Eight Reasons Why Social Media Is the New Cigarette
I used to be really addicted to Facebook. I realized this when I found myself checking the app on my phone in elevators, at red lights, and any other instance where I could fill 30 seconds in my day. My daily use became excessive. There were many times when I would unlock my phone and instinctively hit the blue “F” on my home screen without thinking. This habit is, of course, precisely what Facebook hopes you do with their products, which also include Instagram, Messenger, and Whatsapp.
Once I had the epiphany that Facebook was my digital crack, I deleted the app off my phone. In the first week, I still instinctively opened my phone and tried to hit the space where the Facebook app used to be. When I realized how often that was happening, it became even scarier to me how much my brain was on autopilot when I was using my phone. Eventually this habit faded. I realized I was so much happier, had more time, less anxiety, and was more present after deleting Facebook from my phone. Don’t get me wrong, I still use it occasionally on my desktop to connect with friends and for business, but it doesn’t control my world from my phone anymore.
After this experience, I became curious about why this happened to me. I started researching the impact of technology on humanity four years ago. I’m attempting to distill four years of work in this article for you. I’m guessing you or someone you know feels the same way I did about their social media use. I’m here to let you know you aren’t alone.
There are certainly positive outcomes from using social media. Increasing social capital, finding employment, and receiving social support are some of the good things that can come from moderate use. But just like drinking too much water can kill you, using social media too much has downsides too.
Facebook has tens of thousands of developers whose goal is to make Facebook and its other products as addictive as possible. Why? The more time and attention you give Facebook, the more money it can command for ads, and the more money and power Facebook accumulates. You are the product.
I’m writing this piece hoping that you can become aware of how you are being manipulated and controlled by one of the world’s most valuable firms. While all of the information presented here is relevant for Facebook and Instagram, much of it is also applicable for other social media platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter to varying degrees. You can decide what you want to do with this information. The beginning of behavior change starts with awareness.
Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya said in 2017, “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” Here are eight reasons why social media is the cigarette of the 21st century:
Makes people experience FOMO (fear of missing out)
Instigates negative social comparisons
Involves social pressure
Entails social reciprocity
Incites feelings of outrage and anger
Takes time away from in-person interactions with friends and family
Engineered to be as addictive as possible
Contributes to a lack of identity formation in children and teens
Let’s explore the psychology of each of these in detail.
#1 — Makes people experience FOMO (fear of missing out)
Most people admit to feeling FOMO, or a fear of missing out, when they browse social media. While researchers are still unpacking the psychology behind what is happening during FOMO, it is likely due to our propensity as humans to avoid losses. Loss aversion is a hardwired instinct we have because when humans lose power or resources, we are less likely to survive.
For example, humans interpret the loss of $100 as roughly twice as painful as the happiness we perceive when we win $100. We are wired to avoid losses much more strongly than we are to seek gains as a survival mechanism.
FOMO sets in when we are on social media and we see other people doing things that we aren’t. We experience this as a loss of social capital or connection. When we get this feeling, we can interpret it as a loss of control, which sets off a fight-or-flight response we may not consciously realize is happening.
When the fight-or-flight response is continually activated as we browse, the stress hormone cortisol is released in our body. Over time, excessive cortisol can result in many severe conditions such as depression, anxiety, a reduction in our ability to think clearly, and a decreased ability to deal with future stressful situations. While it seems like browsing social media couldn’t possibly be responsible for all of these things, the data suggests otherwise.
#2 — Instigates negative social comparisons
Another thing that people experience when they browse social media is negative social comparisons. This means that when you look at other people’s profiles, you are subconsciously comparing yourself to them. This happens to everyone on social media unless every person you follow is worse off and less good-looking than you.
Why is this important? Research on happiness shows that a big component of your happiness is your perception of your wealth relative to those around you. When you are always looking at affluent people and their mansions, yachts, and supercars, you can’t help but feel you are inadequate even if you live a comfortable lifestyle. This constant comparison decreases your happiness and makes you feel worse about yourself as you scroll.
Negative social comparisons may also be one of the reasons that eating disorders and teen suicide are on the rise. Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, recently disclosed that 66% of teen girls and 40% of teen boys experience negative social comparisons on Instagram. She also revealed that 13% of British teens and 6% of US teens traced their suicidal thoughts to Instagram. In 2016, 13% of surgeons had patients that had plastic surgery specifically to look good on social media, and that figure quadrupled to 55% in 2019.
