Is Social Media Rewiring Our Brains?
According to Max Fisher, innocent scrolling is more nefarious than we may think
For years now I’ve been very concerned about how social media is impacting us - our self worth, our relationships, our satisfaction with our lives, how we relate to the rest of the world, and most concerningly, our children and the formation not only of their social interactions but of their very brains. I’ve said that I believe in the future we will have “digital rehab” just as we today have drug rehab, and that the effects of digital addiction will be far more severe and far reaching. People think I’m being funny or hyperbolic when I say this. I’m not.
Weird I know, for someone who has built up somewhat of a following on Instagram, and put a lot of effort into doing so. But perhaps that is exactly why I am well placed to have this conversation. Someone who only uses Instagram fleetingly, to share happy moments or confidence-boosting “good” photos or for those delightful cat memes, may not have experienced the same side of social media as someone who for many years was hell bent on creating a profitable business with Instagram as her only form of marketing. (I cringe somewhat to describe myself so, but in the name of honesty I can do little else.)
Don’t get me wrong, I see and appreciate the positives of social media. After all, I have made many wonderful connections through it. Some of the people I’ve met through Instagram have turned into real friends. I’ve been exposed to ideas, places, activities and such which I may otherwise never have heard of. The large majority of clients who join my Pilates studio do so because they’d been following me on instagram for some time, and started to get to know me and what I’m about, or at least enough that it engendered a sense of trust. For this reason alone, I’m not leaving Instagram any time soon.
But, I am changing my relationship with it. And it turns out that this is no small feat.
In speaking on his new book, The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World, Max Fisher describes how social media acts as a drug. This is not a metaphor, but rather a very real biological action on our brains, nervous systems, hormones and our psychology. Max spent five years trying to answer the question of how social media is affecting us, and spent those years working with some of the world’s top scientists and experts, including neuroscientists, social psychologists, political scientists, and whistleblowers in tech companies who have been trying to sound the alarm. He was motivated to do this research by the felt sense which, if we’re honest, we’ve all experienced: that social media does something to our brains, and spending too much time on it feels unpleasant; as well as an uneasy feeling that social media was playing a larger part in politics than anyone has been giving it credit for.
The conclusion from these years of research was that social media operates like a drug, not just in the sense that it feels addictive and is hard to put down, but that it actually exerts an effect on our brain chemistry, changes our behaviour, and most chillingly, changes how our brains process what is right and wrong, and what we believe to be true and not true. Max states that the danger in these effects is in their subtlety. We believe that we’re interacting with our friends when we use social media, but really we’re consuming whatever the algorithm decides to feed us. These platforms have been designed, with the help of psychologists, to train us into thinking and behaving in a way that is profitable for these companies. He describes this “training” as being similar to how rats may be given either a food reward or a jolt of electricity to modify their behaviour. Even if this had not been the original intent of these companies, it has had a massive impact on our social and political environment.
Study after study shows that provocative content which plays on a specific set of emotions related to moral outrage will gain the most traction, regardless of how few followers the user has. The algorithm picks up the post and pushes it out to a wider audience because it has learnt that this type of content is the most engaging. In a fascinating study, researchers took a group of social media users and gauged their level of outrage - how prone were they to outrage in their normal, everyday life. They then encouraged these users to share or post anything that ignites outrage, which would cause the platform to artificially amplify how much reach the post received. This positive “reward” would make the user want to post more and more. The most disturbing aspect of this study was that over time the level of outrage that the participants experienced increased, even when they were not online. They became less likely to use their intellectual reasoning and more prone to be angry and reactive in their everyday, offline lives.
Max goes on to describe various scenarios where this moral outrage played out in real life, and had devastating effects. Such as the ethnic violence which erupted in Myanmar in 2015 and caused the Rohingya refugee crisis which continues until today, and the events at the US Capitol in January of 2021. If you often find yourself feeling angry or even just indignant after spending some time scrolling (I know I have) you may have fallen prey to the platform’s deliberate tactics of polarisation.
(On a side note, isn’t it fascinating that many people censor themselves on social media because of our deeply ingrained need for social acceptance. Yet being controversial, saying the things you really want to say, which will result in the backlash and arguments you’re trying to avoid will bring the very thing you crave: greater views and engagement which, on an emotional level, our primitive brain translates as social acceptance. The business coaches and influencers I’ve mentioned in a previous post often speak on how it’s good business practice to be polarising because this will attract your ideal client and repel the ones who are not for you. I wonder if they realise that their success on social media is likely not only due to their being “authentic” but also because their views are controversial, and therefore trigger people into engagement. Is this how I want to get myself, my business or my work noticed? It brings up an interesting ethical question.)
After listening to Fisher discuss his book in The Rich Roll Podcast, it left me feeling alarmed, but also motivated to do what I’d been threatening, and trying, to do for sometime: curb my own enthusiasm for social media. Isn’t it interesting how we all know that it’s not good for us to spend too much time scrolling, and yet next thing we know we’re at it again? A few months ago I implemented a policy of “no-phone Sunday”, where I would switch my phone off on Saturday evening and only turn it on again on Monday morning. This ensured that I couldn’t use social media and would have a very relaxing and present day with my family, but also caused some logistical hiccups, say for example if we were going for lunch and I needed to get the address. I also forgot about my new policy after a couple of weeks and then fell out of the habit.
Over the last few weeks I’ve implemented a new strategy, and this time it seems to be working, and sticking. I’ll share them with you here, if perhaps you find value in giving it a go yourself!
I now only allow myself to go onto Instagram on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays.
