Quit Social Media
“You will find God by taking away the distractions in your life. By stripping away your addictions, getting rid of the porn, getting rid of the video games, and focusing on what your purpose is. Focusing on service and giving and becoming a man of production and value rather than a man of consumption” – Stefan Aarnio, Hard Times Create Strong Men
Social media is such a massive part of people’s lives in the modern world; people use it every day. Although there are some positives with social media, i believe that it is an overall net negative being on these platforms.
We need to be conscious of the content we are consuming and what the effects of doing so are. Unlike food, there is no nutritional facts every time you open TikTok letting you know the negative effects of prolong use. You’re kept ignorant of these facts because it’s good for business.
These social media platforms are hyper-stimulating applications that were designed to give you elevated levels of dopamine when using them. These platforms are confusing the reward system that you have in your brain that is used for achievement and survival. You might recognize some of the negative effects of using social media from my previous article about porn, as these platforms are taking advantage of the same reward system and producing similar negative effects.
I hope you can find something useful, enjoy!
Dopamine
To start off, it would be helpful to explain what dopamine is for anyone who does not understand it. It’s important to know what it is so we can recognize why these platforms are so damaging.
Per Cleveland Health Clinic:
“Dopamine is known as the “feel-good” hormone. It gives you a sense of pleasure. It also gives you the motivation to do something when you’re feeling pleasure. Dopamine is part of your reward system”
Every person has a reward system inside of them. Millions of years of evolution and beings interacting with the environment in a manner that would sustain survival has created a very complex reward system into our brains to help us continue to survive in our environment.
On the most basic level, dopamine is used to communicate to yourself that you are doing something good that will help you survive. Natural examples of this are eating, drinking water, having sex, and interacting with other humans. These are all things that we need to do for survival, and our body rewards us by giving us dopamine when we achieve, or strive to achieve, any one of these examples. Ideally, dopamine should only be released in the body when you are correctly doing something for your survival.
“Every behavior that is highly habit-forming – taking drugs, eating junk food, playing video games, browsing social media – is associated with higher levels of dopamine. The same can be said for our most basic habitual behaviors like eating food, drinking water, having sex, and interacting socially. “ – James Clear, Atomic Habits
Social Media
The problem is that these social media companies have discovered the structure of our reward systems and are taking advantage of them. Each one is targeting at least one of our most primal reward systems and is using supernormal stimuli (check out the previous article that introduces this topic) to keep us addicted and engaged constantly.
The content we see on social media is dopamine enhancing and the way we are presented content maintains these high dopamine levels. These platforms raise our dopamine levels to abnormally high levels for unnaturally long periods of time. Our bodies naturally give us dopamine when we are achieving or striving to achieve something that is inherently good for survival. Social media platforms, on the other hand, are specifically designed to trick this internal reward system into giving you a reward over and over again without doing anything to improve survival.
Exposure to these platforms can lead to the malignment of your internal reward system, and this has an extremely damaging impact on your life. There is only so much dopamine that your body can give you in a day, so these platforms can leave you feeling depleted and unfulfilled by regular life.
Your brain begins to expect this supernormal stimuli from life. Since you are not receiving the reward your brain thinks you deserve, this will leave you feeling anxious, depressed, unmotivated, and your focus will be scattered searching for that stimuli.
There are three main things that I believe make social media so addicting and harmful; how content is presented, the type of content we see, and the connection we feel on them.
How the Content Is Displayed
“The pull-to-refresh and infinite scrolling mechanism on our news feeds are unnervingly similar to a slot machine, said Tristian Harris… ‘You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing,’ Harris wrote.” – Article from theguardian.com
Social media companies have brought the same design principles that are used in casinos and slot machines to design their platforms. When you are using a slot machine, you pull the lever, and the machine gives you either a reward or nothing. This brings an uncertainty to it that gives you excitement and dopamine. This is the same with social media, where you will find yourself continuing to scroll through it uncertain of what is to come. Once you find something that is rewarding, your brain then associates that action of refreshing or scrolling with achieving something of importance. This cycle is what leads you to continue to scroll social media to find that reward.
