I will never be the same person again

[MnM]

Hello people. Some of you may have already read this article on Discord, I am sharing it here in the forum as well since I felt this section could use some pick-me-up.

I usually write design-related articles on my substack but this is a slight deviation from the usual ones. I felt like I had an obligation to write about this topic. So many articles are written and being written about the negative effects of social media but none of them inspired me to reduce the time I spend doom-scrolling on Instagram. I knew I wanted to have a meaningful life and cultivate good habits, and have meaningful relationships. But something was not allowing me to do it. I knew it had something to do with my usage of social media but I was never able to put a finger on it. So I went in search of answers. In this article, I am writing what I have understood so far.

If you look back at your own life, it is defined by certain instances or incidents that changed your perspective of the world and life in general. You could say this is a metamorphosis of the mind. Unlike butterflies, our mind can go through many such transformations inspired by something we saw, heard, or felt. My life is filled with many such instances as well. Whether it was the first time I learned to ride a bicycle, or displayed my artworks in a local gallery, or when my naivety was crushed by twisted co-workers. These experiences were difficult to process. They gave me a deep sense of transformation that will change the trajectory of my life. Such experiences made me the person I am today and informs my worldview. Recently I experienced another transformative moment in my life. I started to read about the power of language, disinformation, and the science behind social media addiction. The combination of these ideas revealed a few things to me.

First, we need to get the basics right. Language is an abstract concept. Millions of years of evolution have given us the capacity to communicate through words that changed the course of human civilization. Without language, one cannot express their thoughts. Words have no meaning inherently. It is our interpretation of the words that give meaning to it. Controlling language (North Korea) and propaganda (Russia) has had dire consequences throughout history. All of us have heard the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword”. The dictatorship regimes of the past and present should give you a clear perspective on what this phrase truly means.

Your thoughts depend on the words you know. The words you know define what you feel and think. What you think leads to actions and your actions have consequences. What you consume has consequences. People want to cultivate good habits, stay healthy, and be productive. We think that we need to change our actions to change our life but what we need to change is what we consume and thereby changing what we think.

Many neuro-scientific studies elucidate the habit-forming patterns and the neural circuitries that are generated in the brain because of those actions. The more you consume or do something, the stronger the circuit associated with that activity becomes and the more difficult it is to let go of the habit, good or bad. The scientific term for this is neural plasticity. Living in a state of constant excitement has dire physiological consequences. Consuming short bits of content every day will incapacitate our brains of having deep thoughts. If you are someone like me who wants to work on his/her craft, you need to have the ability to enter the flow state of mind more frequently than not. We need to rescue ourselves before we hit the point of no return.

Habit is one part of the problem but the most dangerous problem of our generation is going to be related to the information we consume on social media. Social media giants have far too much influence on the information we see and it is not preposterous to say that our minds have become slaves to their algorithm. Censorship of information is prevalent and these companies, who claim to be independent bodies have become propaganda machines for the powers that control them.

I was so self-assured that I am mentally strong enough to use my critical and rational thinking to come to conclusions of my own. One day I caught myself quoting something I saw on Twitter without even understanding it deeply. Google search used to be the best tool we have, but now I am afraid whether we have become too lazy to even search and verify the information we see on social media and are starting to completely trust what we see, subconsciously. Even if your friends share something with you, you should verify it with multiple sources before coming to any conclusions.

Recently I saw a poll claiming that Prime Minister Modi’s approval rating is 66%. Every media outlet ran with this story. I tried to look into the company website that did the survey and the data was hidden behind a paywall. I am not going to believe it until I see it. Key metrics like age categories, sex, region, and no. of people would have sufficed without even disclosing the entire data but it was not available for public consumption. Even if the survey was done with good intentions, I think you should exercise your critical thinking and not believe it till you see the data for yourself.

Another instance of how we might be susceptible to wrong ideas is this chart. Anyone who sees this chart might immediately conclude that income should be distributed evenly. That might sound reasonable, but you should also take into account where India as a country stands globally [Article Link]. I am not a data science expert but I think the second article changes the entire narrative.

