Social Media as a Depressant and why it acts in such a manner
The People Behind your Teck Addiction
This article highlights the dark side of technology, everything that induces pleasure has the opportunity to become addictive. At the Center for Humane Technology, their goal is to curb this addiction, well attempt to teach people about the harmful effects it can create. The biggest conversation is both the addictive nature of technologies like Instagram and Facebook and the harm it does to people’s self-image. This whole idea of technology as a potentially dangerous thing is new and the Center for Humane Technology aims to both educate people on the harmful effects and create a set of guidelines to create new technology in a ‘humane’ way.
The Internet is a Force of Nature
“Information wants to be free” This article talks about how we created the internet and in doing so we are evolving alongside it. The internet is essentially an organic part of our evolution, but in that way, we need to learn how to make it civil, how to civilize it to work best for ourselves. A large part of this discussion is a decentralized internet vs our current day consumer-driven internet. The internet has become a place where ‘technocrats’ rule, they control what we view, what we buy, and our information as a whole. But this is not how it has to be, we can create rules, we can put things in place to make the internet work for us as humans: Work as the decentralized information database it was originally supposed to be.
https://singularityhub.com/2019/08/25/the-internet-is-a-force-of-nature-its-our-job-to-civilize-it/
Depression and the Secret to happiness
This video basically describes how in today’s culture we think depression is something that should be treated with medication if one medication does not work we through another into the mix and so forth. We are treating an issue that is caused by people not fulfilling themselves in life, we are bandaging depression with medication when in reality we should actually be focusing on the root of the problem, people not being satisfied in the ways they must to live a fulfilling life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R0fTRTIQCE
The real cause for Depression
This video continues to talk about how social media is creating an environment where we judge ourselves based on other peoples ‘likes’ and love. Depression in the user is created by lacking actaull human contact and interaction and extended by the continues feeling of FOMO and not feeling they are good enough, or as good as there peers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfl3Yh7fS4g&feature=youtu.be
Question: Would social media be healthier if we presented only honest self-images of ourselves? Or is the core of the problem rooted in insecurities caused by jealousy of other people’s lives, adventures?
Is it simply that people post false images of who they are, or is the real problem that people feel jealous of others beauty, wealth, and intelligence. Is it possible to make a social media network where people are only uplifted or are people always going to compare themselves to others, making this an innate human issue rather than one caused by social media?
Workable Bibliography :
(Fomo as a cause for depression)
(Social Media makes people lonely)
(Social Media maximizes Fomo and How you should disconnect)
(How social media can increase jealousy)
https://www.lifehack.org/600150/how-social-media-fuels-jealousy
(How social media is making you feel bad about yourself)
(How social media can inflame jealousy)
Article One
(How social media can increase jealousy)
This article highlights the destructive nature of social media in regard to jealousy. Essentially in the past we only compared ourselves to the people we were surrounded by and although at times this caused jealousy, now with social media we compare ourselves to a worldwide range of people, this increases our jealousy. Afridi defines jealousy as… “a part of human nature. It is a feeling of resentment towards someone because of what they have and the attention they get.” By constantly exposing ourselves to what others have and not focusing on what we have as individuals, levels of jealousy have skyrocketed, mainly due to social media. Afridi continues by talking about how our culture of consumerism plays a large role in this situation. People see what their Instagram friends have, are doing, ect… and feel envious of them.
Article Two
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6211134/
(Fomo as a cause for depression)
“Fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) refers to feelings of anxiety that arise from the realization that you may be missing out on rewarding experiences that others are having. FOMO can be identified as an intra-personal trait that drives people to stay up to date of what other people are doing, among others on social media platforms.” (NCBI, Article)
Fomo is a major contributor to tech addiction, people feel like they are missing out if they do not check social media, they feel like they are falling behind. But to keep up with social media, and constantly view your friends doing fun and interesting things has downfalls of its own. Since the 1980’s people who feared ‘missing out’ showed higher signs of stress and anxiety, this idea of Fomo is not new, what makes it such a concerning topic in today’s landscape is the scale of which its happening. In the past before social media, you might miss out on something but it was much less evident, maybe a friend told you he did something fun, or you missed a night out with your friends, but now these instances of Fomo are much more obvious and constant. Every time you open your social media you see things that you have missed out on, this causes the user to feel jealousy, anxiety, and even potential depression.
How my thinking has changed…
For the most part, my thinking about the subject has stayed relatively the same. Something I did realize while reading these articles was how these issues are not new. They have plagued humanity since our origin. What has changed is how often we are presented with things that make us jealous, envious, or make us have Fomo. Social media is simply allowing us to witness the happenings of people’s lives at a much higher level than ever before, in many ways this is an issue for people who are not 100% self-confident or do not feel high levels of self-worth. The issue continues, social media contributes heavily to making people feel they are not good enough, by comparing themselves to other people in ‘better’ situations, the individual’s ego is greatly affected thus making them more prone to Fomo and feeling envy, jealousy, anxiety.
The Re-design of Social Media
This is a difficult problem to tackle, while many people feel great about themselves and use social media without an issue, there are also many people who suffer from the downfalls of the platforms. But how can we change this? In a large way, this question is not simply about social media but instead about human psychology. The way humans view themselves in life as a whole. In order to tackle this problem we would have to figure out how to make people feel satisfied in life, satisfied with what they are accomplishing, and doing, if we where able to tackle how people viewed themselves we might have a chance stopping these feelings at the source, rather than blaming social media a simple ‘tool’, social media is simply making us look closer at a very real human issues, inequality, and peoples envious towards others with ‘more’ then they have.
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