Social Media is No Longer Fun
For many of us, it can be hard to imagine what we would do without social media. Whether it is posting a photo on Instagram, sharing a video on Snapchat, or dancing to a TikTok, many of us are actively involved on some form of platform. Scrolling through feeds has become a part of our daily routines, as it is often the first thing we look at in the morning and the last thing we do before going to bed. Social media can be great because it allows us to share content, maintain relationships, and get information, but these same reasons have also created harmful issues surrounding self-worth, body image, and stereotypes, making it less fun.
Think back to the time when you created your first social media profile. For some of us, we might have been quite young, while others might have been a little older. Regardless of your age, the motivation was likely because you had just found a fun, new platform that you wanted to use. Now think about the first post you ever uploaded. Even if it was just to test out different features, this post was likely created just for yourself and maybe a handful of your closest friends. You weren’t thinking too deeply about how others would react to it and it probably stayed like that for a little while. Very quickly, however, you likely became more attuned to the metrics of social media, specifically those that were made public. With every like that came in and with every follower gained, you became more and more conscious about the content you were posting.
If you’ve ever experienced this, you are not alone. When a user is prepared for others to engage with their social media posts, they are naturally going to want to seek a positive response. Whether that appears in the form of a like, view, thumbs up, or comment, a user will be looking for validation that their content is great. As a result, people have begun spending more and more time curating their content in order to maximize the engagement they receive on each of their posts. Validation is ultimately what pulls us in time and time again, as the chemicals in our brains are directly affected every time we log on. Why does this happen? Whenever we engage with something that makes us feel good (eat delicious food, laugh with friends, hear a catchy song, etc.) our brains release dopamine, triggering a reward cycle that tells our brains to recognize the activity as a positive behavior. Our brains react the same way each time we receive positive feedback on social media. Since this feeling is short-lived, we constantly find ourselves returning to platforms for more. Over time, however, this action can become repetitive, which makes it less exciting to our brains. As a result, we have to rely on social media, even more, to receive the same satisfaction as we did before.
This focus on perfection for the sake of likes has made social media less and less fun. Instead of participating in the simple act of posting fun moments from our lives, social media has roped us into creating the “best” version of ourselves in order to receive a certain reaction. This pattern quickly turns harmful because it prompts users to define their self-worth based on the metrics on their profiles. If a certain post doesn’t reach a certain amount of likes, one can easily start to feel bad about themselves. It becomes a vicious cycle.
Social media’s effects on self-esteem do not stop there. With many living far away from family and friends, social media has become an easy way for users to stay connected with those they love. People can view their family member’s newest photos and stay up to date on the lives of each of their friends. Seeing familiar faces creates many positive associations with social media, drawing users in and keeping them engaged. While social media does allow users to maintain relationships with friends and family, it presents them with many opportunities for comparison as well. This can be quite harmful when looking from the outside in, especially with many people perfectly curating their lives. For example, suppose you are looking at a friend’s Facebook profile that is filled with endless pictures of them smiling and surrounded by their new college friends. Meanwhile, you are having a hard time adjusting to your new campus. Based on their account alone, you can imagine that your friend is living a very happy, stress-free life. Whether or not this is actually the case, we may never know, but it can be very easy to start comparing your life to theirs. This may cause you to start raising doubts about your own life, affecting your self-esteem.
Body image is a particularly common issue caused by social media due to the prolific amount of edited photos. You can find images all over Instagram of people with their seemingly perfect bodies wearing expensive and trendy clothes. Yet again, this creates many opportunities for comparison, even if the original photos were photoshopped to achieve perfection. The presence of celebrities and influencers on social media largely contributes to these issues as well. Many users enjoy following their favorite celebrities because it gives them a unique way to connect with them. However, celebrities and influencers consistently set unrealistic standards for their audiences. They have seemingly eliminated the concept of organic content and instead, chose to post staged photos of their idealized body types. Additionally, the rise of influencer marketing has also added a layer of toxicity to social media, as influencers often promote unhealthy products to millions of people. The more users are exposed to these unrealistic images, the easier it becomes for them to develop a negative body image. Young women especially tend to feel more concerned about their bodies and appearance the more they spend on social media. This can lead to unhealthy behaviors, such as disordered eating.
