“It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger. Obviously, these feelings are warranted, but their expression on social media so often feels like firecrackers setting off other firecrackers in a very small room that soon gets filled with smoke.” - Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing.
The familiar social media paradox: the promise of global connection at a cost of exposure to an increasingly polarized, toxic, and incendiary online world. Throw in the latest in the never-ending-cycle of things to argue about – US elections…breakdancing (?!) – and you might say the social media environment is getting far worse before it gets better. It leads to an all-too-familiar feeling – trapped in a cycle, ping-ponging between the desire for connection and the need to escape the negativity.
While unplugging entirely (and/or tossing your phone into the mighty ocean) could seem like the only sanity-preserving option, let’s consider a not so simple, not so dramatic a response. Take back your critical thinking.
Social media's selling point of unprecedented connection is clearly coming at a negative cost to the very users they’re claiming to benefit. This has led many 4.8 billion people currently signing in and doom-scrolling to believe that a complete digital detox—deleting apps, shutting down accounts, and ramping up the parental controls —is the only solution.
The hope is that by eliminating social media’s presence in our daily habits and routines, we can also eliminate the negativity it breeds. Shut it down. Problem solved. Right?
Sounds good on paper. Not so easy in practice. Completely extricating ourselves from what has become so ingrained in our lives may not be a realistic, sustainable solution. Instead of viewing social media as an inherently negative force we must escape, perhaps there's a way to transform our relationship with it.
While it’s definitely not going to be easy, we can choose to see the challenges of overexposure and overconsumption of the opinions of others as opportunities for growth. By sharpening our awareness and critical thinking, we can learn to navigate the deluge of opinions and soundbites, viewing them as just that and ultimately forming our own objective and informed viewpoints. Perhaps social media can become a tool for self-improvement rather than a source of constant negativity.
But – bad news – we’re already starting at a disadvantage. The echo-chamber effect on social media is a well-documented and broadly recognised reality. And even though we may be aware of and try to avoid encountering only information that aligns with our beliefs, the reality is social media is designed to find our tribe for us.
Rather than seeking out familiar perspectives aligned with our own, we’re exclusively pushed towards them – deliberately and, over time. This is because the quality of content itself isn’t the priority of the platforms we find ourselves scrolling - but the rapid, constant consumption of it is. We see what we’re wanted to see as a means to maximise views, clicks and conversions. Validation feels good and keeps the customers coming back. As a result, whether we recognise it or not, we become more deeply embedded into our tribe and the prevailing wisdom and opinions within it. We immerse ourselves in the thoughts and opinions of others to the extent that over time they become indistinguishable from our own – beliefs adopted by digital osmosis.
Enter digital tribe warfare. The dialogue we’re exposed to and perhaps engage in is no-longer thoughtful nor thought-provoking, but more so knee-jerk and reactive soundbites to complex issues, driven far more by emotion than by reason. We deeply crave being on the just and moral side of the multitude of arguments we’re exposed to everyday and we make enemies of opposing viewpoints in the process - multiplied by a factor of 4 billion users. Everything becomes binary. Digital tribe vs. digital tribe, each convinced they’re on the right side of an issue, each digging in further.
But in a world increasingly defined by grey areas who gets to decide who or what is right? We seek black and white rationale to complex issues, instinctively trying to identify the good guys and the bad guys, ensuring we’re aligned with the former.
Social media reinforces this unrealistic approach to and view of the world. We’re losing the ability to keep ourselves somewhere more firmly in the middle, stubbornly maintaining a sense of objectivity as we’re deliberately pulled to one side vs the other. We’re losing the ability to view the content, opinions and attention-grabbing headlines we’re bombarded with as inputs on which to form our own objective opinions. We’re losing our capacity for critical thinking.
And, ironically, within the problem we’re also offered the solution as an entire category of digital detox retreats has been spawned, offering “detoxing for the mind, body and phone”, with multiple options cleverly advertised on…social media. For a mere few thousand dollars per person, you too could live without reception, without phones, experiencing a reconnection to real life through an escape from the digital madness. What a generation ago may have been simply known as “camping” is now bottled and sold as a solution for your digitally-induced poor mental health, marketed to you on the very channels you’re seeking to avoid. So, go. Escape. Detox. But guess what – you’ll find yourself back in the same scenario.
The reality for many is, to remove yourself entirely isn’t a realistic or sustainable outcome. Social media is a too-big-to-fail reality of our economy, communication practices, information sources and day-to-day society. Instead of viewing it as a big scary monster we need to run away from only to inevitably be sucked back in, let’s shift our energy to changing our relationship with social media. We can get there by recognizing when platforms are deliberately pushing us into echo chambers designed to serve their own business models.
Break the algorithm, abandon the tribe. Resist forming opinions based solely on sensationalized headlines and soundbites you’re being served, and instead, cultivate a stubborn commitment to objectivity. Be vigilant in recognizing when you’re being manipulated by the very platforms claiming to better connect you. Seek out diverse perspectives with an open mind and be willing to disagree with someone without turning each other into enemies. The choice is not as binary as allowing our beliefs to be moulded by mindless scrolling vs. freedom through digital detox.
Practicing awareness, intention and critical thinking, we DO have the ability to connect without being pulled down the rabbit hole, digitally categorised into side-vs-side and turned against one another based on what’s on our phone screen.
Matt Popkes is Head of Strategy at The Brand Agency Perth.