Almost everyone loves their phone; as a matter of fact, you may be reading this very piece on your phone. One thing everyone can agree on is that it is an addiction. Many admit it out loud but yet do nothing to fix it. I, myself, am one of those people.
I have always known the danger and impact of social media, but I can’t seem to get myself to stop. I could never completely cut it out of my life; I always had at least one app installed at all times. Before each important academic event, I would cut it out completely, and it worked for a short period of time.
Last April, when the Cambridge exams began, I deleted every social media application I had on my phone.. I was more involved in life. I wasn’t spending every waking hour on my device. The first week went well, but as it went on. I felt what can only be described as ‘withdrawal’. Funny as it sounds, I craved it. I craved the distraction from reality, the distraction from the tasks at hand. It was especially difficult when everyone around me was always on their phones.
I felt as though I was missing out on something. I often found myself wondering what other people were doing, people I did not even know in real life. It was like I was watching someone’s life from my phone and unconsciously comparing myself to it. Or having the urge to share something I had done.
As hard as it is to admit, my one-and-a-half-month hiatus was not a successful streak; I had gone back multiple times, whether on my laptop or phone, just for a peek. When I did so, I felt the serotonin surging in my subconscious, but following that, I felt guilt. Guilty that I had broken my promise to myself and fallen down the rabbit hole that was Instagram.
Something that occurred to me was that this was not normal behavior. Twenty, thirty years back, this was not the norm. People aren’t supposed to have this much access to other people’s lives. One thing was for sure: it was scary. Scary how much of a hold social media had on me.
This condition, or more so addiction, is not an accident; it is not something that randomly occurs; it is a carefully crafted system designed to hook people on. An eye-opening documentary called “The Social Network” perfectly explains the complex design behind social media. People who worked on these settings and systems fall victim to their very creation. The documentary talked about how these apps were programmed to make the viewers stay on. If you’re sitting and suddenly there’s a notification about a random post, it is not random at all. The pings and lights that light up on your phone are designed so that you pick it up. They want you to ‘doomscroll’, they want your attention to be on your device completely. One saying that perfectly captures this is “if it’s free, you’re the product.”
With a new item, there is a need for a purchase, an exchange. For instance, annual fees on streaming platforms give us access to exclusive movies. This is not free. We pay to use the app and, in return, receive the services. In the case of social media, it is free to download on every device. One thought that might occur is how companies profit from this. This is where the consumers become the product. When you open a social media account, you’ll be hit with advertisements; sometimes you’re not even aware that they are one. Companies are constantly monopolizing the consumers. They want the consumers to be hooked on the app so that we keep generating them money, no matter the cost to the consumers. Social media competes for our attention through programming algorithms to keep us watching for hours at a time.
This begs the question, why should consumers care if it’s free? Shouldn’t we be happy it’s free? Yes and No. Depending on how one uses these platforms, it may be beneficial for it to be free; however, if we look closely enough into it, the real danger arises. When an app is downloaded onto a device, it has access to your photos and location. Both of which can be extracted and used against the consumers. This information can be sold to third-party companies for an amount of profit, all without your knowledge. Your deepest secret, your security, and sometimes even your identity, is used as a transaction.
Not having a phone or a social media account is no longer the norm; it is now a strange thing. If you mentioned to someone that you don’t have social media, they wouldn’t praise you, but instead question you as though you had done something wrong. Without even realising it, we are causing the death of our brain cells, our knowledge, and our attention span. Something that was meant to be revolutionary – to connect people – turns out to be a weapon used against them.