Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk through some of the big
Speaker 1: life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
Speaker 1: mean for our psychology. Hi, Hello, welcome all. Here's the
Speaker 1: question we're asking ourselves this week. Let's jump right into it.
Speaker 1: Is social media rotting your brain? And all? The answer
Speaker 1: is yes, there you go. End of episode Just kidding.
Speaker 1: This week we are going to discuss the consequences of
Speaker 1: social media in our twenties and the absolute chokehold it
Speaker 1: has over so many of our lives. I think social
Speaker 1: media has just recently, in the last decade or two,
Speaker 1: become part of people's daily activities. Many of us spend
Speaker 1: hours each day on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and other
Speaker 1: popular social media sites. Hours hours of our lives detached
Speaker 1: from the real from the real world, from what is
Speaker 1: actually happening, you know, connected but not really. There's so
Speaker 1: much to discuss when we talk about these platforms. We're
Speaker 1: going to consider the issues of social comparison and presentation
Speaker 1: to addiction. We're going to talk about exogenous depression caused
Speaker 1: by excessive social media usage. How the design of social
Speaker 1: media is highly intentional and deliberate to capture of much
Speaker 1: of our attention as possible, based on an understanding of
Speaker 1: how our brains work, how our brains process social information,
Speaker 1: how these platforms are attuned to tribal networks, and the
Speaker 1: matter by which dopamine controls every single one of our actions. TikTok.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about, TikTok, why are those short
Speaker 1: videos so hard to pull away from? And why it's
Speaker 1: probably not your fault that you find yourself in the
Speaker 1: TikTok deep dive or black hole of content so much
Speaker 1: that we're talking about today, So let's just jump right
Speaker 1: in and answer some of those questions. Humans have been
Speaker 1: evolving for thousands of years, and many, if not all,
Speaker 1: of our current anatomical features and processes, like our limbic
Speaker 1: system and our dopamine centers, they have adapted from the
Speaker 1: survival priorities of pre human and I guess human ancestors.
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of ways that this kind
Speaker 1: of evolutionary idea is so important when we consider how
Speaker 1: dominating social media is in our lives these days. In particular,
Speaker 1: our brains are hardwired towards tribal networks, as this was
Speaker 1: kind of the best method for organizing members of a
Speaker 1: group to ensure survival in the past. Humans are adapted
Speaker 1: to be highly social, and despite platforms like Instagram, like
Speaker 1: Facebook being created to help humans connect, social media deliberately
Speaker 1: exploit psychological features of our social brains andgeric systems to
Speaker 1: mean that we keep going back to receive the reward
Speaker 1: of feeling like we are part of a broader group
Speaker 1: and connected to others, even if it's perhaps not true,
Speaker 1: or even if it's just through a screen. As a
Speaker 1: result of that, I guess our social media uses has
Speaker 1: just rapidly increased in the past five years, I'd say
Speaker 1: five to ten years, and some researchers have even found
Speaker 1: reasons to believe that our brains have experienced the kind
Speaker 1: of rapid evolution that we never see. There's been these
Speaker 1: massive changes to our dopamine systems, our signapses, they of
Speaker 1: certain lobes in children and in young adults that have
Speaker 1: been noticed since the introduction of social media, changes that
Speaker 1: would normally take generations entire generations to show up. In
Speaker 1: the past. Social media it evolved. It has evolved beyond
Speaker 1: a platform that connects users, but that's not the main
Speaker 1: purpose anymore. It's now a significant distraction from daily life,
Speaker 1: and many of us prioritize scrolling our feeds or do
Speaker 1: it counterintuitively without even wanting to, and the negative impacts
Speaker 1: that have emerged from that are just endless. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've experienced that yourself, the use of social media as
Speaker 1: a distraction, how it removes value from the moment, seeing
Speaker 1: the world through what we can post to receive attention
Speaker 1: as a way of connection, rather than seeing the world
Speaker 1: through actually kind of enjoying the moment. So to begin,
Speaker 1: we are going to examine how social media platforms like TikTok,
Speaker 1: like Instagram have been designed in a very particular and
Speaker 1: deliberate manner to consume a user. That's you, the user. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the basis of social media addiction, or at
Speaker 1: least attraction or attention. Evolutionary psychologists like we talked about
Speaker 1: have observed that prehuman ancestral groups who had greater social
Speaker 1: connections were more likely to survive because they had greater
Speaker 1: access to food, because they could divide labor, there was
Speaker 1: security in numbers, and they had more mating partners, successful
Speaker 1: social interactions, and the neurotransmitters that are released during these
Speaker 1: interactions can be one of the most fulfilling stimuli for
