HERE'S a sad truth: sometimes, if a service seems free, that’s because you’re the product.
The logic here is simple. The more time you spend on social media, the more ads you see. The better the ad’s performance, the more advertisers are willing to pay to their social media hosts. According to former Google product manager Tristan Harris, this leads to "a race to the bottom of the brain stem.” Essentially, it’s a competition over exploiting our most basic emotions.
Inertia: an object in motion will stay in motion
Social media makes it easy for you to stay engaged. Short-form videos last exactly long enough to keep your attention. Endless scrolling means you’ll always see something new. Without our phones, we feel isolated and detached — enough to cause real anxiety.
The science behind it goes far beyond just promoting good content. Social media giants have done their best to train our brains into seeking their stimuli. It’s all about dopamine; normally, this feel-good chemical is released to reward us for doing something beneficial (think exercise or food).
Social media, however, exploits this reponse — receiving likes, or even passively consuming content, releases the same rush of dopamine as you’d get from a successful social interaction.
Interestingly, the content itself doesn’t matter. The real goal is to get you into the habit of scrolling.
Harvard Medical School researcher Trevor Haynes explains this in-depth: "...if we perceive a reward to be delivered at random,” he writes, "and if checking for the reward comes at little cost, we end up checking habitually... [i]f you pay attention, you might find yourself checking your phone at the slightest feeling of boredom, purely out of habit.”
Addicted to scrolling
The act of scrolling itself is the reward. An example of this is Instagram, says Ramsay Brown, who co-founded behavioural technology company Dopamine Labs.
Brown explains Instagram sometimes withholds likes right after you’ve made a post. "They’re holding some of [those likes] back for you to let you know later in a big burst. Like, hey, here’s the 30 likes we didn’t mention from a little while ago.”
This ingrains a habit of periodically checking on the post for surprise updates. Why not open that app? Why not keep scrolling, just on the off-chance that you might see something you like? Is this really so bad?
The short answer: yes. The long answer: we go online hoping to feel good. Unfortunately, the actual outcome is often the opposite.
Profiting from rage-bait
The surprising thing is that social media sites seem to be actively trying to make you angry. A study from Beihang University about Weibo users found that, more than any other sentiment, angry posts are the most likely to go viral. Online arguments mean engagement. Engagement brings profit, so sites may intentionally push rage-bait to get you to spend more time online.
The bottom line; they want your attention, whether it be good or bad. How you feel afterwards doesn’t usually matter.
Brown created an app called Space in an attempt to help users break bad social media habits. However, the app was rejected outright by the App store, because, he says, "any app that would encourage people to use other apps or their iPhone less was unacceptable for distribution.”
So, what should we do?
"I finally asked, ‘What am I doing?” says Emma Lembke, founder of the Log Off Movement (a non-profit to help people ingrain healthy social media habits). Now, she has a personal mission statement when it comes to her own screen time: "I use social media to connect with others, to learn new things... I do not use social media as a replacement for IRL (real life).”
Instead of being vague with your goals, psychologist Jacqueline Nesi suggests setting a specific limit to your screen time, such as 60 minutes a day. Then, "put your phone in another room, or put it on ‘do not disturb',” she says.
Dr Nina Vasan, a psychiatrist specialising in digital mental health, recommends curating your feed to weed out anything that makes you feel worse. And, "[m]aybe you’re no longer obsessed with baby pandas and are now onto quokkas,” she says. Be mindful about who you follow, and consider unfollowing people or topics that no longer interest you.
Social media is probably never going away. That’s not a bad thing; it’s enabled us to learn, create, and make friends. However, what we need to ask ourselves is this: at what point does it stop becoming useful? Is it making us feel better or worse? Is it actually interesting, or is it just mindless scrolling?
Your time is valuable. Your mental wellbeing is important. If it seems your attention is serving social media moguls instead of yourself, it might just be time to disengage.
Think you might be a doomscroller? Take our quick quiz to uncover your online habits and see how they impact your mental health. Click here to find out.