This isn’t surprising. The start of eating disorders was traced back to the 1950s when TV became more prominent in US households. The average person was exposed to Hollywood models and actors that weren’t commonly seen before that time. Today’s teens are subjected to a more customized, seemingly more real, and more addictive platform that follows them around in their pocket. They can be reminded almost any minute how they are inferior to everyone else on social media.
#3 — Involves social pressure
Social pressure is one of the most powerful forces on Earth. We are programmed to bond and depend on others because we have greater chances for survival as a group instead of existing by ourselves. While social connections are much of the basis of our lives, too much social pressure can be a bad thing.
Imagine that your life consisted of you constantly giving a public speech to your 500 closest friends. Every time you said or did something, you would be in the limelight. The social pressure you experience would be enormous, and it would almost certainly stress you out. This pressure is why public speaking is usually one of the top three fears that all humans have. We are terrified of losing social capital in front of those we care most about.
The unfortunate part about social media is that it is the psychological equivalent of public speaking all day, every day. The social pressure and stress that users experience is a real thing. For example, if I post on social media, I could immediately ask myself: Do I look good enough? Was what I said interesting? What comments will people make? How many likes will I get? This gamut of questions is what many users ask themselves every time they make a post.
Let’s say someone makes a negative comment on my post. What happens? My fight-or-flight response gets activated, and I become embarrassed, regretful, ashamed, or some mixture of all three. And even if this doesn’t happen, just the possibility that it could happen and my awareness of that can activate my fight-or-flight response. This subconscious response precipitates all the negative consequences of high cortisol I mentioned above.
#4 — Entails social reciprocity
Social reciprocity is our innate need to help one another or engage in activities with other people. This hardwired trait also exists to encourage us to bond with others to survive as a group.
In the context of social media (and many other technologies, including email), social reciprocity can be a double-edged sword. When someone else reaches out to us on social media, our need for social reciprocity causes us to respond even if we aren’t genuinely interested in interacting with that person. Especially for teens, this creates a feeling of constant pressure to be monitoring social media. This pressure may be contributing to children and teens staying up much later at night and getting poorer quality sleep, which can exacerbate or contribute to symptoms of depression and anxiety.
#5 — Incites feelings of outrage and anger
Do you ever leave social media feeling angry and outraged? This is by design, not by accident. There is now evidence that Mark Zuckerberg made decisions at Facebook as far back as 2018 to show users content that he knew made them angry and divisive. This is particularly relevant for political posts. The reason? If that type of content was removed, Facebook saw less user engagement, and would be less profitable. Zuckerberg knew this and decided to let anger and outrage continue to happen so he could amass more power and money. There is also evidence that Zuckerberg is allowing far more misinformation on the platform than he could prevent to continue to drive growth and engagement. If you leave Facebook or Instagram and you feel pissed off, you’re not alone.
One impact of this divisiveness is a decline in trust at nearly the lowest level since 1973. Social trust can be defined as the confidence that other people will do what they ought to most of the time. When trust is low, it’s difficult for a group of people to band together to collectively overcome problems and challenges. High-trust countries are less corrupt, more prosperous, and more democratic than their low-trust counterparts. While the solutions to increasing societal trust are complicated, letting people go at each other online by feeding them divisive topics doesn’t seem to be one of them.
#6 — Takes time away from in-person interactions with friends and family
A groundbreaking study published by Stanford in 2019 showed how Facebook affects our social condition. Researchers paid 2,743 users $102 each to give up Facebook completely for an entire month. The results? Those who gave up Facebook were happier, had higher life satisfaction, higher subjective well-being, and were less depressed and anxious. The average increase in happiness was equivalent to an approximate $30,000 annual increase in pay for users who gave up Facebook.
An interesting part of the study was how people spent their time when they weren’t on social media. People passed more time in person with friends and family when not using Facebook. It turns out that if you want to spend more quality time with your friends and family, spend less time on social media.
Incidentally, the quality of your relationships is the most consistent predictor of a happy life. While it’s difficult to prove, doing things with other people in person seems to increase our happiness more than interactions online. Humans are wired to experience other people, their emotions, and body language in three dimensions. We lose a lot of subtle detail seeing someone on a screen compared to in real life, which leads us to connect with others in a more meaningful way when we are in three dimensions.
#7 — Engineered to be as addictive as possible
Imagine that you are an alcoholic. Then let’s pretend that I invent a machine that follows you around and can mix up any alcoholic drink of your choice whenever you want by hitting a button. Each drink is free. The machine emits a sound every 30 to 60 minutes letting you know that your next drink is just one push of a button away. What is the likelihood that you are going to beat your addiction to alcohol? The digital equivalent of this is happening to 2.8 billion people on Facebook’s platforms worldwide, every minute of every day.
