The Social Bubble
If you don’t pay for a product, then you are a product yourself.
This statement is very relevant when applying to social media users. Just go to any park, restaurant, mall, or even while walking on streets, you will find people with their heads down and eyes fixed on the screen.
An average individual spends approximately 2 hours daily on social media platforms which are roughly equal to 6 years of his life.
Have you ever considered why this is the case?
What is so intriguing about a simple website that we are so fond of it?
Is social media addiction really a thing?
The key to all of these issues may be found in the architecture of such platforms and how they discreetly affect us.
This article will change the way you perceive social media platforms.
Many people are unaware that social media businesses employ people who specialize in attention engineering.. They buy their principles from casino gambling to try to make their product as addictive as possible.
The reason for this is that the longer you keep using it, the more money they make.
Technologist Garan Lunaire says-
These companies provide you shiny treats that you delightfully take in exchange for your time and data.
Everyone is under surveillance and the reason they are able to do that is algorithms, which is secretly monitoring your every step on social networking sites and manipulating you with your own data
The founders of the Silicon Valley spying empire have publicly accepted that they intentionally include addictive design.
So at this point, you might be thinking that you are smart, you are in full control of what you see and engage with, but you are WRONG!
Behavioral control manipulation is invisible. You need to understand how this system works before you can make the claim to fully comprehend it.
The sophisticated artificial intelligence running in the background is programmed in a way to catch a quick action response. In general, we respond quickly when we see something negative or irritating, on the contrary, our reaction to something positive is linear and slow.
These responses are recorded according to how fast or slow we scroll and our engagements with the post in the form of likes, comments, and share.
These data are utilized to quickly identify a pattern in how you interact with different topics and then display the appropriate post in an endless stretch of feed, so that you are hooked there for a longer period of time.
This is the exact same reason for fake and negative news to become more viral than positive ones, a big disadvantage of social media, because people engage with negative posts more often.
The job of these social media platforms is not to manipulate you, they just make you addicted to it. The algorithm is designed in such a way that your post will be out there, on someone’s feed, for a delayed period of time and you will keep coming back frequently to check it out.
The real manipulation is done by the people who give money to these companies — the advertisers.
But not all advertisers are bad, they are just selling their product. The real problem is the people who deliberately give money to spread false news or to influence public opinion during elections.
A prime example is the case of Cambridge Analytica and the very recent story covered by the Wall Street Journal. Do read them to understand how bad the impact can be on society.
So far we have seen how these companies design and code their product to influence us, but why are we so vulnerable even after knowing all this?
The answer is Dopamine — a chemical that releases in your brain which gives you a feeling of pleasure.
It’s the same chemical that comes out when you have intercourse, play video games, smoke, drink, do drugs, or view porn.
Robert Sapolsky did foundational research which is called “ The Magic of Maybe”. Day in day out you keep checking your phone for notification so that you aren’t left out.
There may or may not be an email or notification, but you feel driven to check since doing so causes a 400 percent increase in dopamine, which is just slightly less than the high you receive after having a cocaine smack.
So this is how you become not a drug but a social media addict!
People have created a ‘social bubble’ around them where they live in the highlight reel of their friends or other celebrities.
Whenever they go to some other place or have a good meal, they tend to share that on social media as they want a positive affirmation in the form of like and hearts. When they don’t get it, they feel sad, empty and left out.
According to studies, the more time you spend on social media, the more solitary you feel. You must understand that social media is not the same as actual life.
Our life revolves around a perceived sense of perfection and we get rewarded in the form of likes and good comments.
People are more likely to share their flawlessly curated images, which represent only 1% of their lives while concealing 99 percent of the truth.
And when you start to compare yourself with that 1% of perfection, it gives birth to depression, lack of self-confidence, envy and slowly you start losing self-esteem.
No doubt that social media has been the voice of the voiceless and led many revolutions. Good things came into light which might have gone unnoticed. Social media is not a bad platform, but the business model is what made it evil.
It was designed to bring worlds together, make friends, and connect with each other but now has taken a different path.
Even alcohol has an age limit but we give these highly addictive tools to small teenage children, unaware of how bad this can be.
Rather than wasting hours on scrolling apps make use of that time, read books, be creative, and try to have a perspective, not influence.
It’s high time we acknowledged this and try to limit, if not quit, social media.
Make sure to share this information with your friends and family.
