How many times a day do you check your phone? How long do you spend on it? Over the years, technology has developed and pretty much taken control, creating a world through a screen. With the recording of an event having more significance than the actual event itself, we have created a virtual world which, for some, holds more importance than the real world. The need to satisfy our social media feed with likes and comments has become second nature to us; a long with sharing videos, images and opinions across platforms. This virtual world is more of a show than a reality, as pictures are photoshopped and staged, people’s lives are enhanced into brighter colours and identities are falsified. By only showing snippets of our lives via our virtual lives, we lay out the life we want everyone to believe we are living. By changing the facts slightly and perfecting our images/videos, we create our ideal world. As our social media accounts form a life of their own, we live vicariously through our screens, day and night, regretfully pushing aside the real world all-together.
Staying in touch with long lost friends, reaching out to distant relatives, keeping your family updated, finding true love and so on: these are some optimistic characteristics of social media. However, we forget we are social creatures who need companionship in order to thrive in life, making face-to-face socialisation more important than we think. There is evidence that having one-to-one contact with others triggers the hormones that alleviate stress, thus making you feel happier, healthier and positive. Social media could never be that replacement for real-world human connection, no matter how many platforms or followers we have. Ironically, for a technology that’s designed to bring people closer together, spending too much time engaging on it can actually make you feel more lonely and isolated; exacerbating mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Easier said than done of course, as we understand our smartphones to be a type of an addiction, yet we bring them inside our homes and most of us near our beds.
Smartphone dependence is something we all have. We’ve come to the point where we depend so much on them, that we can have the perception it is ringing/vibrating when it isn’t. This is known as “Phantom vibration syndrome” (or phantom ringing syndrome). Yes, sadly this is a real diagnosis. Although some Doctors do say it is better characterised as a “tactile hallucination”, not a syndrome, as the brain perceives a sensation that is not actually present (not that that makes it any better). With one look at Instagram, Reddit, Facebook or whatever your preferred platform may be, we are quickly led down a dark rabbit hole of lost time. But then again, we should know better because we forget that social media was designed to be addictive. Giving into the toxic comfort of our screens, we start to become dangerously depend on our fake lives. Watching a mesmerising sunset no longer consists of you and your eyes, instead it is you and your screen. After all, if it isn’t documented on social media did it really happen?
Our technological advances have not only impacted the lens (virtual and metaphorical) through which we see the world, but most importantly the generations which are growing up with this digital world as a reality. The question,“what do you want to be when you grow up?” no longer resigns with the sweet and simple answer of; a nurse, an astronaut, fashion designer or engineer etc. Instead millennials now eagerly hunt for fame on Instagram, where you can not only be whoever you want to be, whenever you want to be, but also be paid for it! Forget hard work and sitting in an office 7 days a week when you can have the possibility of being paid to travel and advertise it all. It’s all about “you” now. Sharing endless selfies and your innermost thoughts on social media is a world where many are stuck, creating an unhealthy self-centeredness and distance from real-life connections. The sad truth of the matter is that social media has ultimately increased depression by 30% in teenagers worldwide. So maybe this ambition for “social media fame” is not such a good idea in the long run after all.It is true that social media has its advantages, but we are allowing ourselves to be controlled by technology as posed to the other way around.
Much like a gambling compulsion or nicotine addiction, alcohol or drugs; social media use can create psychological cravings. These platforms are meant to snare your attention, keep you online and have you repeatedly checking your screen for updates. They want you to keep wanting more, just like any other addiction. When you receive a favourable reaction to a post (e.g like or share), it can trigger the release of dopamine in the brain, the same “reward” chemical that follows when taking a bite of chocolate or lighting up a cigarette. The more you’re rewarded, the more time you want to spend on social media, even if it becomes detrimental to other aspects of your life. Scary isn’t it?
In the end we use social media more than we’d probably like to, as we give into its suffocating embrace and find comfort in the addiction. We have forgotten what it’s like to enjoy ourselves with our our smartphones in the palm of our hands. It’s all about the likes and comments on that last picture/video you posted now. Do you remember when the last time you enjoyed yourself without filming or photographing the moment was? It’s inevitable that technology will advance in our lifetime and quite frankly things will get weirder (e.g human like robots). Adapting to this change is just as important as holding onto our humanity.
Dolphinmind 