Social media is inescapable; just look at how many people have a social network downloaded on their phones, how many people use them on a daily basis, or even how many companies are utilizing them for advertising and marketing their products. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, these companies don't care about the end-user, but instead, how to raise their stocks. Fortunately for them, their values align with some of their biggest users. Their biggest users, the ones that bring others to the social network, are ones that love to show or tell people what they are doing or thinking; these social media "influencers," these "personalities," are just people who want, and get, attention. In short, narcissism is driving the rise of social media, and if we let it continue to rise, our species will be a very antisocial, segregated and close-minded one.
These traits that you can find on social media, isn't limited to looking at yourself in the mirror; no, it goes much deeper than that. Mike Mariani, author of "The Antisocial Network" in Psychology Today says that "The Dark-Triad" of traits can be simplified into "psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism." Since, we as humans, have such a gigantic disconnect between our real life and our online-life, we often find ourselves having less empathy for others when we are scrolling through the endless tirade of memes. This disconnect can be seen, in some cases, as a sign of psychopathy in our digital era. One anecdote of this disconnection comes from Mariani, who describes a young girl, Christal Mcgee, who tracked her speed with Snapchat, slowly inching past 100mph, until she hit 113; she was finally slowing down when she slammed into somebody that was pulling into the highway. Instead of having any signs of remorse for the other person, "[Mcgee] returned to the app to snap a selfie. The caption read: 'Lucky to be alive.'" This might be an extreme example, but just think of how many times you've scrolled through your social media app, and see a post about your friend having a good time. In my experience, only 1 or 2 people will comment, or engage at all, some will "like" the post, but most will scroll past, not giving it a second thought. It's weird, because if someone were to come up to you and talk, face to face, about having a good time, you would ask questions, you would have a discussion. But on Facebook, there's this sense of anti-socialism on a social network. There are somewhat more intense examples, where someone will share a link, that, if you saw it in real life, you would be terrified, think, police shootout. Most people have a serious, gut wrenching, reaction, but then others might comment on the video about how they could have done it better, or something equally ludicrous; because the more outlandish, the more "post-modern" you are, the more Likes you get, and the more Likes you get, perpetually justifies your outlandish behavior.
Talking of perpetually justification, let's talk echo chambers. Have you seen the news? The earth is flat, vaccines give babies autism, every Liberal wants to take our guns, and every conservative is a bible loving nut case. These are some examples, but the concept still applies. An "echo chamber" is categorized as a person, or people, who create a social bubble around themselves, not letting new information into their lives. Flat Earth Theorists are the craziest example, with every piece of information that comes to them, they simply refuse the facts, and go back to their forums where they are with like-minded individuals, where they get the confirmation bias they need, to keep believing what they want. David Grimes, writer for The Guardian, says that this denial of information locks us in a state of "perpetual tribalism, and does tangible damage to our understandings." The craziest part about this, is that these echo chambers aren't just a paradox found within a single person, or persons, using the web, but rather the people running it too. In Eli Pariser's TED talk, he shows how Google, Facebook, and many other cites are algorithmically curating news to conform to your social media use and internet browsing habits. In his example, he asked two people to type the exact same thing into Google (that being the word: Egypt), and both had wildly different results; one had news about the protests that were happening at the time, while the other got travel guides. The reason being, is that Google uses everything from search history and type of browser you're using, to your geographic location and Google account information (sex, age, etc.). We as humans are prone to confirmation bias, and love to revel in it, and these corporations know that, and use it to their advantage.
Now, with that digression out of the way, we can continue our journey through the wonderful, magical land of the Dark Triad. Machiavellianism, a substructure of narcissism, is characterized by the want or need to manipulate others for some sort of gain. The word comes from a man, Nicco Machiavelli, who schemed his way into a place of fiscal and political power, but in this context we are also relating it to the social gain that comes from posting on social media. And finally, narcissism. It can be found on every social network out there, with it's most narcissistic rising to the top. Have you heard of Jake Paul? Unfortunately, my printer only has so much ink, so if you want to know about the most prolific, highest paid narcissistic, egocentric psychopath on the internet, you should look him up on your own. In 2013, researchers at the University of Michigan "found that tweeting was moderately associated with a sense of superiority, while posting on Facebook corresponded with exhibitionism" (Mariani). This is to say that Twitter is a microphone, while Facebook is a mirror, both of which cultivate narcissistic traits.
