of these posts is high since they are radical in nature. Radical ideas/ideologies are more appealing because of the very inherent biases we have in our brains. These inherent biases are influenced by radical posts and hence create radical biases. Humans have a natural tendency to choose between given choices and as soon as they make a choice, it creates a confirmation bias and the need for that choice to be the best choice. A bias created due to the formation of an opinion on things sometimes without a rhyme or a reason is then preyed upon by the influence vultures and reinforce that bias which creates a loop and the brain at every reinforcement has feel-good moments and releases hormones which ingrain the influence in you. With the scale, social-media platforms operate on if radical ideas and ideologies start influencing and reinforcing influences from radical/offenders on social media. The results will be disastrous for the world. It will be like if Adolf Hitler could spread his ideas across the globe at a click of button and influence thousands with a post and spread what he did in Germany in other countries. The question is then how to stop this influence?
Conclusion: How to stop getting influenced?
The way to stop getting influenced is mentioned below in a summary of steps
- The first step is to acknowledge that we are only human, hence we are bound to get influenced by our surroundings and it is understandable to feel happy to get validated for your ideas.
- The second step is to identify if you are being influenced, does reading/watching something want to make a change in yourself or change in a way you act towards someone? Does reading this article want you to start and check influences around you? If yes, then you were influenced and if not well, you might be influenced but just by negation to what this article mentions.
- Classify Influences. Identify the influences then put them in boxes, does the change you are going to make due to that influence makes you a better human being, if yes put it in the ‘positive’ box and dive into it else throw it in the ‘Negative’ box(Do not go through this box at any cost but keep it with you for later references if you see/read something on similar lines throw it here)
- Correction is the way to go and grow. If you had a bad influence and want to turn a new leaf. Use the above 3 steps to get better and not get influenced by negative content.
Stay Safe
Adios!
Dhruv Batta
