![]() If you disbelieve these self-reports, perhaps you’ll be persuaded by the prodigious amounts of outside research suggesting the same conclusion. The company’s own users told its research team that its products were akin to a mildly addictive depressant. But like all things it benefits from moderation.īut in 2020, Facebook critics weren’t the ones comparing its offerings to addiction-forming chemicals. Sugar is delicious and for most of us there is a special place for it in our lives. Still, while Facebook may not be nicotine I think it is probably like sugar. I know there is a battle for the terminology of addiction but I side firmly with the neuroscientists. I have seen family members struggle with alcoholism and classmates struggle with opioids. “I find that wildly offensive, not to me but to addicts.” He went on: “People compare social media to nicotine,” Andrew Bosworth, a longtime Facebook executive, wrote in an extensive 2019 memo on the company’s internal network. In particular, none of them touches on what social media does to the minds of the young people who use it the most.įrom the December 2019 issue: The dark psychology of social networks ![]() But none of these metaphors completely captures the full berserk mosaic of Facebook or other social-media platforms. The fact that hundreds of millions of people get their news from Facebook makes it very much like a global newspaper. Facebook’s ability to connect previously unconnected groups of people to information and commerce really does make it like a 21st-century railroad. ![]() Facebook is like a global railroad or, no, it’s like a town square or, perhaps, it’s like a transnational government or, rather, it’s an electric grid, or a newspaper, or cable TV.Įach of these gets at something real. But some days, my attention will get caught in the slipstream of gotchas, dunks, and nonsense controversies, and I’ll feel deeply regretful about the way I spent my time … only to open the app again, several minutes later, when the pinch of regret has relaxed and my thumb reaches, without thought, toward a familiar blue icon on my phone.į or the past decade, writers have been trying to jam Facebook into various analogical boxes. It connects me with writers and thinkers whom I would never otherwise reach. It makes my life better and more interesting. I have a more complicated relationship with Twitter. Other analogies fall short some people liken social media to junk food, but ultra-processed snacks have few redeemable health qualities compared with just about every natural alternative. I personally don’t spend much time on Instagram, but on reflection I love Twitter quite like the way I love wine and whiskey. Like booze, social media seems to offer an intoxicating cocktail of dopamine, disorientation, and, for some, dependency. ![]() What does that sound like to you? To me, it sounds like alcohol-a social lubricant that can be delightful but also depressing, a popular experience that blends short-term euphoria with long-term regret, a product that leads to painful and even addictive behavior among a significant minority. So a fair summary of Instagram according to Instagram might go like this: Here is a fun product that millions of people seem to love that is unwholesome in large doses that makes a sizable minority feel more anxious, more depressed, and worse about their bodies and that many people struggle to use in moderation. Although many teenagers reported that Instagram was compulsive but depressing, most teenagers who acknowledged this dark side said they still thought the app was enjoyable and useful.įrom the September 2017 issue: Have smartphones destroyed a generation? “Teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse.” “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from a 2019 presentation. For years, Facebook, which owns Instagram, has investigated the app’s effects on its users, and it kept getting the same result. “They often feel ‘addicted’ and know that what they’re seeing is bad for their mental health but feel unable to stop themselves.” “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the authors wrote in a presentation obtained by The Wall Street Journal. L ast year, researchers at Instagram published disturbing findings from an internal study on the app’s effect on young women.
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