Our Social Dilemma: A gut-wrenching existential crisis + some digital wellness tips
For the TL;DR crowd: Nothing we’ve seen thus far could have prepared us for this turn of events.
To say The Social Dilemma is mainstream’s latest woke up call (and we’ve been going through a lot of those lately) doesn’t give it enough justice. Jeff Orlowski’s newest earth-shattering docudrama belongs in the realm of wherever gut-wrenching existential crises go.
*Spoiler alert*
Though I did not find every piece of the information in this rude awakening to be entirely new, hearing it come straight from the horse’s mouth, in this case the co-creators of the apps that control us, were the unsettling bits. The revealing interviews with Silicon Valley’s most-wanted, concocted by Jeff Orlowski’s way of visual storytelling, illustrate the eerily relatable scenarios of modern-day human moments of absence.
A dramatized narrative of a typical American family’s addiction to social media sprinkled with word vomit from a slew of uncomfortable-looking app creators turns your worst Black Mirror-esque nightmare to reality.
Guilty as charged for being the advertising nerd that I can’t help but be, one of my favorite movie-within-a-movie scenes involve the personification of artificial intelligence/data/app designers played by Mad Men’s very own Vincent Kartheiser, or more commonly known as Pete Campbell. The triple threat shows how creepy and in-depth data mining and surveillance capitalism can get…
All the captivating cinema aside, I still wonder why this film hit so differently, compelling enough to make even the heaviest social media users click CTRL+ALT+DELETE.
Shouldn’t we have seen this coming? Haven’t we witnessed firsthand the real side effects of yet another Unintended Consequence by now (like cigarettes or cars or the beauty industry)?
Take a look around at the people who surround you; too preoccupied with our screens to smile or say, ‘how do you do?’ to our neighbors. We live in a world full of the absent friend or spouse or parent or child. Look in the mirror…it is what it is.
In spite of the glaring red flags, the general public was not prepared to discover just how intentional the addictive design of these apps are.
Features like infinite scrolling and push notifications keep us endlessly engaged and glued to our phones with rewarding dopamine neurotransmitters; our private and personal data collected and stored for the AI to track and absorb in forever land, our attention sold to advertisers for dollars, and our thoughts and actions influenced by manipulative propagandists.
Never have we been so easily polarized or connected, dwelling in the echo chambers of algorithmic filter bubbles.
If you haven’t seen the film, then you’re probably thinking I’m being a little dramatic. Well, that’s because THIS IS SERIOUS! It deserves a somber come to Jesus moment.
Google. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Youtube. TikTok. Snapchat. Pinterest. Reddit. These handful of companies are making billions on us. When I say “on us” I really do mean on us because plot twist, if you haven’t figured it out already: social media is not free.
We are the product.
On the flip side of that disturbing equation, these companies run their own free economy. Accumulating over $100 billion in ad revenue in 2018, it makes it impossible to ignore the fact that social media is a vehicle for many entrepreneurs, creators, startups and small business success stories.
Celebrating its 10th birthday just this week, Instagram has always been my choice of drug. Being one of the app’s Year 1 users, I was a junior in high school when I first downloaded Instagram to my phone…
It was so different back then. More organic. As the beast grew to be what it is now: a strange and remarkable space of the world’s 1 billion and beyond, I can’t but wonder when and why it went so wrong. Like all things untamed or unregulated, there are dark sides to limitless online freedom.
Here’s what the research says:
In 2014, a research team from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine analyzed 1,765 American adults aged 19 and 32 years old. They asked the participants to answer a series of questionnaires to describe their social media usage and also to determine their risk of developing eating disordered symptoms. Their findings revealed that the subjects who spent the most time engaged with social media each day had 2.2 times the risk of developing eating disorders. Additionally, those who most frequently checked their social media feeds weekly carried 2.6 times the risk.
That’s over double the risk. So, the more time we spend on social media looking at appearance related content, the more vulnerable we are to mental health issues, body dysmorphia and eating disorders. Big yikes.
Exploring a full 360° view of what this technology is doing to us and how it might shape future generations, The Social Dilemma touches on another enlightening statistic from the broader issue. It has to do with how this technology is affecting our youth, specifically our young girls and women.
From Wendy Tuohy of Australian newspaper, The Age:
Social psychologist and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt notes a gigantic increase in depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide among pre-teen and teenage children, Gen Z, who have been on social media since mid-primary school.
He says numbers of teenage girls admitted to hospital for self-harm including cutting were stable until around 2011-2013, but in the US, these have risen 62 percent for 15 to 19-year-olds and 189 percent for pre-teen girls.
