5 reasons why social media totally sucks

Does anyone else remember the days before social media rose to influence our culture, our news, and our lives in general? Back then we joked about our phones getting tinier and tinier.

We didn't have Facebook, Twitter or MySpace back then, we just had a contact book and real friend's numbers in it. We would call these friends, make plans real time with the oldest form of communication, the human voice. Back then we dreamed about video phones, and video chatting, and we imagined it would be as seamless as Dick Tracy's watchphone when it finally arrived. This would herald the new age of communication where we would be able to see and interact with the world, and everyone in it. We never could have forseen what would really happen. Even when the phones began to grow in size again from postage stamp to full sized envelope, we still had high hopes for a video connected future. We got sold short by the likes of these networks, in a lot of ways.

Far from the future of freedom and innovation of The Jetsons, this future was to become a product of an algorithmic AI, myopically designed to reinforce our loneliness and isolation by labeling and categorizing us all, and then filing us away into an echo-chamber of our own design. It was created to simulate connectedness, while shutting us off from everything it didn't believe we should see at the very same time. Its medium was, of course, toneless text, not vivid and vibrant video. It was stale memes, not intelligent debate. This became our reality. Instead of the bright and shiny future of high speed connectivity and robot maids, we got shallow, virtual caves filled with a machine's interpretations of our own egos to play around inside of, completely isolated mechanically by algorithms and the predictive power of AI.

It is my opinion that social media totally sucks.

It has got to be, hands down, one of the worst developments of the 21st century, second only to the Juicero.

The sad thing is that it has not only been detrimental to the individual, but as a whole for the future of humanity, unlike the Juicero, which really is only a tax on morons who can't figure out they don't need a machine to squeeze a bag.

Hold on, I hear you already murmuring a protest, but trust me, I have solid reasoning and science behind this, I swear. There's a multitude of reasons, too numerous to list, but for the sake of everyone's sanity, I'll cut this down to the 5 best (worst?) reasons that social media totally sucks.

5

It's lonely, it attracts the lonely, and its continued use only perpetuates more loneliness, which makes us all lonely.

It sounds weird and counter intuitive to say, and doesn't really sound like a statement one might ascribe to "social" media, where we can essentially talk to a million people all around the world at the press of a button, does it? This technology was, after all, developed with the sole purpose of global connectedness. I mean, where would any of us be without the ability to instantly catch up with friends, acquaintances, work-mates, distant family, annoying high school classmates, snotty ex's and complete strangers without the need for a long distance bill or an uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner, amirite?

We have a hundred different platforms to keep in touch with these people today. Whats your Facebook? Whats your Instagram? Follow me on YouTube. Likesubscribefollowsharecomment!

With so many choices, so many platforms, and so many people online today, how could this technology actually be making us more lonely?

Well, loneliness is seemingly reciprocal to social anxiety, and in turn social anxiety is known to facilitate loneliness. Additionally, loneliness invariably increases social anxiety and this may represent a cyclical process and a downward spiral in the most lonely among us. Unfortunately, this condition seems especially prevalent in our young people today and they, more than others, tend to (over)use social media to mediate this loneliness. [1]

This technology is having a profound impact on the minds of our youth, especially in the way they develop and maintain relationships. Feelings of adequacy are now measured in the amount of friends you have online, and no longer seem to be measured by the quality of friendships you have developed over years of knowing people in the real world. This is a real problem. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg explained that it is the quality of your social interactions, not the quantity, that defines the severity of ones loneliness [2].

In a study among university students in the UK, researchers discovered that real life social interaction was negatively associated with excessive use of Twitter. Additionally, they discovered that loneliness was a significant factor that mediated this relationship [3]. In other words: people use social networking sites in general to relieve themselves of their loneliness. The evidence is overwhelming that loneliness, social anxiety and social isolation can lead to excessive overuse of social networking sites in young people. This loneliness the young are feeling is largely a function of the size of perceived friendship networks. Effectively, the fewer friends that an individual has the lonelier they feel.

Facebook and Twitter are the two most significant contributors to these networks of young people, and the greater your friend network, the more one perceives themselves as a successful user of social media, which in turn is likely to have an impact on feelings of mental health, of loneliness, anxiety, paranoia, and other such mental disorders. The size of these networks provides a visible and measurable yardstick of one's popularity, or more significantly, one’s feelings of loneliness and alienation.

