Social media has now become the medium for connecting to friends, family and even people from the workplace; this has become more so now that access to social media is increasingly mobile. Statistics show that 76% of internet users are on social media and 70% logon to Facebook at least once a day . People between the ages of 18-40 use social media more than others. But why do people spend so much time on social media? What does excessive involvement in virtual social networking mean for the actual social lives of people? This essay will argue that while social media has its benefits, it also controls people’s behaviors for its own benefits by taking advantage of the human brain’s nature to believe what it reads or sees thereby creating an addictive environment that may lead to breakup of marriage.
Over the years there has been a phenomenal increase in the way people engage with technology, the internet and more recently social media. While other age groups have plenty of Facebook users, even in the 65 and above age group close to 50% of people are using Facebook . Instagram is another favorite social media tool. 55% of social media users in the age group 18-29 are avid users of Instagram. Twitter follows a close third with 23% of the total internet user population using the social media app. From the statistics it is clear that social media usage has become higher over the years. People are spending an average of 18 hours per day with different electronic media . Of these over six hours are spent on the internet and half of that time on social media. This translates to 21 hours a week on average spent on social media, or 1,092 hours a year. Why do social media have this appeal?
The internet is a vast repository of information and social media combines information and the opportunity to discuss all types of information with family and friends who may live in different cities and countries. It is an affordable way of keeping in touch with people and current events. If using Wi-Fi for accessing these websites, then there is no data charge and unlike SMS no messaging charge either . It is also a means to sharing life events with loved ones who may not be able to attend in person. In many ways social media helps strengthen our physical networks as well. It also provides opportunities for community engagements; it helps enhance creativity by sharing artistic ventures, and promotes sharing of ideas through blogs, videos and so forth.
However, there are insidious aspects to social media well which are never apparent to the user. In order to understand how social media can be controlling to the point of detriment, it is necessary to understand how social media websites are designed, how their information is made valuable, and to what extent they can become addictive.
Social media websites and applications have value only as long as they have followers. Marketers advertise on websites which are most likely to benefit their business. Therefore social media websites have to be designed to ensure maximum followers and have to use algorithms that can benefit the advertisers and therefore themselves. To this end website designers make use of some of our basic psychological needs, namely fear of missing out, ego, perception of control, perceived value and social comparison.
We have a brain wired for collaboration, compromise, restraint, comprehending and managing one’s place in shifting-alliances. We notice when others are doing something that excludes us. It will trigger some primitive survival responses.
People are always on the lookout for creating a valuable relationship. It may be as simple as creating a connection that one day leads to a job offer. This need to increase social capital and build support networks is fully addressed by social media designers. Social media is designed to increase social capital by letting users connect with far-flung connections and ask for advice, seek help, respond to updates. Even if the connection is weak social media helps keep in touch cost effectively. An example of this is the birthday reminder on Facebook. By posting a birthday wish people are able to show that they are paying attention to a connection.
Other design features play to people’s ego, their perception of value of information, perception of control and self-esteem. By tracking a user’s browsing habits, social media websites are designed to highlight offers and promotions that a user might be interested in . If the user participates in a contest, they are encouraged to share the information with friends and other connections. Local holidays are used by marketers on social media to highlight holiday related content. A recent example is Mother’s Day when users would get recommendations for reading posts related to motherhood, promotions were offered by retailers for Mother’s Day gifts. This information has perceptible value for users who are thinking of getting gifts and when they get a good deal, they are more likely to boost their social ego by telling others about it . By creating an impression that the website allowed the user to choose to click on a particular post or promotion, it also gives a sense of control to the user. They feel they got a better deal than they would get at a shop. When friends who also made use of the promotion or read the post shared by a user thank the user or ‘Like’ the user’s updates, it increases the self-esteem of the user.
Apart from design, the other technique used by social media websites is creating a sense of information veracity. Information by itself may have no actual value but by creating a sense of value, the information gains credibility. In the example of promotional offers, users will never know whether a deal offered on social media is really beneficial unless they check for other similar deals in the real world. Information is taken at face value. Whatever is seen on social media is accepted as true. This phenomenon occurs because social media caters to how the human brain functions. According to a study, the brain prefers to work on information as less as possible.
Weighing the plausibility and the source of a message is cognitively more difficult than simply accepting that the message is true — it requires additional motivational and cognitive resources. [Stephan Lewandowsky cited by ].
Lewandowsky goes on to further state that people tend to believe things to which they may already have some exposure to but which were never important enough for further investigation. Misinformation is easily made into truth when viewed by people with other important things in mind. This is why people tend to simply share a post that they read somewhere. After that as people respond to a post, the basic need for conformity and acceptance kicks in and due to the fear of missing out, more and more people become involved in discussion and sharing .
When all these factors are combined, it leads to what is now recognized as social media addiction which is deemed on par with any other form of addiction due to its debilitating effects on people. A recent study by Cornell University on why people are unable to stay away from Facebook revealed that many of the participants underwent the same symptoms of withdrawal that substance abusers do . The study required people to stay away from Facebook for 99 days. Nearly 90% of the 5,000 participants failed the experiment.
I was experiencing withdrawal and felt socially disconnected. The impluse to check FB was very strong, especially when I was feeling low. I caved in after about a week, and began checking FB a few times a day for about a week. But then I decided to quit FB again, which again only last 2-3 days. For the past 4 days I have been checking FB once-twice a day, spending around 5 min per day in total. [Response of participant on reversion after few days of not checking Facebook. ]
I missed a birthday because of not seeing the FB invite. [Response of participant on reversion after 66 days of not checking Facebook ]
This level of compulsion to be on social media leads to significant health issues in the form of insomnia and depression. Insomnia, inability to sleep, is one of the biggest side-effects . The 24-hour connectivity of social media is tempting for many people. People stay home chatting with friends, seldom venture out and have no physical exercise to make them tired. This results in poor sleep. Many users are woken up by update message alerts. Not having proper deep REM sleep reduces the functional capacity of the brain and overtimes affects long term memory. Similarly, social media usage has been linked to depression as well. The more time people spend watching happy pictures or social cause messages on Facebook, the unhappier they become. As more and more people replace real-time social lives with virtual ones, they form less meaningful relationships. This leads to a need for constant validation from online communities. When this is not received as expected, it can trigger depression in people.
As physical health and mental health are compromised, so are the relationships in a person’s life. Marriage is becoming a significant casualty to social media usage . Over a period of 2 years, the increase in social media usage showed a positive correlation increase in divorce rates. One of the stressors is the fact that spouses may have several friends of the opposite gender . Getting friend requests from former partners or finding intimate photos of past relationships can also cause relationship problems. Given that people take information at face value, any pictures or comments by ex-partners or friends of the opposite gender are liable to be misconstrued and taken out of context leading to arguments and fights. Another reason is that time spent with the partner is reduced when engaged online . Therefore many life issues may go without discussion until they escalate to unmanageable levels. Also, people may behave in inappropriate manner on social media which their spouses may find hard to bear. While it is agreed that more empirical research is required to positively link divorce to social media usage, more and more lawyers are using social media evidence in divorce cases , which shows that social media adversely impacts the quality of a marriage.
While social media’s role is to help people strengthen their social relationships and increase their social capital, its impact on people’s lives raise some concerns. By utilizing the nature of human psychology and the workings of the human brain, social media taps into people’s fears of missing out, their need for social validation and their susceptibility to believe any information they read. Perhaps the biggest concern is how social media is designed to easily become addictive which leads to deterioration of health and relationships, most notably marriage. As its influence continues to grow, people themselves will need to follow practices that ensure that their experience on social media remains positive.
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