Speaker 1: humans because of the survival benefits of maintaining a large
Speaker 1: social network in the past, that instinctual drive towards maintaining
Speaker 1: expansive networks and groups has survived the evolutionary process. It's
Speaker 1: still here today. Modern day humans, you and me right
Speaker 1: now still place great value in an expanse of social
Speaker 1: network because it's hardwired into our genetic material and certain
Speaker 1: drives that create our lives, and social media naturally exploits
Speaker 1: that tribal instinct. It says it in the name social media.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm really converting anything new with that,
Speaker 1: but it's really interesting to think about how what once
Speaker 1: emerged as something that was social, something that was meant
Speaker 1: to cater to our need for connection, has actually created
Speaker 1: perhaps more disconnection than previously. So let's do a quick
Speaker 1: a quick history, lesson fun fact trivia time. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people think that the first social media platform
Speaker 1: was MySpace. That's not correct. It was this thing called
Speaker 1: six degrees and it was created in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: So six degrees kind of relating to that idea of
Speaker 1: six degrees of separation and it essentially connected users with ends,
Speaker 1: kind of like what MySpace did after that or what
Speaker 1: Facebook did after MySpace. So the premise of social media
Speaker 1: was and it continues to be, engaging audiences and connecting
Speaker 1: people online whilst accumulating profits through methods like ad revenue,
Speaker 1: capitalism and psychology kind of mixing to create the greatest profits,
Speaker 1: I guess. And if a site captures more of your
Speaker 1: attention and you spend more time on it, the more
Speaker 1: ads they can run and the more they can receive
Speaker 1: from this income stream, so they have an incentive to
Speaker 1: capture as much of your finite attention and time as possible.
Speaker 1: So since this platform, six Degrees first launched, more platforms
Speaker 1: have obviously been created for different needs or kind of
Speaker 1: the same one though, but in different ways, and many
Speaker 1: people have become so engrossed by this virtual world that
Speaker 1: they suffer from an addiction to these platforms which hijack
Speaker 1: not only their social kind of brain, but their reward
Speaker 1: systems as well. And these digital kind of technologies as well.
Speaker 1: Like our smartphones become more integrated with everyday life, social
Speaker 1: media is becoming highly proficient at capturing our attention whilst
Speaker 1: kind of producing a global shift, a massive shift and
Speaker 1: how people gather information and connect with each other. No
Speaker 1: wonder we're seeing these huge changes in our brain formation.
Speaker 1: Social media, let's not kid ourselves. It has been specifically
Speaker 1: designed to be addictive. It exploits psychological processes to not
Speaker 1: only engage users, but to promote addictions. So in twenty
Speaker 1: and seventeen, the ex president of Facebook, Sean Parker, if
Speaker 1: you've watched The Social Network the movie, it's played by
Speaker 1: Justin Timberlake ill, but Sean Parker, Facebook president, he confirmed
Speaker 1: that the creators of Facebook deliberately tried to exploit a
Speaker 1: vulnerability in human psychology when designing Facebook, with the objective
Speaker 1: of consuming as much time and attention as possible or
Speaker 1: making the platform as addictive as possible. So one feature
Speaker 1: in particular that he kind of cites that they created
Speaker 1: to achieve this damaging objective was like the like button. Parker,
Speaker 1: this ex president man he stated, in kind of like
Speaker 1: a public announcement or a public outing against Facebook, that
Speaker 1: the like button it trains users to receive a little
Speaker 1: dopamine hit from this feature, as it brings a sense
Speaker 1: of social validation and encourages users to engage for longer.
Speaker 1: Same with the life button on Instagram. Social media, it
Speaker 1: has the ability then to both capture and scatter your
Speaker 1: attention because with a simple kind of refresh, there's not
Speaker 1: only constant new information at your fingertips, but constant possibilities
Speaker 1: for validation. And the true drivers of our attachment to
Speaker 1: social media are the hyper social environments that they offer.
Speaker 1: Very methods are used and very successful in keeping our
Speaker 1: attention because of this innate need for social validation. So
Speaker 1: when a person uses social media and posts, you know,
Speaker 1: a picture or a status, or a video or a reel,
Speaker 1: they receive a like, They receive positive social feedback and
Speaker 1: a dopamine hit from a brain from the brain. So,
Speaker 1: according to the study by Harvard University, a very big
Speaker 1: name social networking, it triggers the same region of your
Speaker 1: brain that ignites when you use addictive substances. So this
Speaker 1: rewards the behavior and perpetuates the social media habits that
Speaker 1: we see these days. The instantaneous gratification from an immediate
Speaker 1: release of dopamine that is the basis for addiction and
Speaker 1: why you can't stop scrolling, why you can't look away.