The Internet was new, technology was fascinating. We have gone ahead and built these tools that allow us to interact with millions of people without considering the repercussions. Twitter was built with the naive aim of sharing your activities with your friends. Now it is most probably separating your friends away from you. Being hooked on social media 24/7 is not doing us any good. It is important to understand how easy it is to trick our brains to control our thoughts, actions, and outcomes. If you want to foster connection with people across the world, then these social media platforms are not the tools we need.

10 years of social media usage should give us a rough idea of the pros and cons and what we should do. The combination of social media addiction and manipulation through disinformation is deadly, and the consequences are catastrophic, to say the least. Our society has been heavily polarized over the past decade, thanks to these Big Tech companies.

The answer to this problem is simple on the surface. Verify what you read and cultivate better thoughts. But it takes effort to rewire our brains to suppress the strength of these “bad-circuitries” we have formed due to our social media usage. We need to replace that with new ones and hopefully good ones. Exercise your critical thinking and make sure you put the right things in your head. Read more about addiction and disinformation tactics. Freedom of thought is freedom of expression, and it is core to our very being.

It is easy to get cynical. But I am optimistic that we can rescue ourselves from this mess we have created. There are many beautiful things in life to be inspired by. How does a seed, however tiny it may be, contain enough information to grow into a giant tree? How do two highly combustible gases combine to produce water? What is love, and the meaning of life? What should be our relationship to death? How do we seek to improve ourselves and the community we live in? We have limited time on this planet and we should not be spending time chasing dopamine hits. Talk with your friends and see what they think about this article. The time is now. Let us not delay it any further. Thank you.

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Thanks to STM for proofreading this article.

[MangaD]

Great article @MnM! You nailed one of the biggest problems of the modern world. I would have used China instead of North Korea as an example. And also, good thing that you mentioned media outlets and not just social media. Mainstream media have been doing this manipulation for decades, if not centuries, and they've been getting away with it.

I have tried challenging my virtual friends into contacting with opinions that go against the mainstream narrative. Even if I am not an expert in the topics or do not necessarily (fully) agree with the position(s) that I was presenting. The result was that most ignored these attempts or felt that their beliefs were under attack and stopped talking to me or removed me from their friend list entirely. To summarize, there wasn't any effort made into discussing the matters, let alone in a critical thinking / open-minded way.

Now I feel tempted to ignore all of the political, religious and social matters discussed on social media. After all, why waste my time on that and sever my connections when I can just mind myself doing more productive things? And yet, I feel that by doing this I become a social nihilist just like most people have become, without caring about the society that I live in. What is your advice on this?

Edit: Forgot to mention that it would be nice to link to the studies you mention.

[FredyFired]

I only now got to read this article and I gotta say that I really enjoyed it, great read. I'm always glad when I see people tackle these modern world problems we are currently facing.

I was so self-assured that I am mentally strong enough to use my critical and rational thinking to come to conclusions of my own. One day I caught myself quoting something I saw on Twitter without even understanding it deeply. Google search used to be the best tool we have, but now I am afraid whether we have become too lazy to even search and verify the information we see on social media and are starting to completely trust what we see, subconsciously. Even if your friends share something with you, you should verify it with multiple sources before coming to any conclusions.

This part is something that really caught my eye, since I also made this mistake in the past and I still have lots of friends that keep making it to this day. It's interesting how in spite of living in the age of information, it is easier than ever to be misinformed or ignorant when it comes to serious matters and I think the current global situation even showcased this exact issue.

Now I feel tempted to ignore all of the political, religious and social matters discussed on social media. After all, why waste my time on that and sever my connections when I can just mind myself doing more productive things? And yet, I feel that by doing this I become a social nihilist just like most people have become, without caring about the society that I live in. What is your advice on this?

The way I handle this is that I have a select few friends with whom I can speak my mind quite freely and go more in-depth into all sorts of topics, some of which might be controversial like the ones you mentioned and I also like to approach different issues with them and have debates in which one of us usually takes the role of the Devil's advocate. When it comes to social media (stuff like Facebook or Youtube) I very rarely express my opinions on there because I feel like no one truly pays attention there enough. People would rather instigate fights and go at each other's necks, barely any civil arguments can be had and no conclusions are ever reached. When it comes to some niche communities and websites, I find it to usually be much easier to have a civilized and entertaining discussion with someone else about a specific topic, so I guess this would be my advice pretty much regarding this whole situation.