Social media continues to reinforce unhealthy stereotypes in other ways as well. One of the biggest appeals of social media is its ability to share information. Platforms like Twitter can give users real-time updates on current events. There is also the concept of content virality, which allows information to circulate quickly online. Although social media makes information convenient and accessible, it is important to note that misinformation can spread just as easily.
After reading Langdon Winner’s article “Do Artifacts Have Politics?,” I realized how social media might be a product that is. Although platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were designed to connect with others, they can and do greatly reinforce common stereotypes. For example, suppose a young woman is interested in a career in sports but has only ever been shown posts and advertisements related to fashion and make-up. Suppose her male peers have the same interests and are bombarded with advertisements detailing sports-related summer programs and internships. Rather than presenting the young woman with the same opportunities, social media platforms instead reinforce sexist stereotypes by suggesting to her what her interests can and should be.
Although social media platforms have the power to stop perpetuating harmful stereotypes, they simply choose not to. This is because these platforms are profiting from them. This type of behavior parallels Winner’s argument that “scientific knowledge, technological invention, and corporate profit reinforce each other in deeply entrenched patterns that bear the unmistakable stamp of political and economic power (Winner, 126).” Social media platforms are ultimately making a majority of their money through advertising. After all, their services are essentially free for all users. This concept of selling advertisements on a free service is not entirely new. Magazines, newspapers, and television have been doing this for decades. However, social media platforms today are capable of reaching unprecedented amounts of people, so they attract a lot of advertisers to their sites.
Given their large reach, platforms rely on algorithms to distribute different advertisements to different users. Gone are the days of chronological feeds and instead new algorithms designed to keep users interested. For example, Instagram’s main feed is influenced by four main factors: information about the post, information about the person who posted, your activity, and your history of interacting with someone. As confirmed by Instagram themselves, the more likely you are to engage with the post, the higher up it will appear on your feed. Twitter’s main feed algorithm also takes a personalized approach by displaying recommendations of content they think you might be interested in alongside Tweets from accounts you actually follow. TikTok has fully embraced a personalized experience dedicating an entire feed just “For You.”
These algorithms likely exhibit some level of bias when put into action. This may cause many situations like the example given above, where advertisements begin to promote common stereotypes. While it may not be intentional, it is up to the developers to ensure that algorithms are designed appropriately.
While social media may not be much fun anymore, I don’t think it has to stay this way. I believe that with conscious effort, we can turn social media back into a more positive experience. One way to do this is by cleaning up our feeds. In other words, we can be more aware of the people and accounts that we follow. If someone else’s photos are consistently bringing you down, simply unfollow them. If another person can’t stop posting, hide their content. Your feed will start to become more enjoyable as you filter out all of the unhealthy content. Even if it means unfriending a loved one, this process might actually preserve a relationship long term. One challenge that comes with platforms such as Instagram or Twitter is the explore pages, which display content from accounts outside of what a user might be following. However, knowing what we do about algorithms, we might actually be able to have some control over what these pages choose to show us. Since these algorithms are designed to show users they are likely to engage with, we can train them to show us content that we actually want to see. To do so, avoid clicking on images that make you upset or mark them as content that you are not interested in.
In addition to filtering the materials we see, we can also consciously change the content we produce. Start posting content for your own enjoyment, rather than to receive affirmation from others. Eliminating metrics such as likes and comments can help break the cycle of analyzing the performance of posts. The last way to create a positive relationship with social media is to set clear boundaries around your consumption. Many devices allow you to limit the time you spend on platforms each day. By doing so, you can avoid getting sucked into a rabbit hole of feeds and posts regularly.
Overall, social media today has a severe lack of authenticity, even though most were designed to encourage users to be their true selves. By streamlining false realities, platforms are becoming more and more harmful to the populations they reach. At this point, social media is no longer much fun, but this does not mean it cannot be a positive tool in our lives. With social media playing a large role in society, it can be difficult to ignore, so it is up to us to find a way to turn it back into something good.