Speaker 1: So variably rewarding users with stimuli, so likes, notification comments,
Speaker 1: that's what keeps you engaged with and companies understand what
Speaker 1: causes those dopamine surges and lulls, So not just they're
Speaker 1: not just interested in what piques your dopamine, but also
Speaker 1: what reduces it, and it creates their product their platform
Speaker 1: with those hijacking techniques in mind, that will trigger compulsion loops.
Speaker 1: Follow with me here. So the like button, the social
Speaker 1: validation features. It basically causes your brain to produce dopamine
Speaker 1: and the companies can use that to create these compulsion loops.
Speaker 1: The more our brain receives dopamine from social media, the
Speaker 1: more the behavior of scrolling your feed, of visiting the
Speaker 1: site is positively reinforced, and people crave that instant rush
Speaker 1: of social affirmation from the dopamine release. The variable reinforcement
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier is really crucial to this equation. So
Speaker 1: variable reinforcement remember that word or that phrase. So in
Speaker 1: social media marking, there is this idea called the hook model.
Speaker 1: The hook model, it goes beyond reinforcing behavior, It creates habits,
Speaker 1: and it spurs users to act on their own. We
Speaker 1: no longer need marketing to make people use the platform
Speaker 1: or to visit it. You no longer need to invest
Speaker 1: in kind of expensive external stimuli or ads or kind
Speaker 1: of motivators for people to scroll their feeds. So at
Speaker 1: the heart of the hook model is a pretty powerful
Speaker 1: cognitive quirk and it was first described by BF Skinner
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. BF Skinner huge name in psychology.
Speaker 1: He's done so much for ideas of like conditioning and addiction.
Speaker 1: And it's called the variable schedule of rewards or intermittent reinforcement.
Speaker 1: So Skinner, he's most known for this kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, like an experiment, like a yeah, like a tool.
Speaker 1: He's best known for these boxes that he kept rats
Speaker 1: in and he observed that these rats they responded most
Speaker 1: to random rewards. So basically these boxes were used by
Speaker 1: Skinner to understand how we learn how humans learned by
Speaker 1: using rats as like kind of proteotypes. And either he
Speaker 1: punished them, he removed a negative stimulus, he provided a
Speaker 1: positive stimulus, or he removed or he removed a positive stimulus.
Speaker 1: So that creates the four types of reward and punishment
Speaker 1: that we know, positive and negative reward and positive and
Speaker 1: negative punishment. So the mice or the rats, they would
Speaker 1: push or press a lever and sometimes they'd get a
Speaker 1: small treat, other times they'd get a large treat, and
Speaker 1: other times they get nothing at all. So, unlike the
Speaker 1: rats in other boxes that when they press a lever
Speaker 1: they would receive the same treat every time, the mice
Speaker 1: that we're receiving this kind of variable reward seemed to
Speaker 1: press this lever more compulsively, more excessively. They pressed it
Speaker 1: even when they weren't hungry, and they became obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: So humans, like the mice in Skinner's box, we crave predictability,
Speaker 1: and we struggle to find patterns when none exist. So
Speaker 1: variability is kind of the brain's cognitive nemesis, and our
Speaker 1: minds they want to understand the cause and effect of
Speaker 1: how things come to be, and we really can't understand
Speaker 1: those ambiguous situations. So instead of leaving it, we kind
Speaker 1: of become more obsessed with knowing the pattern of the reward,
Speaker 1: and we become more engaged in receiving the reward because
Speaker 1: we kind of have expectation. Now, So let's explain this
Speaker 1: a bit further as to how these ambiguous situations kind
Speaker 1: and kind of feed into variable rewards and addiction. So
Speaker 1: variable rewards they keep the brain occupied because we want
Speaker 1: to find out that cause and effect of when we're
Speaker 1: going to receive something, and we become obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: It removes our defenses and it removes our kind of
Speaker 1: cognitive controls. And that's how you know, either the teacher
Speaker 1: in this case, Skinner or social media platforms have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to plant these seeds of new habits and these compulsions.
