“Is Social Media Making Us Worse People?”

Too much time online chips away at what makes you, you.

A few months ago, I read The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt. I reviewed it a little previously, but am back to revisit some of its topics. Broadly, the book posits that social media and phone use in childhood and early adolescence wreaks havoc on mental health, and higher usage is correlated with virtually every negative outcome: anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, poor body image, addiction, etc. Haidt’s main points are undoubtedly good ones: High social media use leads to poor mental health, children shouldn’t be using social media before age 16, and children need more time to play with other kids, sans technology.

Though The Anxious Generation didn’t “begin” the movement in question, it has certainly contributed greatly. In more regions of the country and online world, we are seeing a multifaceted, growing movement to reduce social media use in children and teenagers, reverse or prevent the damages wrought by a phone-based life, and increase childhood independence (like, let kids walk to school on their own before age 10, chop an onion with a real knife, play unsupervised outside, etc.)

The research on phone use and mental health has merit for adults, too. Some of these organizations are research-driven ones designed to support parents and teachers (Let Grow; Children and Screens). However, there are also Gen-Z, student-led initiatives, designed to serve varying but related purposes, like ending digital hate and cyberbullying (ReThink), building healthier relationships with social media (LOG OFF), and gathering in social groups without any phones (the reconnect movement)

For any who fear that no one knows how to hang out anymore without whipping out their phones, for those who can’t stop glancing at their own phone every few seconds, and all who despair over how much of their time is wasted scrolling mindlessly—hope is not lost! In fact, there are a lot of people who are dedicating their time and energy toward reclaiming our and our children’s attention from social media, and disentangling ourselves from the digital world.

A few days ago, TheAnxiousGeneration.com began their “Phone-Free Friday summer challenge,” which is exactly what it sounds. One day a week of intentional disconnection. I participated last Friday, which meant no social media or texting beyond what’s necessary. (I didn’t give up my audiobooks, but want to this week.) The number of times I compulsively reach to check social media—even to use it for less than a minute at a time—is a number I want to reduce about 95%. Eliminating social media for 24 hours, one time a week, is the least I can do to achieve this goal.

Instagram may not be your social media of choice like it is mine, but maybe you feel similarly about Facebook or YouTube, your email or TV, or even texting. Chances are, there’s something in your life that you spend too much time doing that eats at your attention, makes you feel worse, or simply feels like you’ve wasted an hour. What captures your attention for too long?

Wherever we go, we turn to the phone at the first hint of a dull moment. (I’m speaking generally here, obviously not everyone does this.) During two-minute commercials in our TV show—we turn to the phone to replace the stimulation. While waiting in line for anything—we turn to the phone. Sure, maybe we’re getting work done in those moments, and need that time to reply to a message or something. And, I guarantee that this accounts for only a small portion of the time we automatically reach for the phone. What happened to the spaces in between? How on earth have we let the cracks of life be filled with entertainment and mind-numbing content, fractionated clips of stranger’s lives? Instead of allowing those moments to be filled with contemplation, conversation, or even just the breath entering our lungs, we turn to the phone.

My biggest problem with my own phone use—and perhaps this idea resonates with you, too—is that a lot of the time, if I’m scrolling longer than a few minutes, it feels like I’m wasting my potential. I’m preventing my own thoughts and feelings from going anywhere by jamming a phone in its way. I’m blocking myself off from the stream of life that is happening all around me, and even if I’m just ‘checking for messages’ by looking down at my screen, I’ve already diverted my attention away from what is actually happening in front of me. I’m missing out on my own life, and flattening the scope of my potential.

If that sounds dramatic, it’s because it is. It really feels that dramatic and important.

If the phone or the internet wasn’t hijacking our attention all the time, what would we think about? What new ideas and innovations would we come up with? I wonder if we’d feel better, not having to constantly respond to a tiny vibrating rectangle that lives in our pockets and beneath our fingertips all day long. As

Freya India

of the Substack

GIRLS

smartly writes about, it is not only our mental health that social media and high phone use threatens, but our very humanity—the values we hold, and the kind of people we are becoming.¹

From India’s recent post called “What’s Become Of Us?”:

“Most of the time when we talk about social media being bad for us we mean for our mental health. These platforms make us anxious, depressed, and insecure, and for many reasons: the constant social comparison; the superficiality and inauthenticity of it all; being ranked and rated by strangers. All this seems to make us miserable.

But I don’t just think it makes us miserable. I’ve written before about how it makes us bitchy. And self-absorbed. And over time I’m becoming convinced that our most pressing concern isn’t that social media makes us feel worse about ourselves. It’s that social media makes us worse people.”