“We’ve seen the same pattern with suicide,” he said. “In older teen girls it’s up 70 percent compared with the first decade of this century and in pre-teen girls, who had very low rates [previously] it’s up 151 percent and that pattern points to social media.”
Take a second to internalize those numbers. This technology is correlated with teenage suicide and sucking the joy from girls and young women everywhere. Are these unintentional consequences worth a public mental health crisis?
Anecdotally, I’ve spent hours at a time looking at influencers’ and supermodels’ filtered posts, intrigued by their seemingly wondrous lives. Causing my younger self to have terrible self-esteem issues and anxiety from comparing my appearance to photoshopped perfection and my life to the curated online profiles of others.
Due to this Instagram comparison game, I’d often find myself coping with thoughts like:
Why can’t I be that cool? I wish I could spend my days traveling the world and getting paid to look that good. Oh my god, her clothes are everything. Those clothes wouldn't look good on me anyway. Why can’t I have a butt like hers? Why can’t I have that many likes or followers? She's barely wearing any makeup and still looks that good. I can’t stand my face! I'm just an unfortunate looking peasant compared to her…
These are the same thoughts that linger inside the minds of social media users long after they close the app. Disproportionately on young girls and women, the world is unkind to us as is but when you add toxic and shallow insta role models in the mix, it brings societal expectations to a whole new level.
And to think this generation never knew a world without social media, it’s no wonder why so many of our young people are suffering.
As a semi-functioning adult millennial, I do my best to eliminate these sorts of negative ideas from my mind. Sometimes it’s easy to turn away from them and other times, I let them happen so freely, it's like breathing. Maybe I’m not as woke as I pretend to be.
Are these behaviors and characteristics irreversible? Is this it for us? Or can society rise above?
Now the purpose of this vivid documentary is crystal clear: to provide a detailed and gripping account of how social media and tech companies are changing human behavior while also scaring the shit out of you.
But Orlowski’s third installment in the real-world horror genre left me with wanting more—like an answer to this harrowing question, begging for a solve:
Where do we go from here?
I mean, we can't just stop using social media. It has manifested into an integral part of how we learn, communicate, and do business with one another. We google everything. I’ve built a career and freelance business around digital media. Met amazing clients and found a community on Instagram, landed fruitful job opportunities via LinkedIn, gathered loads of design inspiration and some of my husband’s all-time favorite recipes from Pinterest, and enjoy catching up with old friends and family on Facebook.
I can’t resist my love-hate relationship with the platforms that give me a voice, a way to express myself and peek into a world I didn’t know was there. A world that wouldn’t have been accessible if it weren’t for the freedom the digital age brings.
Perhaps the aforementioned gut-wrenching existential crisis is uniquely susceptible to those who make their livelihoods using social media platforms. I’m referring to the countless content creators, creative entrepreneurs, small business owners, developers, designers, and the rest of the internet’s beautiful builders.
Look, I don’t need to prove to anyone the reasons why these platforms have transformed our daily lives. It’s not like these things are inherently bad for you. As Google’s former design ethicist and star muse of the documentary, Tristan Harris said, “A lot of what we’re saying sounds like it’s just this one-sided doom and gloom…It’s confusing, because it’s simultaneous utopia and dystopia. I can hit a button on my phone and a car shows up in 30 seconds and I can go exactly where I need to go. That is magic. That’s amazing.”
A fact no one can deny. Like British science-fiction writer Arthur Clarke’s third law states:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Tristan Harris, by the way, left Google to start The Center for Human Technology (you should really check it out).
In truth, it is only when we’re faced with such a hair-raising, graphic film, we stop to think about the downsides and deeper issues of social media apps and how they’ve affected our mental and physical well-being over the last decade. These hard-pressed reflections aren’t on our radars when the magic is happening. And it doesn’t help that the world has increasingly made it acceptable to allow what used to be defined as narcissism, to be totally normal.
We all have our own experiences dealing with social media and I can only speak for myself on the topic. Admittedly, I’ve been struggling with Instagram and phone addiction for years. I am sad to say it has affected my marriage in negative ways and I blame myself for lacking control and making my patient husband lose his patience with me. Having married a man who is quite proud to be “off the grid” (he doesn’t use social media and didn’t get his first smartphone until 2014) can cause us to miss seeing eye-to-eye from time-to-time. For the most part, I’m grateful he somehow magically dodged the pressures of the social media train. Because I fear that if it weren’t for him, then my head would remain up on the cloud.