Speaker 1: This is how social media gets to us. It doesn't
Speaker 1: tell us when we might receive something we particularly like,
Speaker 1: so we'll try and find that pattern ourselves, and therefore
Speaker 1: we become integrated into the very technology that we are
Speaker 1: addicted to. Because we're obsessed with it, we compulsively press
Speaker 1: the lever to use that kind of mice example. It's
Speaker 1: the same with platforms like TikTok now, but this platform
Speaker 1: has added something extra special into the mix that has
Speaker 1: already been used by other platforms, but has been especially
Speaker 1: fine tuned on TikTok in particular. So what does TikTok
Speaker 1: do well that other platforms also do but haven't quite
Speaker 1: gotten the perfect formula? For algorithms? Algorithms they are such
Speaker 1: astonishing tools for creating addictive platforms because they create a
Speaker 1: virtual world that is perfectly curated to the things that
Speaker 1: you like and the things that the platform now knows
Speaker 1: you'll want to consume and come back to. So a
Speaker 1: social media algorithm, it's a compilation of data and rules
Speaker 1: that will make decisions almost for you about what you
Speaker 1: see on a platform, the social media site. It creates
Speaker 1: unique algorithms for every single person, every single user, which
Speaker 1: means that no two people will have the exact same
Speaker 1: social media news feeds. Besides issues of privacy, there's also
Speaker 1: this issue of cognitive exploitation. By monitoring a user's online
Speaker 1: behavior and harvesting their private data, they manipulate what they
Speaker 1: can see online, and this is a form of manipulation
Speaker 1: known as surveillance capitalism. These social media algorithms, they work
Speaker 1: without any oversight, and they work twenty four seven to
Speaker 1: keep the users addicted to liking and scrolling through endless
Speaker 1: ads and content because although that variable reward is still present,
Speaker 1: your overall experience with the app is likely to be
Speaker 1: more pleasant because you're seeing the things that kind of
Speaker 1: pertain to you. So the hijacking of our rewards system
Speaker 1: that we've seen with variable reinforcement and with the addition
Speaker 1: of things like the like button, it's furthered by this
Speaker 1: neurological process called long term potentiation or LTP, so long
Speaker 1: term potentiation. It's the process in which neural pathways that
Speaker 1: are used frequently they become stronger. It's kind of the
Speaker 1: opposite of use it or lose it. As the pathways
Speaker 1: associated with social media use are exploited more frequently, they
Speaker 1: become stronger, creating the compulsion. The more we open the app,
Speaker 1: the stronger these links between our signaps is become. And
Speaker 1: if you have an iPhone, you can actually see this
Speaker 1: on your phone. You can see this compulsion that's kind
Speaker 1: of operating separate from probably your own intentions. So take
Speaker 1: a second now, grab your phone, and I want you
Speaker 1: to go to the section of your settings that tells
Speaker 1: you your screen time. I'm not worried about that. Scroll
Speaker 1: down and you'll find this section called first used after pickup.
Speaker 1: How many times after you pick up your phone has
Speaker 1: the next thing you've done been open an app like Instagram,
Speaker 1: Facebook or TikTok Okay. I'll be honest, I'm recording this
Speaker 1: early in the morning and already I have forty total
Speaker 1: pickups of my phone, and of those fifteen after Instagram,
Speaker 1: almost half. I don't even get notifications for Instagram. It
Speaker 1: has become a compulsion. The site doesn't even need to
Speaker 1: advertise to me. It doesn't even need to motivate me.
Speaker 1: I have been overtaken by the hook model, whereby they
Speaker 1: no longer have to persuade me to use the app.
Speaker 1: I do it, not truly without even consciously thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I don't even think about it anymore. And long term
Speaker 1: potentiation is responsible for those behaviors, because those kind of
Speaker 1: cause and effect behaviors I have. Okay, I see my phone,
Speaker 1: I pick it up. My first thought is social media.
Speaker 1: It's become, like I said at habit, because I've frequently
Speaker 1: checked it in the past, and I continue to do
Speaker 1: it because I'm craving that reward, but also because the
Speaker 1: more I use it, the stronger those synaptic connections that
Speaker 1: associate my phone with the dopamine I get from social media.
Speaker 1: The stronger those connections become. And this exploitation has obviously
Speaker 1: raised some pretty serious debate over whether or not social
Speaker 1: media should be regulated, or at least algorithms should be regulated.
Speaker 1: You know. The other thing that really scares me about
Speaker 1: social media, particularly Instagram for me, is that if someone
Speaker 1: asked me to remember, to recount, to recall anything I'd
Speaker 1: seen on Instagram from the past, I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to tell you the details of a singular post. So
Speaker 1: I spent at least probably an hour or two a
Speaker 1: day on that platform. Those hours are completely empty. I
Speaker 1: have absolutely no memory of what it was that even
Speaker 1: captured my attention or anything I saw. I'm completely blind
Speaker 1: to those hours, and that's really terrifying. Before we talk
Speaker 1: about even social comparison, I want to explain a bit
Speaker 1: more about what social media does to our neural networks.