She goes on to comment on the other side of social media use, the side that isn’t always spoken about: you. You, who in the process of comparing your life to others, are becoming increasingly bitter, resentful, and envious. You, who can rant about inauthentic influencers, and then turn around to be as fake and shallow as you think they are. You, the consumer and the participant, the poster and the follower, who already know about the terrible things social media can “do” to you, but rarely consider your role in this process. How often do you think about how your participation with the digital world is changing you?

We’re too smart to be treating social media like a perpetrator, rendering us its helpless victims. That dynamic is true for children, who genuinely don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to regulate digital use of any kind—but we, with our fully formed prefrontal cortices, don’t get the same excuse. Social media is not just “making your mental health suffer”—you are participating in and contributing to the suffering. The media is designed to be addictive, it’s meant to make us feel lacking and like we need to buy or do something different. It’s not our ‘fault’ for getting hooked scrolling or consuming content longer than we want to—that’s exactly what social media was meant to do. However, it is our responsibility to deal with it in an adult way.

The first step may be to really investigate the different ways we engage online, and who we are while we’re doing it. Who am I while I’m looking at someone else’s beautiful life? Who am I becoming when I’m reading hateful comments or casually observing violence? Who am I when I’m swiping through dozens of people, judging them based on their initial appearance?

Maybe, like many of us, you’ve decided to use social media for ‘inspiration’ by selectively following people you feel inspired or bettered by. That may be fine, but as India astutely points out, “Hate to say it…it’s still all about you. It’s all about your self-improvement. Still a constant, even subconscious reminder to think about yourself.”

Touché. Thinking about ourselves is what we do all the time anyways—it’s human. Should we really be filling all the extra moments of our days with more comparison and self-involvement? What might we lose when we think too much about ourselves? I’ll start the list: disconnection from reality, self-obsession, arrogance, apathy toward others, loss of ability to genuinely connect with people…it goes on. What is your participation in social media (or truly, substitute your digital media vice) really turning you into? Who are you when you’re online, and how does it affect who you are offline?

Permission to think about yourself a while longer, to contemplate what thinking excessively about yourself might be doing to you.

* *

It’s often not until we try and remove the thing we fear we are dependent on that we realize we are, in fact, dependent on it. When we try to take it away, our bodies and minds react with desperation or compulsion or denial—we want it, no, we need that thing. What will we do without it? We rationalize that it can’t be that bad; we talk ourselves out of the slinky feeling that we’d like to be less attached to this thing.

Think of something that has become routine in your day, that you wish you didn’t need or do all the time. I’m not talking about illicit substances here, but there may be overlap. Choose social media, your phone, any numbing practice or habit that has the effect of inducing craving and dependency in you. Try removing it for a day and see what happens: How long can you go without reaching for it? How consumed is your mind with wanting it?

To quote Freya India once more: “Maybe that funny feeling we get from social media isn’t always anxiety. Maybe sometimes that feeling is shame.”

Guilt may be a better substitute for shame, here, because guilt has to do with what you do (behavior) while shame has to do with who you feel you are as a person. Guilt says “I did something bad” while shame says “I am bad.”² Shame as a way to drive behavior change isn’t generally regarded as ethical. Still, India’s observation here is a great framework for noticing what we’re feeling as we scroll, swipe left or right, comment, like, consume, consume, consume. Does it feel…gross? Do you feel guilty? Ashamed? Do you feel absolutely nothing at all?

Why?

Conversations about social media use—phone or digital media use in general— are worth participating in. If you were to sit down and be really honest with yourself about the time you spend online or consuming digital content—what would come out in that conversation? You deserve to know what you’re doing to yourself by willingly being on the apps, sometimes for multiple hours a day. Who are you on these platforms? Are you better for the time you spend there? Worse?

If the answer that genuinely comes up is, “yeah I’m totally happy with my life and online use exactly as it is”…great, that’s pretty cool. If it isn’t, well, you’re like most of us.

Maybe you want to try reclaiming some of those hours of your day by taking some time offline. If you detoxify from social media long enough, you’ll probably find a deep sense of relief. You might feel like you’re returning back to yourself, back to the moment in front of you, to the people and animals, the topics and causes, the jobs and activities you care about. Who knows what else you’ll find when you come back to the world outside a screen.

Maggie

1. Freya India is also a new contributor to The Anxious Generation and After Babel with Jonathan Haidt

2. Brene Brown is credited for this framework, usually.