Studies show that social media is a magnet for those with social anxiety, people who lack social assurance in their day to day lives, and that these people tend to overuse these platforms. It stands to reason then, that a great deal of heavy social media users are seeking validation outside themselves for perceived personal inadequacies they face in their day to day lives. Are these necessarily the type of people you want to associate with on a daily basis? Remember what Robert Greene says in the 48 Laws of Power:

4

It's addicting and unhealthy

People who already have severe social anxiety and a need for social assurance are often associated with recurring use of Facebook to the point where Facebook use can become an addiction [4], and has even been shown to activate the same brain areas as cocaine [5]!

Additionally, heavy use tends was shown in a recent US study of 1,839 college students by Reynol Junco at Lock Haven University, to reduce GPA. The researchers found that time spent on Facebook was strongly and significantly negatively related to overall grade point average (GPA). Interestingly, they discovered that it was solely time spent socializing on Facebook that had this negative relationship with school performance [6].

Jay Campisi and his colleagues at Regis University in Colorado discovered that ALL of their respondents experienced some form of Facebook-induced stress. Strangely, this stress tended to manifest itself most often in the form of physical health problems such as upper respiratory infections [7]. The interesting part about this study however was that it was not related to how small a respondent's network was, but how large. It appears that the larger your network grows, the more stress you feel. In yet another study by Julie Morin-Major and colleagues at Harvard, it was discovered that the larger your Facebook network, the greater your diurnal cortisol production. Higher cortisol levels have been associated with chronic stress, worry, burnout, and are a vulnerability factor for depression. [8]

3

It's divisive, and tears real friendships apart

There's nothing quite like thinking you know someone, only to have them post an opinion or a meme that doesn't jive with your worldview that suddenly sours you on their whole character. It can be upsetting, jarring, triggering to some. It creates feelings of cognitive dissonance, which leads to emotional reactions that end up ruining relationships. From my own experience, I've found this to be true whenever I bring up male rights issues, which should be talked about, such as the Selective Service being a sexist operation, clearly discriminatory in nature, or the fact that fathers have absolutely zero reproductive rights. When I began my journey into this area of research, every post I made practically, alienated and isolated a friend of mine, and I lost plenty of friends and respect during this period of my research. Despite my posts being as objective as possible, despite tip-toeing around feelings I knew were sure to be stirred up, I was still met with anger, disrespect, and unfriending of people who I thought were understanding, old friends some of them. I decided after that, that I wouldn't say anything as controversial as saying men shouldn't be alone in the draft, if we are not going to end the ridiculous institution for being outright sexist, then at least make women serve too. Afterall, equality isn't a one-way street is it? And when we are talking about the right to vote, having half the population in the position to send the other half to war without having to go themselves is wrong. But saying this won me no friends. In fact, many women I had known throughout my life who liked me, left me, unfollowed, or simply unfriended. It was a disaster to have an opinion at a time when "white males" were so hated and misquoted and taken out of context. But I digress. This is simply one anecdote, and I'm sure if you ask anyone you know if they've ever had a falling out over an opinion or a viewpoint expressed on social media, they will have a story for you. It simply is not a good medium for the rational exchange of ideas.

Never was this more true than during the US 2016 Elections between two very unpopular candidates. For some reason, this election, more than any other before it, seemed to divide the nation's people in ways that had never occurred before in the history of the US to the point where simply showing support for one side or the other was grounds for an open assault, and cyberbullying.

It was a time when simply stating an opinion or showing support for one candidate or the other became reason alone to cast disparaging, hurtful remarks at each other, cause strife and discord among people and even end friendships as we were asked to pick one toxic side of the dirty coin or the other. The flame wars on social media raged for months before and after the actual election, often tearing people apart as people's politics got trotted out as dirty laundry to be aired upon strawmen and red herrings out in public. These opinions and views were reason alone to shame or hate on someone. Often this occurred between two close, long time friends, as it did myself and a friend I will call Justin. Justin and I could simply not see eye to eye on a particular topic related to the one of the people running, and we parted ways as friends after 20 years or so of knowing each other before the rise of the "smart" phone. I had heard of countless other stories of longtime friends disappearing from each other's lives over a post made on Facebook during this election. It polarized the nation like never before, and we were, for some reason, ready to tear each other's throats out over posts made that expressed any sort of opinion or viewpoint that was contrary to ones we held. And for what?

We didn't get our video phones, like we thought we'd get. No, turns out that eats too much bandwidth, and is not fun to deal with when it "buffers" for minutes at a time. Plus, who wants to answer a video call without looking their selfie best first?