Speaker 1: We've talked about dopamine, we've talked about long term potentiation,
Speaker 1: but of course there's more to it, so heaps of
Speaker 1: studies have been done it. It's really interesting in terms
Speaker 1: of social psychology, yes, but also biological psychology and how
Speaker 1: our brains have adapted around this new important institution of
Speaker 1: our daily lives, because that's what it is. Social media
Speaker 1: is an institution. So heavy social media uses they and that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say heavy social media is an
Speaker 1: hour or more I'm guessing all of us meet that criteria.
Speaker 1: So these users, they perform worse on cognitive tests, especially
Speaker 1: those that require attention and the ability to multitask. So
Speaker 1: compared to moderate or light social media users, heavy users
Speaker 1: we need to exert more effort to maintain focused or
Speaker 1: to maintain focus. Yet to remain focused or maintain focus
Speaker 1: in the face of distraction, and researchers have hypothesized that
Speaker 1: since social media is easily accessible and competes for our
Speaker 1: attention with the promise of perpetual new content, heavy social
Speaker 1: media users they actually become less able to ignore distraction
Speaker 1: in general. Not only does this lead to pour a
Speaker 1: cognitive performance, but it actually strengths the part of the
Speaker 1: brain associated with maintaining attention. So the ability of the
Speaker 1: brain to change is called neuropla plasticity neuroplasticity, and it
Speaker 1: has a big effect on your attention and cognitive function.
Speaker 1: Research it also shows that heavy social media use is
Speaker 1: linked with memory deficits, especially in your transactive memory. This
Speaker 1: kind of memory involves deciding what kind of information is
Speaker 1: important to store in your brain and what kind of
Speaker 1: information can kind of been kind of be outsourced. So
Speaker 1: social media's central feature, the sharing and storing of your experiences,
Speaker 1: may actually be altering which memories you keep and which
Speaker 1: ones you don't. So when one study the participants they
Speaker 1: were asked to record an experience using their notes or
Speaker 1: social media, and the other groups who are asked to
Speaker 1: simply experience the event without recording it, without noting anything
Speaker 1: down and at the end of the study, those who
Speaker 1: had recorded or shared the event performed worse and showed
Speaker 1: more memory deficit than those who had just experienced the
Speaker 1: event organically without recording it. So externalizing an experience putting
Speaker 1: it on social media, it worsened the participants memory because
Speaker 1: their brains, they've kind the brain has kind of received
Speaker 1: this message that they didn't need to hold onto the
Speaker 1: information anymore. It was stored elsewhere. So consequently, not only
Speaker 1: did the individuals lose some memory of their original experience,
Speaker 1: but they also experience longer term deficits in the size
Speaker 1: and functions of their brain if they use social media
Speaker 1: again and again and again, and these consequences they're like
Speaker 1: genuinely terrifying, especially when you consider young kids now who
Speaker 1: are going to grow up with social media present in
Speaker 1: their lives from day dot from day one. You know,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel grateful, at least me, you probably
Speaker 1: if you're in your twenties, if you're over the age
Speaker 1: of twenty. At least we kind of got a chance
Speaker 1: to have some years without it, back when our parents
Speaker 1: were just kind of worried about the TV and not
Speaker 1: this like evil capitalist invention at our fingertips that is
Speaker 1: individually curated to be addictive just for you. We've talked
Speaker 1: about addiction now, we've talked about the New York connections
Speaker 1: and how social media kind of changes them, how it
Speaker 1: manipulates them. But another result of trapping users in this endless,
Speaker 1: kind of scrolling loop of content is that it can
Speaker 1: lead to social comparison. It's perhaps one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things that people you know, scared about or talk about
Speaker 1: when they talk about social media. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it has been about my life recently, but I have
Speaker 1: been so weak to this, so weak to social comparison.
Speaker 1: And it's often thinks like Instagram that are the catalyst
Speaker 1: every single time. You know, people's perfectly created lives with
Speaker 1: their endless cycle of friends and gorgeous outfits and money
Speaker 1: to spend on restaurants. I'm envious. But then I'll have
Speaker 1: people turn around to me and say things like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you look so happy now, you're flourishing, you
Speaker 1: look like you're having so much fun. And the only
Speaker 1: thing that they have to judge that by is what
Speaker 1: I post on social media. These people they haven't seen
Speaker 1: me for months, and the impression they get is that
Speaker 1: my life is going really well. Let me just say
Speaker 1: that has not been the case. Like I had my
Speaker 1: heartbroken recently, I had someone really hurt me, like really bad,
Speaker 1: and have just been at such a low point in
Speaker 1: terms of my self esteem and sense of value. You know,
Speaker 1: in the past six months, I've lost countless friends as
Speaker 1: I've moved and evolved and shifted into this new version
Speaker 1: of myself. I spent like days alone, hours kind of
Speaker 1: crying over this person who was never going to love
Speaker 1: me back. And I've spent hours looking at other people's
Speaker 1: lives through social media thinking that they have everything going
Speaker 1: for them whilst they're thinking the same thing about me.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of a bit of a fucked game.