These narcissistic traits aren't limited just to how people see themselves, but also how these people see others, and how they can use others to help themselves. PhD holders and Korean researchers, Yongjun Sung and Jung-Ah Lee found, through a group of 315 people, that "individuals higher in narcissism regard the act of posting selfies more positively and are more willing to continue posting selfies in the future." Which is to be expected at this point, but what they also found was that people higher on the narcissism scale "keep an eye on what others are posting as a comparative self-enhancement strategy." Just knowing, that every time you post something, someone is looking at your clothes, house, car or friends and family, and comparing themselves to you for their own gain is somewhat unsettling.
What I find infinity saddening, is the loss of happiness through social media use. From my personal research (two surveys consisting of 51 people, then 40), I found the exact same things that other researchers have found, with some interesting findings along the way. The first of which being that over 75% of respondents said that they have never posted anything negative about their lives to social media, showing a strong disconnect between the lives we live, and the lives we show to others; after all, social media has become more of a stage for performers, rather than an actual a social outlet. And even with that statistic, almost half of the people using social media compare their lives with the lives of others, whether that be their bodies, clothes, friends, houses, looks or relationships, and within those half of participants that compare their lives with others, every single one of them said that their life is worse. It's just saddening to me to see that, even though nobody shows their true self online, a lot of people still aren't satisfied with their life, because of what they see on social media.
Finally, with all this information, we can understand why some people are turning away from social media, and becoming happier without it. As for personal anecdotes, I have seen several friends and family members quit the rat-race of trying to foster a sense of self-adulation that has become so intrinsically tied to Facebook or Instagram. Social media numbers are up by 13% from last year, based on statistics by Smart Insight writer, Dave Chaffery. But, just a quick Google search results in hundreds of articles about the happiness garnered through the lack of social media use. Daisy from Manchester says "I feel less anxious and less like a failure," Ali Syed says "I don't need to prove anything to people," and Cassidy Rosanna, "I can live my life instead of trying to shape it into one that looks good online." These are people that saw the personalities that were rewarded on social media, and finally had enough. These are the people that looked at themselves and realized what they needed to do to become happier, less anxious, individuals was to quit using social media to promote their falsified, editorialized, life.
This disconnect, this lack of empathy, it wasn't born within most, it was cultivated within a generation that was told to perform everything, all the time, for no reason. Social media is just the market's answer to a generation that demanded to perform. Comedian, actor, and now writer and director, Bo Burnham, said it best when he said: "I know very little about anything, but what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience... you should do it."
Work Cited
Burnham, Bo. "Make Happy." June 3, 2016, Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, New York, USA. Comedy Lecture.
Burton, Neel. “The 10 Personality Disorders.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, May 29,www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/the-10-personality-disorders.
Carpenter, Chris. "Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and anti-social behavior." 4 Nov. 2011.
Grimes, David Robert. “Echo Chambers Are Dangerous – We Must Try to Break Free of Our Online Bubbles.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Dec. 2017,www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/dec/04/echo-chambers-are-dangerous-we-must-try-to-break-free-of-our-online-bubbles.
Lee, Jung-Ah and Yongjun Sung. "Hide-And-Seek: Narcissism and 'Selfie'-RelatedBehavior." Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, vol. 19, no. 5, May 2016, pp. 347-351. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1089/cyber.2015.0486.
Pariser, Eli. "Beware online 'filter bubbles.'" TED, Mar. 2011, www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.
Marsh, Sarah. “Does Quitting Social Media Make You Happier? Yes, Say Young People Doing It.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Sept.2016,www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/21/does-quitting-social-media-make-you-happier-yes-say-young-people-doing-it.
Shearer, Elisa, and Jeffrey Gottfried. “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017.” Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 7 Sept. 2017, www.journalism.org/2017/09/07/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2017/.
McEvoy, Mike. “7 Reasons Google Search Results Vary Dramatically.” Web Presence Solutions - Digital Marketing, SEO Services, 6 Apr. 2018, www.webpresencesolutions.net/7-reasons-google-search-results-vary-dramatically/.