Beep – beep – beep.
The weekend has finally come. You’ve just woken up, and it’s time to start your day. While turning off the alarm on your phone, you notice a few notifications from the social media apps that you use. While quickly checking them, you get distracted and start doom scrolling.
Ten minutes pass.
“It’s only been ten minutes, I’ll get up soon. It’s the weekend anyways. . .”
Half an hour has passed.
“Alright, I’ll get up in a bit. . .”
An hour passes.
You still have not gotten up. By the time you do, you feel groggy and are barely in the mood to get any work done. It takes yet another hour by the time you finally get started.
This is the life of many teens and young adults in this modern age. Some are late to work, school, and other responsibilities due to their preoccupation with their phone.
We’ve all been guilty of this before: you’re out with friends or hanging out at their house to spend some quality time together. But what ends up happening? Everyone ends up staring at their screens, allowing useless content to consume them, rather than talking and making the most of their time with each other. I say this all from personal experience. Maybe this occurs only for a brief moment. A brief moment that seems to repeat itself in a loop over and over again…. Pretty dystopian, isn’t it?
On daily commutes, or even just on your break, you can’t help but notice the people around you – what are they all doing? They’re all just mindlessly looking down at their screens. Now that’s dystopian.
But of course, everyone has their own reasons.
Some could be checking important e-mails, or as myself and other students do, use their phone to work on assignments or study.
On the other hand, there are also people who spend their free time and commute scrolling, or even watching a full-on show.
So, this leaves many wondering, how did it get to this point? Are consumers at fault for their time being spent in vain? Also, if someone’s commute starts partially above ground, how could someone ignore such beautiful sunrises outside the window in favor of their screens?
In technicality it is their fault for choosing to go on their phone rather than putting their time to good use. At the same time, it’s misleading to place the blame solely on the user. One could blame them for how they use their phone. It could also be agreed upon that the corporate entities dumping billions of dollars into their platforms play a pretty significant role into how consumers use social media to consume too. That’s why I feel that most of the fault lies in the companies behind the social media platforms that we use today. Plus, there is direct evidence of this for tech giant, Meta, formerly known as Facebook.
Back in 2021, The Wall Street Journal released an investigation dubbed “The Facebook Files.” This exposé was a collection of stories and articles based on hundreds of leaked internal documents from within Facebook. These documents were shared in redacted form, and were leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager. They were then shared with Congress after Haugen disclosed them to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Well, what did these leaked internal documents contain? Research findings from studies sponsored and done by the company, as well as internal audits – which are reports of how a company or specific department in a company is doing – that the company had performed on its own products and practices. These reports and presentations contained many statistics. One such statistic, according to The Wall Street Journal, states that 32% of teenage girls that were surveyed by Facebook said that when feeling insecure about their bodies, Instagram exacerbated their feelings further. This is just one of many statistics, such as how 13% of British users and 6% of American users conceived suicidal ideation from Instagram, 40% of teen boys experienced the effects of negative social comparison during their time on Instagram, and even an internal 2019 slide presentation stated, “We make body-image issues worse for one in three teenage girls.”
During the years leading up to this exposé, Facebook employees would make a persistent push against Facebook’s policies, making it clear that they did not fully agree on many of the company’s policies. This became especially prevalent within the company after the January 6th riots, as employees knew these rioters’ extremism grew on Facebook’s platform, due to the lack of moderation.
All of this makes it clear that Instagram undoubtedly has deteriorating effects on a wide variety of people. Since all of these platforms compete with each other, all of them have similar features, therefore they all are just as detrimental to society as Instagram is. Most notably, the signature feature of all of these platforms is the ability to scroll short form content infinitely, which was inspired by TikTok. Think, what does being able to scroll content infinitely – which is otherwise known as doom scrolling – do to you? It keeps you hooked, addicted, depressed, anxious, and overall makes you feel horrible.
“The usage of social media has been more geared towards habits that are negative for us from an emotional point of view, psychological point of view, and neurological point of view,” said Dr. Kamran Fallahpour, during a Zoom interview with me. Fallahpour, who has a background in neuroscience and clinical psychology, is a licensed clinical psychologist and the director of the Brain Resource Center in New York City. At the Brain Resource Center, Fallahpour uses neurofeedback to help patients achieve better brain and mental health. He is also the founder and chief science officer for Vital Neuro, an app that uses neurofeedback and audio to help users perform optimally, relax, and sleep.