Speaker 1: It's a facade. We choose those best moments when we
Speaker 1: are smiling or watching a sunset, out partying with friends
Speaker 1: and the other ninety nine percent that's unaccounted for, but
Speaker 1: we judge people on the one percent, And those comments
Speaker 1: that I got from a few people actually just really
Speaker 1: made me realize that idea so deeply for the first time,
Speaker 1: even though it's common knowledge. You know, we do only
Speaker 1: share the best moments of our lives, but that becomes
Speaker 1: the source of so much social comparison, and you don't
Speaker 1: really realize it until you feel it personally, until you
Speaker 1: see it. So when presented with the curated feeds of
Speaker 1: other people, we are vulnerable to frequent and pretty extreme
Speaker 1: upwards social comparison, which can lead to a number of
Speaker 1: other negative side effects, some of which I've talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, the erosion of self esteem, a depressed mood,
Speaker 1: and decrease life satisfaction overall. So social comparison it's a
Speaker 1: form of sociological self esteem where we derive our sense
Speaker 1: of self through comparing ourselves with others. Many studies have
Speaker 1: argued that people have a tendency to make downwards social
Speaker 1: comparisons with those who are worse off or less skilled
Speaker 1: than them, and this raises your self esteem obviously at
Speaker 1: the expense of that other person, and then Conversely, we
Speaker 1: have upwards social comparisons and this reduces social that this
Speaker 1: reduces self esteem, and it's more likely with social media.
Speaker 1: That's when you kind of you see someone who is
Speaker 1: more skilled than you, doing better than you, happier than
Speaker 1: you can you kind of see where we're going with this.
Speaker 1: So there's this guy, his name's Alfred Admer, and he
Speaker 1: said to be human is to have inferiority feelings, and
Speaker 1: in the age of social media, this is potentially definitely
Speaker 1: heightened and amplified. Social comparison in the real world usually
Speaker 1: involves the self, you and a few other people, whilst
Speaker 1: in the digital universe of social media, you're kind of
Speaker 1: presented with limitless potential to compare yourself to other people limitless.
Speaker 1: There's thousands and research predating social media. It estimated that
Speaker 1: the average person you know back in the nineties, back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen hundreds had perhaps ten to twenty close
Speaker 1: relations chips and maybe one hundred and fifty people in
Speaker 1: their wider social circle. So that includes you know, like
Speaker 1: friends of your parents, colleagues, people you kind of know.
Speaker 1: Whereas now that number of wider social acquaintances because of
Speaker 1: social media, it's up to around four hundred. So whilst
Speaker 1: social connection offers people heaps of positive opportunities, the more connections,
Speaker 1: the more opportunities there is for social comparison. And that's
Speaker 1: what social media does to us. It creates that upwards
Speaker 1: social comparison that makes you feel shit about yourself. Think
Speaker 1: about this in the context of our twenties. This is
Speaker 1: such a formative period for our self esteem, for how
Speaker 1: we view ourselves, how we view others, and our identity.
Speaker 1: And we spend hours of our daily life in an
Speaker 1: online environment of comparison. And the consequences of that aren't
Speaker 1: you just felt today and tomorrow? But they're life long.
Speaker 1: And here's another related issue. This is the issue of
Speaker 1: self presentation and identity. So social media, we've said it
Speaker 1: affords you, the user, the ability to carefully curate and
Speaker 1: control how you present yourself to your audience and people
Speaker 1: you know, you and I. We generally choose to show
Speaker 1: an ideal image on social media and in social psychology,
Speaker 1: two major motives are believed to influence this positive self presentation.
