Through the Looking Glass of Social Media

Through the Looking Glass of Social Media

Validation of Our Value

The rhythmic turns of my grandmother’s rotary telephone could be heard from the living room where I often played with hand me down Barbie dolls or watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my older brother. Whenever I wanted a cookie or some Nesquik chocolate milk, I would hurry into the kitchen where the odd device lived. I’d run in, grab my snack, and just for a moment, slowly eyed the seemingly prehistoric telephone attached to the wall well above my limited reach.I couldn’t figure out why Grandma would have such a different phone than the one we had at home. It seemed so silly to have to move your finger all the around the front of it so it would work properly. This one didn’t even light up like ours.Fast forward many years later, and it’s that very same phone that comes to mind as I’m purchasing my first cell phone. I knew my parents wouldn’t want to put me on their monthly bill, but I was determined to have one by the time I was entering high school. I would not be that one person in the whole school who did not own a cell phone. So I kept on the lookout in the ads for a reasonable TracFone and saved my money so I could buy “minutes” to go with it. I was eager to open up the over-the-counter plastic case and turn on my refurbished flip phone for the first time. I loved that phone, as well as the other five phones, all different makes and models, I owned before my current smartphone. I’ve had a total of four phones that fall into the smartphone category. After the first taste, I knew there was no going back. Suddenly, moving your finger around the face of a telephone became habitual and natural.Attention spans have shortened and the rate of Attention Deficit ADHD diagnoses has continued to increase. Statistics from The Center for Disease Control report that in 2003, only 7.8% of kids in the United States between 4 and 17 were diagnosed with ADHD. In 2011, that number went up to 11%. There weren’t any states in 2003 that had over 13%  of kids with ADHD, but over ten states in 2011 did, and only one state had less than 7%. Teenagers and children in this day and age are growing up with technology at their fingertips, making it second nature reach for a cell phone or laptop. This research supports parental complaints that being in so much contact with technology puts stress on their kids’ attention spans. Parents think their kids are being ridiculous that they “need” to be constantly using technology. But an actual need to be connected to a smartphone is becoming more and more real. Research is piling up in the area of social media and its effect on how the brain works. As humans, wanting contact with others is instinctive, as well as wanting the worth of our thoughts being validated. And if we don’t get enough “likes” or “favorites”, we feel as though our worth has lessened. These tendencies have led me to believe that social media has a negative impact on the way the brain handles stress and self-esteem issues.

Miranda Poulson is Online

My finger hovered over the send button as I hesitated for only a few seconds before I decided to become a walking irony. “Could I interview you for an article?” I prompted Miranda Poulson, a close friend and freshman at Missouri State University. A feature I have come to have a love/hate relationship with on Facebook Messenger is the little check next to your message so you know the other person has read it, as well as the taunting ellipsis that jumps up and down to indicate the other person is typing a response. Shortly after sending the question, I hear the pop of a new message and scroll to see Miranda’s short reply: “Sure.”I breathe a sigh of relief and begin the process of interviewing with the added hurtle of having a conversation online. I was caught in a humorous paradox of asking questions about the use of social media and its effects while simultaneously chatting via a social network. My mind put itself at ease as I got into Miranda’s responses and became inspired to come up with new questions to pose. For over an hour, Facebook helped me to compile plenty of new thoughts and a fresh perspective.Miranda is no stranger to technology or the use of social media. She owns an iPad, iPod touch, a laptop, and a smartphone, all of which she uses on a daily basis. The iPad, her weapon of choice, is the most used when it comes to accessing social media. Keynote, a mobile cloud testing and monitoring company, conducted a survey in 2012 and found that 75% of those with a tablet use it to participate in social media/networking sites. When asked how often she checked social media sites in a given day, Miranda admitted, “Well this is embarrassing. I suppose I check social media sites at least twice an hour, if not more.” She isn’t alone. In the same survey, 39% of those using mobile applications spend between 1 and 2 hours total each day, while 28% spend 3 to 4 hours on the Web from a home computer. From a provided list of 9 social networking sites, Miranda is signed up for 8. She visits Twitter the most frequently, although she says she’s on all of the sites at least once a day. “I usually signed up for sites because my friends wanted me to,” Poulson said. It isn’t uncommon to feel the pressure to be so technologically connected. People could feel left out or not know every waking thought of those they will most likely interact with the next day. “I gave up Facebook for Lent one year, which ultimately led to my Twitter addiction,” Miranda stated, exemplifying how people have a need to always be in the know. “Time normally spent on Facebook I channeled to Twitter.” As soon as Lent, the 40 days before Easter where some Christians give up something for its duration, had concluded, Poulson said she immediately returned to Facebook.

