The 6 Ways Social Media Warps How People Think
Granted, “Social media” encompasses a wide number of platforms these days, but yours truly has been around the block on a lot of them. I ran one of the most successful conservative Facebook pages that has ever existed, handled social media for Duncan Hunter’s 2008 presidential campaign, I have 41.8k X followers, and I’ve created a YouTube video with over 100k views. All that has been done by me personally, without being a conservative rock star like Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, or Glenn Beck.
Perhaps more importantly, given the topic, I was very familiar with the media, the conservative world, and the Internet before social media ever became a big thing. If you don’t have that kind of perspective, it’s very difficult to understand what has changed since social media came along.
So, how does social media warp how people think? Like this.
1) It creates echo chambers: Social media gives us the illusion that we’re getting information from the whole planet, but that’s a mirage. After all, who do most people follow on social media? People whom they like and agree with. Then it’s, “Wow, everybody seems to feel exactly the same way about this that I do.” Yes, that’s because you choose people who feel exactly the same way you do to follow.
Then, to top it off, the algorithms on these sites feed you more of what you’re most likely to be interested in. Guess what that is? It’s people repeating back to you what you already believe. This often leads to horrifyingly inaccurate views of the world. Worse yet, it leads to extremism not just because you don’t see a lot of alternative views, but because you have to take more and more extreme positions to stand out in large groups of people with like-minded views.
2) It strips away context: On social media platforms, there generally is no real context or depth. People form judgments based on short video clips, snappy headlines, or unsupported claims. It leads to incredibly simplistic thinking. “Oh, they said something I like! They must be good!” “I disagree with that. They must be bad!” “Did you see that 6-second video clip in the middle of what happened? That proves who the bad guy is!”
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to understand the world this way without knowing more than you see from a meme, bumper sticker, or slogan. Do you understand why a war started? Do you know history? Have you read a book on the subject? Do you even know anything about the person making the claim? Are they reliable? What’s their agenda? The larger the percentage of information people get from social media, the dumber they get.
3) It shortens attention spans: X is 280 characters. Instagram is pictures. TikTok is short videos. On YouTube, the rule for music videos is to change what people see every 3-10 seconds, or they’ll lose interest. Then, there are memes:
Believe it or not, before the radio and TV era, people could watch a dry debate for hours. Before the Internet, people couldn’t hold out that long, but they did actually want the news of the day, even if it was boring. Then, we got to the point where it was, “Give them a little entertainment to make sure they stick around for the important stuff.” Now, it’s more like, “Make it as entertaining as possible to try to get them to look, and if you get any real information across, that’s a bonus.”
The problem with that is if you have the attention span of a goldfish, you don’t know much, you can’t learn much, and you’re never really going to understand the world. We could argue about which came first, the social media chicken or the short attention span egg, but best-case scenario, it’s heavily contributing to the problem.
4) It causes people to behave like brands: How do you judge whether Ford is more successful than Toyota? It’s who sells more cars and makes more profit. So, how do you decide who’s more successful online? It’s the people who get more likes, followers, and attention.
Do you get those things by being who you really are? By being authentic? For the most part, no. You get them by saying things you think people will want to hear. Things that you believe will be popular. By behaving in an exaggerated way to holds people’s attention.
It’s not about making friends. It’s not about introducing people to the “real you,” it’s about getting eyeballs, and that drives many people to create personas that they often get mired in permanently. This is how you end up with people like this eating themselves to death because people are willing to watch them do it:
5) It traps people in the negative: People often complain that there’s so much negative news, rage bait, and information designed to outrage people on social media, but it exists for the same reason you see a fast-food restaurant selling unhealthy, calorie-laden food on every corner. It’s WHAT PEOPLE WANT. Believe it or not, you can serve up positive, happy news and you will find that no one wants it.
We want to be outraged. We want something to hate. We want over-the-top characters saying crazy things. We want to feel something online, even if it’s negative. This wasn’t that big of a problem, say 10 years ago, because most people hadn’t figured this out. Now that they have, if you are on social media, you are incessantly being marinated in negativity, gossip, and doom. Even when you get off the computer, that negativity goes with you and warps how you view the world.
6) It skews perceptions: What is “strong?” What is “rich?” What is “popular?” What is “beautiful?” Online, you are constantly bombarded with the 1% of the 1% in every area, and to a lot of people, that becomes the standard they measure themselves against. You could be the strongest, richest, most popular, or most beautiful person in YOUR STATE and still feel woefully inadequate compared to the best-of-the-best online, especially after their image has been carefully curated to look as good as possible.
Maybe I’m not the best example because I’m not a big Instagram guy, but my last five pictures on there are from Tokyo, Japan; Horseshoe Bend, New York; Puerto Rico; and Savanah, Georgia. Sounds at least fairly cool, right? Like I’m going on vacations non-stop. Except that all five of those pictures were taken over a 75-week period. There’s an awful lot of life in-between that you’re not seeing there. Most social media is like this.
Everyone is putting their highlight reel online to try to be impressive, while most people are comparing that to their everyday life, when they got a flat tire, took the dog to the vet, and accidentally wore a shirt with a hole in it out to dinner. This leads to a lot of people feeling like losers because social media has changed what they consider “winning” to be something only the tiniest fraction of humanity can ever achieve.
All of this is correct, but there's one thing missing, the answer to this question:
WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO DO ABOUT IT?
I wrote the following some time ago. It still holds true.
https://iceage.substack.com/p/im-ice-age-and-im-a-recovering-conservaholic
One thing I forgot to add is this: Why are the conservatives who write these articles always sad or outraged or dismayed or disappointed by some Terrible Thing - but never enraged or pissed off? I think it's an editorial thing, some edict handed down from on high that no author who writes for the website shall ever express anger at the Left's latest shenanigans, only a sort of handwringing worry appropriate to the prudish spinster aunt of legend who crossess herself and pray for divine intervention. If I wasn't a good Christian and all that.
Oh, and don't need to wake up. We're awake. We can see what's happening just fine. We just don't want to get involved because we have a mortgage to pay, or Tommy needs braces, or Caitlin has soccer practice and what difference would it make anyway?
And there's this:
https://iceage.substack.com/p/easy-success-is-driving-us-all-mad
I think your article addresses these things, all rolled up into one.
This all sounds right to me. Humans are so flawed in their emotional disregualtion and staus pursuit. They want to be little Gods. Or they are so wounded phycoligically they cannot think critically.