Speaker 1: They are self enhancement and self verification. Self enhancement this
Speaker 1: motivates people to present an enhanced positive self image and
Speaker 1: to seek favorable self relevant information. Self verification, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, drives people to verify or to maintain stability
Speaker 1: of their pre existing self views. So that first one
Speaker 1: is about presenting this enhanced view and seeing whether people
Speaker 1: like it, and the other is maintaining how you feel
Speaker 1: about yourself now and making sure that you continue to
Speaker 1: be validated for that. Self presentation theory suggests that people
Speaker 1: they have to discretion as to how they present themselves
Speaker 1: in a variety of performances daily performances, and social media
Speaker 1: is one such performance. So the hyper personal model of
Speaker 1: behavior argues that with that self presentation, that ability to
Speaker 1: present who you want to be, even if it's not real,
Speaker 1: that is really promoted by computer mediated or social media
Speaker 1: mediated communication, and that has advantages over face to face
Speaker 1: communication and how we optimize our self presentation. Think about
Speaker 1: this a bit deeper. It's pretty obvious, but really think
Speaker 1: about it. If you see someone in your daily life,
Speaker 1: you know they're going to see your flaws. Maybe you
Speaker 1: like have a pimple. You know they're going to see
Speaker 1: the mistakes that you mean, They're going to see that
Speaker 1: you're not perfect. But you have the opportunity to screen
Speaker 1: those parts of you out on social media, you have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to show yourself being incredibly happy when that
Speaker 1: might not actually be the case. This isn't really our
Speaker 1: true selves, and we can use social media as a
Speaker 1: shield for acknowledging not only who we truly are and
Speaker 1: our true values, but it's also destruction from what's truly
Speaker 1: going on, because we can use that validation and self
Speaker 1: enhancement to make us feel better, to make us seem
Speaker 1: better to the people that we want to receive validation from,
Speaker 1: to the people that we want to win press. Essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, you're probably asking yourself, surely, this isn't very
Speaker 1: good for our mental health. What are the chances you
Speaker 1: would be correct? What gave it away? Time and time again.
Speaker 1: Social media has been shown to promote negative experiences like
Speaker 1: that feeling of inadequacy about your life and appearance is
Speaker 1: because of upwards social comparison and a study by this
Speaker 1: English author Primark found not primarch the store the person,
Speaker 1: it found a link between the use of multiple social
Speaker 1: media platforms and increase depression and anxiety symptoms in young
Speaker 1: people age nineteen to thirty two. That's probably you, that's
Speaker 1: my normal audience range. Nineteen to thirty two. And think
Speaker 1: about that again. If you use social media platforms, it's
Speaker 1: literally could potentially be making you more anxious, it could
Speaker 1: be making you more depressed. From another angle, though, online
Speaker 1: platforms may also have the potential to damage mental well
Speaker 1: being through this promotion of unreasonable expectations about what you
Speaker 1: look like and how you present social media, it's been
Speaker 1: linked to poor self esteem and self image because of
Speaker 1: the advent of image manipulation on photo sharing platforms. You know,
Speaker 1: you can download face tune and make yourself look amazing.
Speaker 1: You can make yourself look skinnier, you can smooth out
Speaker 1: your skin, you can make your skin look lowy. And
Speaker 1: it's this idea of the idealized body image that has
Speaker 1: been promoted by social media that arguably has the most
Speaker 1: dental detrimental effect to self esteem and image, especially that
Speaker 1: of young people. The twenty four seventh circulation of easibly
Speaker 1: viewable manipulated images promotes and entrenches those unrealistic expectations of
Speaker 1: how you should look and how you should behave think
Speaker 1: about all those photos you know of Kim Kardashian that
Speaker 1: people like, you know, screenshot or like repost, and then
Speaker 1: you find out that they're edited. Of course they are.
Speaker 1: No one looks like that, like have you ever seen
Speaker 1: anyone who looks like that? No? No, like, you don't.
Speaker 1: And when these expectations we have for what we should
Speaker 1: look like based on what we see on social media,
Speaker 1: when they're not met, the impact on self esteem is
Speaker 1: so damaging and it's really disturbing. You know. There was
Speaker 1: this study run by the Australian government, like the Health Department,
Speaker 1: and it found that ninety percent night out of ten
Speaker 1: young women that they interviewed, and they interviewed quite a
Speaker 1: few say they were unhappy with how they look and
Speaker 1: a big part of that was because of social media. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the rise of social media, it's incredibly multifaceted. It's you know,
Speaker 1: we can't explain it simply, but the statistics they do
Speaker 1: suggest that it's strongly correlated or at least associated with anxiety, loneliness, depression,
Speaker 1: social comparison. And I've been feeling that, you know myself,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have as well. Whether it is you know,
Speaker 1: just a causal kind of thing based on the fact
Speaker 1: that there is other stuff shown on our feeds that
Speaker 1: could be depressing us, like war and terror and awful things.