Instead of the video phones of the future, what we got was a mediocre text interface and the ability to upload an inflammatory meme to our timeline to do all of our thinking for us. And as a direct result of this missing non-verbal element of communication in social media, it became very easy to be unsympathetic toward another person's feelings and sensibilities. We lost our empathy. We lost the ability to build the "quality" in friendships that we need to keep them. Ending a friendship is as easy as a click of a mouse button, both physically and mentally, in this day and age. See something we don't like about a person we thought we liked? Unfriend. And that unfriended person maybe won't even realize it, unless they look closely enough to their friendlist.

See, in person at least, we can look at a look of shock, or disgust on another person's face when we say something out of line, and we can temper our words, explain, maybe come to an understanding and peace. In person, we can hear the quaver of a another human about to break down in tears, and we sympathize, empathize, offer support. In social media, there is none of this. Tone is deceptive, and often sounds hurtful when it is not intended to be so. Because of the limitations we have (text), we have lost that very important means of communication that aided and increased our empathy feelings toward another. On social media it is very easy to go too far because we have cut off that important non-verbal aspect of communication that humans evolved with. This is the part of communication that helps us empathize. This lack of societal repercussion creates an atmosphere where it is acceptable to say the most hurtful things to each other, and there really is no repercussion. If you go to a Christmas party for example, and you say some insulting thing like you might typically see commented on a YouTube video, you would face societal repercussions, as the host may decide he doesn't want you at the party anymore. On social media this is different, and it is perceived that words are just words and that people might should just move on, and not take it so personally. This has decreased overall empathy in human beings, leading to such phenomenon as "trolling", where someone will simply write words or viewpoints which are designed and distributed solely for the purpose of hurting someone's feelings or laughing at and bullying another, to provoke as strong a reaction as possible "for the lulz" (the laughs).

It seems no wonder then, that in a study about Social Isolation, Miller McPherson and colleagues found that between the years 1984 and 2005, the mean number of confidants a person had decreased. The researchers discovered a drop from 2.94 to 2.08 of “real friends” in a person's life. [9]

2

It's extremely invasive of our privacy

Somehow along the way we got persuaded to give up every single detail about ourselves without thinking that it really mattered. We happily entered personal details into forms when asked, dutifully allowing unknown parties to use that information as they saw fit. Oddly, I bet if we were asked to stand on a street corner and yell out these details to passerbys we might think twice about just letting everyone know our age, our sexual orientation, our hometown, our employer's name, our political views, and everything else we don't even think we are admitting to when we post freely to these platforms, that NO ONE would do that. Strange though, because that is exactly what we are doing when we post online. Everything about ourselves can be mined now, by sophisticated algorithms which comb through your profile and dissect pertinent details, and we freely give it away without even thinking about where it might end up. At this point, we should all know that if the product you are using is free, then it is you who are the product. It's been shown again and again that these companies sell your personal information. [10] Why do we allow this to continue? It's been shown that we as Americans are in an "it depends" mood about privacy. We don't seem to mind office surveillance cameras, sharing health information, or grocery store loyalty cards, but seem to draw a line at the smart thermostat, and 'free' social media.

Yet we still use these things, even though we know what's wrong with them? Is it because we have become addicted to these technologies? Do we actually even like having targeted advertising? It depends, I guess. [11]

Additionally, on these platforms anyone can upload a photo of you, whether they know you or not. You could just be looking dumb for a split second on someone's travel photo background, and instantly you're a meme on social media. If someone happens to know you, and "tag" you on a potentially life-ruining image of you without your knowledge or consent, what can you do about it, really? That picture of you tore up drunk and puking into a toilet last Friday night? A friend, or a rival, could potentially use it to ruin your reputation, turn you into a meme that is shared 50,000 times, get you fired, or worse. These platforms facilitate this sort of modern interaction and anyone could be the potential victim of this technology. And, remember, the internet never forgets. Your likeness could be known worldwide for something you maybe had little or no control over (a dumb face in a split second of your life, a bad choice of clothing at the walmart, whatever) in an instant in today's world and the technology facilitating this paradigm shift from when I was young, is invariably Social Media.