A Trust Serum 

Imagine a new mother holding her baby for the first time. She cuddles and coos the fragile human, and bounces it gently up and down to soothe the baby if it’s fussy. As infants, we’re able to recognize our mother’s voice nearly immediately. Before we’ve even left the womb, we have bonded.This is all thanks to a certain hormone that is released from our pituitary gland, Oxytocin. Most commonly known for forging the bond between a mother and her child, Oxytocin is known as many other pseudonyms, such as “the love drug” or “the cuddle hormone.” This hormone induces contractions and helps with lactation for new moms. Discussing a study featured in Developmental Psychobiology, Johanna Bick explains that in the brain, Oxytocin initiates maternal instincts, although it doesn’t necessarily maintain them. This helps with the bonds that form. Not only does Oxytocin begin a strong relationship for Mom and little Timmy, but it’s also a factor in how we interact with other people in our life, such as close friends. Paul Zak, quoted in an article for Inman News, says Oxytocin is like “social glue” through its powers of trust. The article goes on to describe an experiment of social media’s effect on levels of Oxytocin. Over a ten minute period while casually going through their news feed on Tweetdeck, a Twitter-based platform, the users’ levels of Oxytocin increased by 13.2%, while hormones related to stress were reduced in their bodies. When asked if using social media sites reduces her stress, Miranda Poulson responded, “For a short amount of time. It reduces my stress when I’m actually on the site, but when I get off I have even more stress from putting [schoolwork] off.” Yes, we may feel a surge of that good-feeling hormone when we check Facebook for the hundredth time that day, but perhaps that’s why we constantly need to get on it. The more we experience a way to be less stressed, the more we will want to attempt the experience. Miranda went on about how she feels social media reduces stress  for people. “It gives you an escape,” she says, “You don’t have to worry about your problems. You can get involved in other people’s problems or look at pictures or rant about how good things are going, even if they’re not.” This helps explain why people would rather find serenity online than in the real world, where there are face-to-face interactions and problems that can’t be outrun by simply exiting the webpage. Poulson goes a step further, “Getting on a social media site is like logging into a cooler version of yourself.” You can be anyone you want to be on the internet, and people most often opt to appear as an enhanced model of themselves.

Tell Me I’m Pretty

The basic want for humans is the desire to be desired. In today’s society, the seemingly easiest way to tell if others approve of us to tally up the number of friends we have on Facebook, or how many followers we can rack up on Twitter. Yes, it’s true, that it’s easier than ever to stay in contact with people who are no longer near us, but most of the time, we are not interested in every waking moment of their lives that they share online. However much people’s brains say they feel more connected and less stressed, there are still consequences. Sometimes people will post a selfie, a picture they’ve taken of themselves, but none of their friends like it. A psychologist from the Department of Mental Health, Dr. Panpimol Wipulakorn, was quoted on this subject in Time magazine in February 2014: “This could affect their thoughts. They can lose self-confidence and have a negative attitude toward themselves, such as feeling dissatisfied with themselves or their body.” The concept that our generation gets their self-confidence from an online community and the number of likes a picture gets is unacceptable. Kids and teens should base their worth on their personality or integrity, not other people’s opinion of their looks.The people who do put stock in other’s opinions try to be sneaky in the way they ask for attention. Casually posting a picture they spent an hour to get to look just right, then another twenty minutes picking out the best filter for the lighting, then acting surprised when 10 comments pop up in their notifications telling them how gorgeous they are. Or perhaps they send out a tweet, or even a subtweet, where the user indirectly speaks to another person in a usually sarcastic tone. This causes others to ask what’s the matter, where the user will nonchalantly reply, “Oh, I really don’t want to talk about it.” When people get into these behaviors, all it does it advocate inflated egos and lack of humility.“That’s one problem with social media,” Poulson says, “It intensifies our need for attention. And you’ll get the reaction you want: pity, encouragement, envy, etc.”

Since the Dawn of the Internet

Over a year ago, Miranda was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medication to help her focus. According to statistics provided by the Center for Disease Control, the percentage of children 4-17 years of age taking medication for ADHD increased between 2007 and 2011. Overall in the United states, the percentage of those diagnosed and medicated went from 66.3% to 69%.  When I asked Miranda if she thought the use of social media has influenced her ADHD, she agreed whole-heartedly. “Everything is shortened. Every tweet is 140 characters or less. Vines are 6 seconds long. A 10 minute YouTube video seems too long for me to watch.” In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, an article on The Atlantic magazine’s website, Nicholas Carr expresses his concern that the way the internet is used nowadays is changing the way our brains work and think. He feels as if he can no longer take the time to ready a lengthy piece of writing, because he starts getting restless and distracted. Both Miranda and Nicholas Carr explain that they know there are always perks of social media. For Miranda, she talks about keeping in touch with friends and family, making the remark, “The world is no longer this big scary place, it’s your computer screen.” As for Carr, he explains as a writer, the Web has made his job easier. The use of databases and search engines makes stacking up research a snap. Although these points may be valid, the consequences of the continual use of social media sites are far greater than the pros. “It seems like they [social media] are encouraging short attention spans, which makes it that much harder when I’m trying to improve my attention span and focus more,” Miranda explains.A book released in 2010, The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, discusses how the pioneers of the Internet had an inkling that something such as social networking would become the norm. As far back as in an essay from 1968, J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor described their idea of online communities as, “[N]ot of common location, but of common interest.” I find it amazing that just the idea of something as big as Facebook could be predicted so far in advance. I also find it amazing how social media has exploded in the last decade. No one could have predicted the impact of being only a click away from the world.I still think about that rotary telephone from time to time, even though my grandmother doesn’t live in that house anymore. I can picture it, protruding out from the wall and silently adding personality to the entire home. The curls of the cord wrapped around the same fingers that wound the dial around, one number at a time. You were forced to slow down back then. Only relatively recently did everything begin to speed up. We expect our phones and tablets to perform at certain rate, and we’re unsatisfied when they don’t. Being connected to the world has its benefits, but in the end there are too many cons that can’t be overlooked.