I actually credit him for my recent shift in mindset. And tbh, since realigning my purpose for using Instagram to create more and consume less, life has changed. When before, I’d use social media to keep up with what everyone else was doing, it truly did feel like a black hole of wasted time and energy. Over the last four and a half months, I started using Instagram to jump launch my freelancing business and I feel it has brought some peace and meaning to my life.
Once I cleaned out my feed and started fresh on a new account—I realized that most of the followers and accounts I’m following on my personal account are people I barely even know. Maybe we used to know each other in high school or met once at a party…but what value did they bring? Next to nothing.
When I began Studio Mash, I was a lot more deliberate in my choosing. I feel this has helped me protect my time by consuming content that adds real value and inspires me daily. The community I found on Instagram empowers me to be a better version of myself while serving as a safe space to express who I am. These are the things I love about connecting with people from all over the world.
But to be completely honest with you, I could be better at controlling my usage and prioritizing digital wellness. Over the last few weeks since The Social Dilemma premiered on Netflix, I’ve had several very insightful conversations with my community on Instagram. And guess what? We’re all dealing with the same problems. So why don’t more people talk about these issues openly? These are ambitious people who make a living creating content or running an online business but are helplessly addicted to their phones and suffering immensely from mental health issues behind their dazzling feeds. I can’t imagine that ignoring the side effects of social media is doing anything for anyone. The first step is admitting we have a problem.
I’ll go first. Hi, my name is Mashia Stilt and I am addicted to my phone.
If you’re still reading this, then it’s
your turn
Now we have come to the part where I share a few tangible tips that we can all learn from.
In my search for a healthier relationship with my own digital wellbeing, I met with a girl who spends a lot of her time thinking about digital wellness. Her name is Saiyak Rakeeb and she’s a digital wellness coach.
Saiyak helps social media users redesign their digital habits and daily routines so they can take back control of when, why, and how they use their phones.
I asked her for some actionable advice and here’s what she had to say:
5 Digital Wellness Tips for your mental wellbeing
Assess your current relationship with technology
Take a moment to think about where you are now and where you would like to be with your relationship with your phone. For most people, it may not be realistic to quit social media altogether. Consider adding new hobbies into your routine and getting creative with your environment. This is typically more effective for changing your habits and reducing the overall time spent on your devices.
Protect your time and start your day off strong
If your phone is the first thing you check in the morning, then it’s easy to get overwhelmed and jump right into your online world before your day has even begun. With an app-blocker like Freedom, you can set a recurring schedule to protect your morning time and select a few apps to stay offline until you're ready to use them. Blocking apps at night may help you sleep too. You can do this through your phone settings.
Turn off notifications to reduce your stress
Most notifications are red because it works to draw your attention. The more notifications you have on your phone screen, the more you’ll feel the itch to look at every ding regardless of its importance. Reclaim your time by turning off non-essential notifications. Fewer notifications also means fewer chances of you getting distracted or being absent in a room with your loved ones.
Declutter your newsfeed to stop the comparison
When you are deliberate about which accounts you choose to follow, you take back control over what you repeatedly consume. Browse through the accounts you follow online and think carefully about the role they play in your life. If someone who inspires you is the same person who makes you feel like you’re not enough, consider unfollowing or muting them. Their account will always be there when you need it. However, you might find that forgetting about their existence can do wonders in how often you compare yourself to them.
Set boundaries around when to use your phone and for what purposes
Challenge yourself to remove social media apps from your phone. If you must use social media, use the clunkier, less addictive browser versions instead. By setting the intention to check them on your computer, you’ll reduce the chances of pulling out your phone on-the-go and waste more time than intended. Just because your phone can do everything doesn’t mean it has to.
These 5 tips are a great way to begin your journey towards a healthier digital and mental wellbeing. Learn more about Saiyak and her passion for helping people regain control of their online lives on her Instagram, linked here (oh, the irony)! Make sure to give her a follow for more digital wellness tips.
I also scoured the internet for a few more resources so if you’re interested in a life change, then check this out:
Tech Wellness: Mindful Living In A Digital World
From The Good Trade: Digital Wellness Is More Than Just Managing Your Screen Time
It’s Time to Log Off: The Home of Digital Wellbeing
From HelpGuide: Smartphone Addiction
Apps for Android users: Top 5 Digital Wellness Apps for Android
From Becoming Minimalist: 7 Proven Ways to Break Your Cell Phone Addiction
Finally, it’s important to remember that the more educated we are on the topic around social media and phone addiction, the better informed we are and the easier it becomes to identify the root cause of certain mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Self-help is a good start, but if that doesn’t work, seek help from a mental healthcare professional.
Let’s regain control of our lives and beat the algorithms together. It’s never too late for society to turn a new leaf.