1

It encourages hive-mind thinking, makes it easier for the "controllers" to control the narrative

One of the old ways of controlling thinking was the use of the television and newspapers. Before that it was the news shorts that played in front of the movies. Remember the ones? History has nearly erased all of these films from existence, but a few remain. These blatant propaganda pieces were used in the early 40's to inspire young men to enlist in the army and go "fight the Japs". It takes an incredible amount of persuasive rhetoric to get people to sign up to go put themselves in the middle of a gunfight, but the power of these messages was strong over the people of the era. We've become more sophisticated in our thinking over time, but the methods have been altered and updated all that time to fit our growing awareness. We are surprisingly easy to manipulate as a species. Those that are in control know that more and more people simply are not seeing much of their efforts anymore, as TV watching overall has decreased compared to previous generations. The tactics they use must evolve with the times, and the internet has been a blessing as much as a curse for the Edward Bernays types out there. It has made them more clever than ever before.

Social media lets one think they have the freedom to say whatever it is they want to when they make a post to the world, to their network. What is happening, however is the opposite. They actually control the narrative behind the scene. We all know someone who has gone to "Facebook jail" over a post they've made, which often times seems completely innocuous. "Community guidelines" are a way for these networks to enforce their rules, which can and sometimes do become arbitrary. Your speech, and what you are attempting to bring to discussion can be, and often is, censured and controlled in the same way the AI running the algorithm brings an echo-chamber it has determined you will enjoy to your timeline every minute of everyday. And I hear what you're thinking already, it's their right to restrict the speech on their platform, private property rights, and all that. And I don't disagree. However, you have to admit that it certainly makes it very easy to control the narrative if you have a convenient (and often arbitrary) "policy" to fall back on.

I've personally heard reports from Libertarian Celebrity's that even though subscribers have put them on top timeline notification, that they may see less than half of what they have posted. This is a consent violation, simply put. If one has opted into seeing all information a person has to say, to not show them 50% or more of what they post is a fraud, and an attempt to control the flow of information.

In advertising, Facebook will often bring you the bottom 2% of estimated eyeballs to your post. This is standard. It should be called out as fraud, because that is what it is. Their high number is often so far away from what you actually get, that it doesn't even make sense for the price you're paying. They are making money hand over fist and not delivering the estimated visits.

Additionally robot accounts are rampant among social media sites like Twitter, and Facebook. These are sock accounts designed to look as real as they can be, and these accounts have gone far beyond the unrealistically gorgeous model with 2 posts and no friends. [12] These have lots of photos, and enough believable background for you. If you aren't careful, you could allow one of these 'friends' in too close, where more data can be extracted from you, or you could simply be being watched by some shadowy eyeball of government, as Snowden's revelations revealed. [13]

So there you have it, the 5 reasons why social media sucks. Feel free to comment down below, and let us know what you think about social media.

References

[1] Lim M H, Rodebaugh T L, Zyphur M J & Gleeson J F M (2016) Loneliness over time: The crucial role of social anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125, 620-630.

[2] Klinenberg E (2013) Going solo: The extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of living alone. Penguin Books.

[3] Ndasauka Y, Hou J, Wang Y, Yang L et al. (2016) Excessive use of Twitter among college students in the UK: Validation of the Microblog Excessive Use Scale and relationship to social interaction and loneliness. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 963-971.

[4] Lee-Won R J, Herzog L & Gwan Park S (2015) Hooked on Facebook: The role of social anxiety and need for social assurance in problematic use of Facebook. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw., 18, 567-574.

[5] Turel O, He Q, Xue G & Bechara A (2014) Examination of neural systems sub-serving Facebook “addiction”. Psychological Reports: Disability & Trauma, 115, 675-695.

[6] Junco R (2011) Too much face and not enough books: the relationship between multiple indices of Facebook use and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior

[7] Campisi J, Bynog P, McGehee H, Oakland J C et al. (2012) Facebook, stress, and incidence of upper respiratory infection in undergraduate college students. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw., 15, 675-681.

[8] Morin-Major J K, Marin M-F, Durand N, Wan N et al. (2016) Facebook behaviors associated with diurnal cortisol in adolescents: Is befriending stressful? Psychoneuroendocrinology, 63, 238-246.

[9] McPherson M, Smith-Lovin L & Brashears M E (2006) Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades. American Sociological Review, 7, 353-375.

[10] https://www.pcworld.com/article/2986988/privacy/the-price-of-free-how-apple-facebook-microsoft-and-google-sell-you-to-advertisers.html

[11] https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/14/privacy-is-personal/

[12] https://www.itworld.com/article/2832601/security/the-fake-factor--seven-warning-signs-that-facebook-account-is-bogus.html

[13] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/12/snowden-nsas-quantumhand-uses-doppelganger-faceboo/