Speaker 1: It's going to have to you know, time will kind
Speaker 1: of tell, and there is so much policy research into
Speaker 1: this and so much kind of talk around regulation with
Speaker 1: the social media industry today as well. A lot of
Speaker 1: what we've talked about, it's probably not new to you.
Speaker 1: And there are definitely some elements of social media that
Speaker 1: are really i would say beneficial and pretty incredible when
Speaker 1: you think back. For example, you know, the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: At the moment, we would know so much less than
Speaker 1: we do if people didn't have the ability to share
Speaker 1: their experiences on the ground with people across the world.
Speaker 1: This is the same with other wars and revolutions. Since
Speaker 1: social media kind of became a thing the Me Too movement,
Speaker 1: election mobilization social media, it's also a source of connection
Speaker 1: and information sharing that may not be accessible elsewhere or
Speaker 1: in another manner. Another thing that kind of comes to
Speaker 1: mind is how social media can be used to help
Speaker 1: educate people about movements like black Lives Matter and spread
Speaker 1: awareness around things. You know, I think about when that
Speaker 1: girl went missing in wa that was all over social media.
Speaker 1: That's definitely something to be positive about. That instantaneous communication platform,
Speaker 1: and that's what it was meant to be at its
Speaker 1: purest form, but it's really not that anymore. And although
Speaker 1: there are some good things, all of these good things
Speaker 1: are happening in a virtual environment that is deliberately creating addiction,
Speaker 1: and it's hijacking our synaptic connections and our dopamine centers
Speaker 1: to essentially make money for big organizations through ad revenue,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of running our minds and changing the
Speaker 1: very structure of our brains, like I said, and that's
Speaker 1: obviously not going to change anytime soon. Like every year,
Speaker 1: there's just more and more ways that our society kind
Speaker 1: of caters towards social media, like TikTok now is a
Speaker 1: marketing platform. I was actually thinking this the other day,
Speaker 1: Like I don't see billboards for movies anymore. I don't
Speaker 1: see like ads in the paper, like I don't see
Speaker 1: like magazine articles about it. I see it on TikTok
Speaker 1: or I see it on Instagram. And that's how I know,
Speaker 1: Like you know, the Batman came out or something like that.
Speaker 1: Those are the kind of things that I'm talking about
Speaker 1: of how it's changed how we relate to the world
Speaker 1: and communicate and how we get our knowledge. Anyways, I
Speaker 1: hope that you enjoyed this episode. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of fun researching this. I learned so much like and
Speaker 1: I think, especially with the social comparison ideas we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, it's really at least inspired me to take
Speaker 1: some time off social media, to turn off notifications, to
Speaker 1: kind of limit how much I use it, how dependent
Speaker 1: I am on it, how much I posed, how much
Speaker 1: I share. I just kind of spend more time in
Speaker 1: the present moment doing the things I love. Like when
Speaker 1: I was in Queensland recently, I would just try and
Speaker 1: make a conscious effort to leave my phone in the
Speaker 1: car when I was going to the beach, because I
Speaker 1: noticed if I brought my phone, I would literally be
Speaker 1: sitting there in front of some of the most beautiful
Speaker 1: water and clearest guys a girl can find during Lenina,
Speaker 1: and I would be on my phone and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even remember what was going on around me. And I
Speaker 1: wouldn't remember what was going on on my phone either,
Speaker 1: And you just kind of blind to your life in
Speaker 1: that moment, aren't you, Eddie. How thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: Thank you for subscribing if you have, if not your choice,
Speaker 1: but please do it would be very lovely, and if
Speaker 1: you feel called to leave a review on either Spotify
Speaker 1: or Apple Podcasts, it's so lovely. I've been getting so
Speaker 1: many reviews and it makes me so so happy, makes
Speaker 1: me a very happy girl. So if you feel called
Speaker 1: to do it, please do it. Takes a couple of seconds,
Speaker 1: it makes my day. You'll feel good about yourself, unless
Speaker 1: you want to stop using your phone as much because
Speaker 1: of social media addiction, in which case, don't do it.
Speaker 1: Stay away, but we'll be back next week. I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about love languages because that sounds exciting, right
Speaker 1: and a friend of my one of my friends, and
Speaker 1: I were discussing it the other day and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. I want to see whether there
Speaker 1: is actually like research behind this, whether this is like legit.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to be talking about next week.
Speaker 1: Until then, we've got so many episodes on Spotify at
Speaker 1: the moment. If you want to listen back and just
Speaker 1: have a great week, enjoy your life, enjoy your enjoy
Speaker 1: yourself in the moment, and turn off Instagram. It will
Speaker 1: be good for you.