Bored is the New Fit: Part 1
“Hit ‘em with a little bit of dopamine to keep ‘em lookin’
Every second, they’ll be second-guessing, try to meet the
Expectation of the age of information, the simulation
Will be so convincing, they’ll forget that they’re alive”
When was the last time you saw one of them in public? These days one could go through their entire commute and not even see one. They often seem so out of place that if you do encounter one, you'll think something is wrong. You'll probably think they even need help. Are they sad? Depressed? Did someone just break up with them? Are they having an existential crisis? Why would they just, look at the world like that? What could have happened to them?
I'm talking, of course, of a person in public, by themself, standing there, not looking at their phone.
To prove my point, I've got a little challenge for you the next time you're out and, say, waiting in a line. All you have to do is not look at your phone. That's it, simple enough, right? Give it sixteen seconds and you'll feel it; the discomfort, the draw, the buzzing in the back of your mind whispering "people will think you're weird for just standing here. Pull out your phone!"
That buzzing, that discomfort, is by design. We, as a society, have successfully been caught in the snares of the attention merchants. They have elegantly convinced us that harvesting our every waking moment for their financial glut is just how the world works now. Isn't that nice?
Of course not. We all feel that we want to spend less time on technology than we do. Isn't that a sign that something is wrong? Think about it, it isn't uncommon to spend more than five to eight hours a day just staring at a lame piece of electronic glass in our hands, and for what? What do we get out of that? A sparse and clinically prescribed chuckle, handed to us by the algorithm at just the right interval to keep us scrolling?
Social media is no longer what it set out to be. What started out as connecting people around the world now has mutated into showing us 90%+ algorithmically curated content. These algorithms and content are exquisitely tuned to addict us to their feeds and keep us from spending time with our families, friends, and reality.
"Woah woah, OK buddy, I get that you don't like social media, but they're not really trying to stop us from spending time with our families, right? that's a bit extreme" you say, trying to turn the temperature down a bit.
In the words of the inestimable Horton, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant". Social media companies make more money the more time you spend looking at their feed; that's what all this fuss is about. Their direct competition is anything other than that feed. They may say they want to "connect you", but that's all a facade. The more time you spend out doing anything in the real world, the less money they make.
Remember the movie "Coraline"? In sum, a girl finds access to an alternate world where her parents are much nicer and happier than in the real world, but something just feels off. As she explores and learns more, she finds that her "parents" in this new world are actually puppets controlled by a creature that wants to keep her there forever. Starting to sound familiar?
The only reason social media companies want us "connecting" with family and friends is so that, through their platform, they can leverage our relationships to make us spend more time on their feed. Have you ever considered what inspired their creepy "auto face tagging" algorithm? They created these massive algorithms to be able to identify you and all your friends instantly. Odd, right? This is because getting a notification you've been tagged in a photo is one of the best ways to get you to interact with their platform.
The solution? Simple in concept, at least. Treat social media like a mental drug and poison.
Dr. Anna Lembke's very relevant work in Dopamine Nation is worth quoting at length:
"The increased numbers variety and potency of highly rewarding stimuli today is staggering. The smartphone is the modern day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. If you haven't met your drug of choice yet, it's coming soon to a website near you...
"Researchers interviewed nearly 150,000 people in 26 countries to determine the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder. They found that richer countries had higher rates of anxiety than poor ones. The authors wrote: 'the disorder is significantly more prevalent and impairing in higher income countries than in low or middle income countries...
"The question is, why in a time of unprecedented wealth, freedom, technological progress, and medical advancement, do we appear to be unhappier and in more pain than ever? The reason we are all so miserable may be because we are working so hard to avoid being miserable."
A major culprit? The eternal stimulus. The feed. The constant stream of clinically calculated hits of dopamine curated for us by a billion dollar supercomputer. It's sole purpose? "Maximize user engagement".