The Internet and Its Habit of Decreasing Our Self-Efficacy

Outsourcing our questions and problems to the void of the online world comes at an expense.

My opinions of social media and excess phone use being are not a secret: I do believe that we lose a lot by spending too much time online. I’ve backed the arguments that social media makes us worse people; that it’s terrible for mental health; that we’re hooked on our phones to the point where we’ve forgotten how to withstand discomfort. Here’s my latest rebuke: reliance on the internet and our phones makes us increasingly accustomed to outsourcing the answers to our problems and using other people’s answers to guide our lives. Consequently, our competence and self-efficacy decreases, and our intuition becomes less accessible. Hear me out.

• We use Google maps to go everywhere, failing to exercise our sense of direction and ability to know where we are. (Cue everyone who says they ‘need’ it—yes, you do need it, now. That’s the point.)

• We research what restaurant to go to via online photos and ratings, bypassing the opportunity to drive or walk along a street full of establishments and notice where we are naturally drawn to. Which one would catch our eye? What if we asked a local? What would happen if we let our inner sense of where to go lead the way, instead of outsourcing to Yelp or Google Reviews?

• We look up answers to a thought-provoking question—engaging too quickly with what other people think about it—therefore missing the opportunity to let our minds work anything out. Instead of engaging in conversation—why not ask someone else what they think?—or in the magic of contemplation—maybe we actually have a thoughtful answer?—we get our answers from the internet.

• We constantly consult “experts” (whether self-appointed or credentialed) to inform what we should be buying and how we should be eating, sleeping, making money, parenting, or exercising. Really, what we should be consulting is our intuitions.

This is not to say it’s bad to do these things — why wouldn’t we ask Yelp to find the ‘best’ pizza restaurant? We certainly don’t want bad pizza. Why wouldn’t we look up information about the US Olympic gymnastics team on Google? Or anything about anything, for that matter? Shouldn’t we be able to instantly learn what other movies that familiar looking actress is in? Why wouldn’t we look to the “Millennial Money Expert” for her advice on saving more than you spend, or that Child Psychologist celebrity for what she recommends for your toddler’s bedtime routine?

It isn’t inherently wrong to source answers from people who know more or to base our decisions off of what people on the internet say. There are brilliant people and brilliant apps that may indeed have exactly what we’re looking for. The internet has enhanced our lives and given us access to knowledge we originally would have needed to work a lot harder for. Google Maps is, for many of us, how we are able to get anywhere. We don’t need to give it up. (I’m sure I never will.) Yelp reviews save us from undoubtedly terrible food, Instagram informs us which brands to boycott (phew), and influencers from around the internet offer 7-week Immersion Zoom programs that will finally teach us how to eat right and exercise. #blessed.

Point made? Internet can be good and helpful. It doesn’t need to be removed from our lives.

The access to information we have should be empowering. That was one of Steve Jobs’ original intentions with the iPhone: empower the consumer by bringing information to their fingertips.¹ But, is this what the internet has done? Does your device really hold your ticket to empowerment, or is your use of it actually disempowering you?

By empowerment, I’m talking about self-efficacy, competence, self-trust, agency. I’m talking about intuition—that internal guidebook we seem to spend our time either trying to find or trying to avoid. These qualities of empowerment will not be taught by your smartphone or the internet. We will not learn to trust ourselves and our intuitions if we are constantly outsourcing to Reddit, or people in the comments, or to online mental health professionals we don’t even know.

We have access to all the advice we possibly need—parenting, mental health, physical health, cities to live in, jobs to pursue. We have the ability to figure out any bit of documented information at a 3-second notice. Theoretically, we should be able to use the internet to our advantage—so let’s stop letting it dominate our attention and co-opt our self-efficacy. Let’s retrieve intuition from where it’s buried beneath the opinions of other people online. Let’s remember what competent, capable humans we are, without the internet guiding our lives and decisions.

If you have a high sense of self-efficacy, you know that you can figure it out. It might be tricky, or confusing, but you know you can do it. ‘I got this’ rings out over your internal dialogue. You know that you can trust yourself and your decisions; you don’t feel the need to seek advice from 12 different online sources. You believe in yourself and your capacity to be successful.

If you want this to be you more often—put down the phone before asking Google. Look for answers in unlikely places. Talk to an old friend instead of Reddit for advice. Stop overwhelming your beautiful brain with too much information and too many opinions, and connect with your inner sense of right/wrong. Ask yourself what to do, first. Trust yourself, first. Proceed from there.

Maggie 

1. I’m paraphrasing, but this is really true about Steve Jobs—I learned this from BBC’s “The New Gurus” podcast with Helen Lewis.