Tim Kendall, former director of monetization at Facebook, told Congress in 2020 that Facebook intentionally made its product as addictive as cigarettes. There is now research from Harvard University that self-disclosure on social networking sites light up the same part of the brain that is activated when taking an addictive substance. Why is this a problem? Our brains are not fully developed until roughly age 25. As a result, impulsivity and susceptibility to addictive substances are exceptionally high in teenagers who haven’t fully developed self-control and regulation.
When we give a 12-year-old access to a social media account, we are handing them a platform that is incredibly addictive. Then we ask them to use their very limited self-control to fight the efforts of tens of thousands of developers who have engineered Facebook to be as addictive as possible. Does this sound like a fair fight? Of course, adults are prone to these impulses too.
Facebook’s own data shows that 3.1% of Facebook users in the US exhibit problematic use, i.e. addiction. That equates to 6.9 million Americans who are hooked on the platform. Facebook published this data in May of 2019. People under the age of 25 are nearly twice as likely as other age groups to be addicted to Facebook. Notice how that statistic coincides perfectly with the age at which the brain is fully developed.
The 3.1% rate of Facebook addiction compares to a 1% rate for gambling, 5.3% rate for alcohol, and 14.0% for cigarette smoking. One of the ways cigarette companies have been so successful with getting a high proportion of the population addicted is that 90% started by the age of 18. This is why Facebook is focused on the teen market — it’s their ticket to getting users addicted early in life so they continue to be addicted as adults. It seems plausible that if Facebook successfully gets younger and younger people on its platforms earlier in life, the rate of Facebook addiction could substantially increase over time.
Everyone today wants more time. We are living in an increasingly busy society, and time comes at a premium. Because of its addictive nature the average person spends two hours and 22 minutes per day on social media, or 16.6 hours per week in America. That’s a part-time job. And that’s also the average use. If you are part of a younger demographic, it’s not unthinkable that you are using social media greater than four hours per day, or 28 hours per week. That’s nearing full-time job status. What else could humanity be doing with that time?
#8 — Contributes to a lack of identity formation in children and teens
Let’s travel back to the time when you were 12 years old. We’ll pretend that a company hired a film crew to follow you around and document most of the things you did in your life so that it could later be played in a movie to your closest friends and family. I’m guessing that your younger self would have been far more preoccupied with what you did, said, and how you appeared to others. This is the psychological equivalent of what is happening to teens today when they use social media, and it has negative effects on their identity formation.
How are we supposed to develop our own identity when we are constantly thinking about what other people will say about us online? I went through this same dilemma myself when I blogged during my travels to Europe, South America, and Central America. During those trips, I frequently thought about the next picture that I’d need for my blog post, or how I would frame one of the activities I did when I would write about it.
It was a great experience to document my travels, but I also found it exhausting, and I sometimes didn’t feel like I was doing the trip for my own sake. There was an air of exhibitionism to it, and that changed my attitude toward what I did. There is a certain freedom to not worry about what others will think of your own life.
This hindered identity formation may be one of the reasons why teens are delayed in their development from everything to dating, driving cars, and working for pay. This may be affecting nearly every aspect of adolescent life, and many of these effects are not positive. One particularly alarming statistic is that young adults aged 18–23 have the least resilience of any age group of humans. Resilience can predict the future mental health of individuals as shown by research. It is very likely that social media is a significant contributor to lower resilience and worse mental health in teens and early 20-somethings for many of the reasons cited above.
The majority of the eight points above are applicable even if you only browse on social media. While it might seem less harmful to just browse and not post, there are still many subconscious things that are happening to you that are negatively impacting your mental health, relationships, and well-being when you are endlessly scrolling.
My solution for using social media has been to delete it from my phone and use it in minimal quantities on my desktop computer only. This forces me to be much more deliberate about my use. If that seems too drastic for you, an interim solution could be to move all your social media apps to the last page of your home screen. That way, when you unlock your phone, you will have to be more intentional about when using your social apps.
How do you think your life would change if you cut your social media time in half? How many more in-person laughs could you share with friends, hobbies could you pick up, or books could you read?
If you’re interested in discussing this problem in more detail, I’d love to chat with you. It would be great to meet in person if you’re in the Denver, Colorado area. You can reach me at rob@humansfirst.us. I look forward to connecting with you and collaborating on how technology can better serve humanity.