Instagram is the main platform I use - I don’t enjoy the others so they don’t pose that addictive risk for me. Since doing this I can feel the tentacles of compulsion releasing their grip on me. The less time I spend on Instagram the less time I want to spend on it. Having said that, once I do go on I fall prey to the same never-ending rabbit hole of scrolling as before, but am now more conscious of that and can put a stop to it faster. Allowing myself these three days a week means that I can still post what I may feel is necessary to continue having an online presence from a business perspective, or just whatever I feel like I want to post from a social perspective.
2. I deleted the app from my home screen.
Have you ever found yourself picking up your phone to check the time and next thing you’re scrolling through posts with no memory of opening the app? Me too. Previously I’ve hidden the app inside a folder, but my fingers soon learnt how to find it. I now have to search my phone to find the app. I’m sure that in time this too will become redundant and I may have to move the app somewhere else again. The point is to have it in a new place where you actually have to think to be able to go open it.
3. I invented a little technique I call “Post & Ghost”
Get on, post your post, and get off. No scrolling, no checking how your post is doing, no replying to comments or DMs. This 21st century expectation that we must be available 24/7 and reply immediately to any business enquiries is a scourge on our mental health.
4. Don’t fan the flames of outrage, no matter how moral it seems
I’ve done it many times, thinking that I’m doing what’s “right”. Speaking up instead of being silent. Therein lies the danger - it appeals so greatly to our sense of goodness and morality. I’ve asked myself how do I navigate this in the future? What do I do when there’s a topic I feel I cannot be silent on, as will inevitably happen? My advice to myself is to pause and reflect deeply, on how important this particular subject is to me personally, and how I can share awareness without igniting outrage with the way I choose to speak on it. Otherwise we’re just Instagram’s unwitting activism sluts, spreading outrage porn like brain-dead zombies.
5. I found somewhere else to engage in (meaningful) community
And that’s right here, on Substack. The many, many occasions I’ve berated myself for mindless scrolling in time I could have spent writing has come to an end my friends. Furthermore I have so enjoyed the sense of supportive community here on Substack, where everyone feels like the underdog breaking free from the algorithm overlords. Max Fisher says that this has been the most important aspect of rehabbing himself from social media, and I would agree. We are social creatures by nature. Community and relationship are as much a basic human need as food and sex. In a world where we are increasingly cut off from meaningful human contact, in a world where almost the entire global population was put into weeks-long lockdowns, social media feeds into this basic desire like a custom-made kid glove. Max’s solution was to spend more time on WhatsApp groups made with real friends with common interests. Other solutions could be to take up a new hobby, start a new sport, join a club of some sort… anything that gives you that sense of community and belonging, the one which social media promises but never delivers.
If you decide to try any or all of these tactics, let me know how you get on.
The best part about not being on Instagram every day is that you realise how little the natural world and the march of time care about such frivolities. Nothing changes when I don’t check Instagram. Nobody likes me more or likes me less. I don’t earn more money or less money. And when I go back on, it’s the same BS as always - I didn’t miss anything.
PODCASTS
If you’re a fellow podcast lover, please do check out my latest podcast episode with Melayne Shayne, entitled The Way of The Warrior Woman. In this episode we chat about movement as a philosophy and way of life rather than mere exercise, Melayne’s career trajectory from brand marketing manager at Adidas in Germany to becoming the VP and Global Brand Director of Budokon Academy and University first in Miami and now in Montana, as well as a teacher and mixed movement athlete herself. Towards the end we get into the juicy subject of sexuality in regard to monogamy, or lack thereof.
Let me know if you would prefer to see my podcast episodes right here on Substack.
And if you’d like to listen to the episode which prompted this essay, check it out here on The Rich Roll Podcast.
LITTLE RED HEARTS - A POEM
The following poem was written by fellow Substack writer Samuél Lopez-Barrantes and is shared with his permission. You can read his publication If Not, Paris here.
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Something must be done about these little red hearts.
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While the cardiologists are lampooned & the world gorges itself on news feeds,
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the rest of us take selfies & write op-eds to prove that we, too, are heart-checkers.
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We capture images, put them in boxes, become wilful caricatures,
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it’s all about the journey to a certified-blue check.
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Our growth-based mindset has gone viral, malignant & infected,
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but who amongst us has the ovaries, or the balls, or the in-between to say it?
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To turn off the screen, stop feeding these tiny heart-shaped tumors before we’re dead?
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The best version of ourselves see these little bloodred hearts for what they are
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(we know the human heart is so much bigger than this)
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but that version is off-line. It has no followers. The SEO can’t fix it.
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We return to our feeds in search of answers, scampering like spiders on the world wide web,
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scrolling through the writings on the wall, which we’ve known all along:
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our anemic souls cannot survive on this endless feed of digestible content much longer;
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we are trapped inside these little red hearts; there’s no vomit, only wretch.
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So please, be sure to subscribe, please like, & leave a comment
❤️ 1 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS!!!!!
Don’t feed the animals & please, please, please
❤️ OBLIVION
Until next week,
Raine
Very wise, practical, and easy to implement tips. Thanks for the wisdom. I recently deleted Instagram altogether (okay, I admit: I only deactivated it, but I did it for a second time within the month, so maybe this time will truly stick ...), but I always put my social media apps in a folder that was hidden in a different window on my phone and called "The Spectacle" which reminded me that if I was planning to delve into the interaction, I should be aware of what exactly I'm engaging with (Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle" is a foundational text for my thoughts regarding social media in the last few years). All this to say, *awareness* is the first step to understanding where our addictions lie, and no more-so than with the constant noise coming from the Internet and social media.