Dr. Fallahpour went on to explain how this addiction works. He said, “As you might know, dopamine is a reward neurotransmitter, and because of the overuse of social media, the reward system in the brain and the dopamine system gets dysregulated. This hyper-stimulative reward system is by design – they’re actually designed to provide immediate gratification through likes, comments, imagery, photos, and this all releases dopamine to the levels and to frequencies that are not healthy for the brain. So, it creates a cycle of craving and reward, leading to compulsive behavior like checking your phone all the time and it all leads to what we call dopamine depletion.”
That dopamine depletion leaves your brain less sensitive to dopamine, needing more to be effective. It also makes short and long term changes to your brain chemistry, messing with your cognitive functions like attention, focus, memory. That is what causes your grogginess and feelings of emptiness – the dopamine depletion causes a temporary loss in pleasure in daily, regular activities.
So why do these companies design their apps to be addictive? Advertisements are the main source of income of all these platforms, and advertisers spend from $500 to $50,000 to show off their products. Of course, companies want to maximize their profits so they try to keep users on the platform for as long as possible to increase their exposure to advertisements. All of this is at the expense of your free time and well-being.
It should also be pointed out that within Facebook’s leaked documents were slides acknowledging that human traffickers used Instagram frequently for their operations. Facebook knew this as far back as 2018. Yet, only in 2019 did Facebook decide to take action against the issue, when Apple threatened to take Instagram off the App Store due to how bad the human trafficking was getting. Even Haugen stated after whistleblowing that, “Facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently. Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety. It is subsidizing, it is paying for its profits with our safety.”
So, by now it’s very clear that these companies don’t prioritize their users, beyond capturing their attention. One could argue that they are businesses, and that this whole scrolling thing is just their business model. However, if a business is causing widespread harm, such as a company utilizing harmful substances in a product, that company should be held accountable legally. These companies should have a sense of responsibility, rather than just focusing on profits.
Of course, it will be quite a while until these companies face meaningful repercussions. Even a multi-million dollar fine here and there won’t do anything to these billion dollar tech giants. So, what can we do to stop consuming as much and lead a more mindful, present, and happier life? Here’s Dr. Fallahpour’s advice:
#1 – Be cautious in believing what you see
“My first suggestion is don’t believe everything you see on social media, in fact don’t believe 90%, maybe 99% of it. Always have a curious mind and look at it with a filter that you don’t believe in. I think that’s a very sober way to look at all that,” said Dr. Fallahpour. The purpose of this is to stop people from comparing themselves to what they see online, as content online differs from reality.
#2 – Take breaks!
Dr. Fallahpour said, “I would say, take breaks from social media. You should be having situations where you’re not on social media for an hour, for a day, for half a day for 20 minutes – whatever, whatever you can.”
#3 – Switch to monochrome
In relation to taking breaks, Dr. Fallahpour suggests setting your phone screen to be monochrome. He said, “there is a feature on your phone where you make your phone into monochrome, black and white. If you do that, your tendency to use social media decreases. Maybe from time to time turn that into monochrome.”
For iPhone:
- Open Settings
- Tap on Accessibility
- Under “VISION,” tap “Display & Text Size”
- Scroll down to find “Color Filters,” turn it on, and set it to grayscale. From here, you can adjust the intensity of the grayscale using the slider at the bottom.
For Android (process varies from phone to phone)
- Open Settings
- Scroll down and tap Accessibility > Color and motion > Color correction
- Turn on Color Correction from the Color Correction page
- Select grayscale
#4 – Stay mindful and pay attention to the little things in life
Dr. Fallahpour suggests paying attention to the little things in life, whether that is friendship, family, academics, or work. I personally have a simple suggestion that while you’re outside, just look at anything. Look at the sky, appreciate the clouds, take note of how the breeze feels on your skin. And as I mentioned before, appreciate the beauty of the sun rising and setting!
Dr. Fallahpour went on to say, “Focus on things like nature, art, and engage in a creative process. Do all these things that normally would actually enhance your life that you’re going to miss out on while you’re on social media. Don’t just scroll mindlessly and get junk into your brain and nervous system.”
“As you might know, dopamine is a reward neurotransmitter, and because of the overuse of social media, the reward system in the brain and the dopamine system gets dysregulated. This hyper-stimulative reward system is by design – they’re actually designed to provide immediate gratification through likes, comments, imagery, photos, and this all releases dopamine to the levels and to frequencies that are not healthy for the brain. So, it creates a cycle of craving and reward, leading to compulsive behavior like checking your phone all the time and it all leads to what we call dopamine depletion,” said Dr. Kamran Fallahpour, a licensed clinical psychologist and the director of the Brain Resource Center in New York City.