No, You’re Not Addicted to Social Media

I think post-millennial teenagers are misled. Many are deeply unhappy spending so much time on social media and would rather hang out with their friends in real life. But because they believe that everyone else expects them to be on it, disclosing their true preferences has become too costly. The immense pressure of the norm means that no one can quit.

Framing the issue solely as social media addiction, besides being unhelpful, might in fact hinder social change. Measures that give teens and parents more control over the time they spend on social media —work well to increase awareness of our behavior, but they do nothing to change expectations about the private beliefs and hidden preferences of other people. Because of this, strategies that target individual behavior will be largely ineffective when it comes to changing the social norm.

Arunas L. Radzvilavicius writing in Undark  

JOMO: The joy of missing out

One of the joys of aging (I’m 64) is to recognize that what used to be important no longer is. There’s no obsession now with social media, no need to follow fleeting trends; the latest movie or fashion style or restaurant or celebrity is unimportant. There’s a sense of peace that comes with pulling back from the zeitgeist and spending the day reading a library book, taking a walk, and preparing a meal. JOMO is real, and its benefits can be achieved at any age if the desire is strong enough.

Comment made by NYCtoMalibu on the New York Times article, “How to Make This the Summer of Missing Out”

Addicted to Love

Breaking up is hard to do. Literally. A brain study out of Rutgers shows getting over romantic rejection is similar to kicking an addiction. One of the study authors says, "When you've been rejected in love, you have lost life's greatest prize, which is a mating partner." Researchers examined the brains of more than dozen volunteers who had each recently been dumped but still loved the person who had rejected them. It turned out reminders of the beloved activated brain regions in the lover associated with addiction to cocaine and cigarettes. These same areas affect emotional control, rewards, addiction cravings, a sense of attachment, pain and distress. This brain system becomes activated in an attempt to win the person's affections again, according to the researchers. Details are in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Perhaps the lesson here is that it's important to become addicted to someone who is good for you.

Stephen Goforth

Getting hooked

Should the makers of habit-forming products be praised as innovative entrepreneurs? Or shunned as the immoral equivalents of drug pushers? Ian Bogost, a designer of video games, describes them as nothing less than the “cigarette of this century”. Paul Graham, a Silicon Valley investor, worries that humans have not had time to develop societal “antibodies to addictive new things”.

If any other business were found to be employing people with the title of “behaviour designers”, they would be seen as exploitative and downright creepy. The internet is becoming ever more powerful and pervasive. And every new technological leap makes it easier for behaviour designers to weave digital technology into consumers’ daily habits. As smartphones become loaded with ever more sensors, and with software that can interpret their users’ emotional states (see article), the scope for manipulating minds is growing. The world is also on the cusp of a wearable revolution which will fix Google Glasses to people’s skulls and put smart T-shirts onto their torsos: the irresistible, all-knowing machines will be ever more ubiquitous. And the trouble with insatiable desires is that the struggle to sate them leaves everyone as exhausted as they are unfulfilled.

The Economist