Social media bad
Context
When I was in 11th standard, I deleted my Facebook account (this was in 2012, when Facebook was very popular). I then proceeded to delete my Instagram and WhatsApp accounts as well. This was a time when people didn’t even have Instagram and WhatsApp accounts in my circle.
I have had a lot of conversations with people over the years about why I have been so anti-social.
Anti-social
I don’t consider myself to be anti-social but since I have deleted my social media accounts, I have come to love life without too much interaction with social media apps. I have realized a few things about social media by observing people around me who spend an inordinate amount of time on these apps:
- Social media app interest and your interest probably do not match. Almost all social media apps want you to spend as much time as possible on their app. To achieve this, they will do everything in their power to grasp your attention. They’ll try to get as much data on you as possible to show you relevant content. I am not against this practice if it’s used for building meaningful products, but using my data to bait me into spending more time on your app? No thanks!
- Uploading a picture and getting likes on it gives you a dopamine hit. Too much of it can bait you into opening the app again and again. In the long run, it can mess up your attention span and focus. The ability to focus is a highly valuable skill that one should absolutely build.
- If you catch yourself speculating about how would you describe a particular situation (like going out to a fancy restaurant with your friends or on a trek) on social media (like posting a photo or tweet of the experience) you are essentially missing out on the experience and rather focusing on providing content for Social media.
- Social media (and mindless scrolling) is effectively ruining our learning abilities. We scroll, sometimes maybe entertainingly learn something (think DIY hacks on TikTok), and then pass on thinking that we have learned something. But we haven’t. We have just been entertained. Unfortunately, this goes way beyond DIY hacks and seeps into fundamental concepts (eg: a 10-minute video that can make you an expert in an entire field!).
- Social media apps serve as a distraction. They are not the cause of our distraction but serve as a place where we can go to seek relief from whatever discomfort we are feeling. So if we are feeling too stuck in our work (uncomfortable situation), we would often turn to Social media apps to find some relief (watching cat videos).
- When we communicate with other people face to face, then apart from listening to them, we also depend on visual and tonal cues to understand what the other person is communicating. Social media (+ Instant messaging) apps kill these forms of cues. This is why there are a lot of misunderstandings when you communicate on social media apps. And that is why Zoom meetings will never be the same as in-person meetings. In every virtual meeting I have attended, someone or the other has spoken in between or over others precisely because there was no visual cue as to when one should speak.
There are a lot of benefits of social media apps as well when used properly. But I feel that most people don’t use it responsibly. They are controlled by dopamine hits from social media apps.
Disclosure
I have created my WhatsApp and Instagram accounts again due to personal reasons. But I still don’t use it very often. I don’t have the Instagram app on my phone and my WhatsApp notifications are always turned off. Due to this, I have built a bad reputation for not being social over the years.
Some of the points above are developed from the book Four Thousand Weeks