Why I Decided to Quit Social Media for a Semester
The background story behind me quitting social media
1/4/20232 min read
During my time in college, I took a class called The Psychology of Social Media. Despite only being a one credit class, this ended up being one of the most impactful classes to me.
In the grand scheme of things, social media is still incredibly novel to us. We are only now starting to grasp what kind of effect it has on us. The class aimed to highlight the work of leading researchers and what their data has found. For many of the people around my age (Gen-Z) we were the guinea pigs of what early exposure to social media could do.
I would highly recommend The Social Dilemma on Netflix. The documentary touched upon several of the topics discussed in my class. They even interview current and former employees from Silicon Valley, the tech capital of the world. After watching the documentary, I guarantee your entire viewpoint of social media will change.
In class we learned that some of the original software engineers who wrote and developed the code for Instagram’s algorithm REFUSED to allow their family to use the app. That immediately set off red flags in my head. They knew the app was being designed to keep people hooked. Instagram originally would send you a push notification immediately after someone would either like or comment on one of your post. An update eventually rolled out that let the interactions on your post pile up before sending you notifications. Seeing that build up of notifications drop all at once on our phones lead to a dopamine overload for users. It stimulated our need for social validation. Social media was intentionally developed using our understanding of human psychology to make us want to come back for more.
How is it that someone who was working so hard on this cutting-edge technology wouldn’t allow those closest to them use it? Facebook became available to the public in 2006. Research has shown that since then, and in the coming years when Facebook’s popularity skyrocketed, both suicides rates and the experiencing of major depression both increased.
Have you ever wondered how despite being free apps like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are able to produce profits? In the case of social media, YOU are the product that companies are buying.Instagram gauges and tracks your likes, the content that you interact with, what pages you visit. All this data is then sold to companies who are willing to pay for it. Some social media even tracks your interests outside of the app. For example, this is why sometimes you’ll Google “red sweaters on sale” and then the next time you log into Instagram you see a personalized ad for a red sweater.
With the overwhelming amount of content available at any given moment, our attention has become one of the scarcest resources. Instagram is using its algorithm to monetize its user’s attention. What is scarce is rare. What is rare is valuable. Be honest. Have you read every single word of this blog post? Or have you skimmed it looking for highlights to read?
-JC