On the most basic level, this is what life is all about and why this type of behavior exists. We travel through the world, venture into the unknown, all the time. We do it because what we don’t have and want is eternally in the unknown and unexplored. When we venture into the unknown, sometimes we get a reward, sometimes we receive a punishment, and sometimes we get nothing. We do this because we know that sometimes we get a reward, so we continue to push ourselves into the unexplored.
Social media companies – and casinos – create an easier, safer, and more rewarding environment for this behavior. This behavior replaces your natural tendency to explore the unknown in real life with an easier and quicker reward system. This is problematic though because once you decide, or are forced, to participate in this behavior in real life, it is a lot harder and less rewarding than the fabricated versions of reality given to us from social media sites. This significantly decreases your performance in these situations and your fulfillment from them as well.
Supernormal Content
On top of that, the actual content that we see on these platforms is extremely stimulating. There is so much interesting content on the internet from beautiful looking videos, interesting conversations, helpful information, attractive people, and simply cool content.
Interesting content is interesting because your brain understands that there is something important or valuable to learn from this content and wants you to pay attention to it. Before social media arrived, interest presented and manifested itself naturally in the world, where something would interest you and you would pursue that interest and learn or gain something important from that pursuit. Now we are drowned with interesting things on the internet; and in the grand scheme of things, most content is not actually important.
When you expose yourself to social media, your brain begins to think that interesting content is this accessible and abundant in the real world. Once you decide to put the phone down though, this can leave your attention fragmented because your brain is looking for interesting content and is not finding it as easily, since there just isn’t that much interesting stuff happening in the real world at any given time. Your brain is used to finding new, interesting content at the scroll of a finger whereas in the real-world interesting content is a lot more difficult to find and is usually less interesting.
This leaves you unable to pay attention in conversation, struggling to work hard for prolonged periods of time, feeling anxiety from not having as much stimuli as you think you should have, and leaves your focus fragmented. There have been studies pointing out that social media can cause attention disorders such as ADHD. If you have problems with attention and focus (or any of the other problems mentioned above), abstaining from social media might be something worthwhile to try and see how you feel.
“Social media can permanently reduce your capacity for concentration” – Cal Newport
Instagram/TikTok Models
Talking to the men here, we all know the process; you’re bored, you hop on Instagram, you start to see some beautiful women, you start to feel concupiscent (you can look that word up if you’d like, but you can probably fill in the blank), and then you end up on Pornhub. Myself included, most men if not all of us are guilty of this behavior at some point whether we want to admit it or not. It’s an understandable progression but is very damaging to your mental health and creates bad habits.
This draws back to ideas from my previous article on porn; we now have the ability to see more beautiful, nude or half nude women than any other time in history. As a man, you need to understand that this type of content is EXTREMELY distracting and can also lead you to developing unhealthy habits and behavior patterns. Instagram, TikTok, and Pornhub all play off of your reward system for having sex, which is the most compelling and addictive. The process described above is dangerous and can lead to lower energy levels, social anxiety (particularly with women), and decaying motivation for greatness. Check out my previous article for a more in-depth description of this topic.
Supernormal Connection
Another one of our primal behaviors of survival is social connection. We are social creatures, and throughout our entire history we have obtained success through having a large social network. Its not about what you know, but who you know. Social media gives the false impression that you are growing your social network and that these people truly care about you. It is an easier version of making new friends and expanding your social network in the real world.
Although this isn’t the worst part about social media, it can become dangerous when you decide to replace making real friends with making virtual friends. You can meet great people online, but do not fall for the idea that you’re 1000 followers actually care about you on a deep level like a real person would. This is an unnatural substitute for making real friends.
There is also a liking system that is implemented into every social media platform, and this can become very addicting as well. It can be a dangerous spiral trying to seek the approval of people online. Saying or posting things you know will get likes is not the same as posting the real you. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors on social media and looking at it too much can also have you starting to believe that’s really how other people’s lives are.
I feel this was the biggest issue when social media first came about and am not sure how much of an issue this still is. I think the content has become so addictive and stimulating, that this issue has fallen into the background, but is still worth mentioning.
Conclusion
Quitting social media leads to improved focus and attention, more fulfillment from life, increased positive emotions, lowered anxiety and depression, deeper connection with others, etc. I personally have been much better off abstaining from social media and have experienced all of the positive effects above. Just like the last article, I could speak about the benefits that I experienced and that have been recorded by others all day, but I hope that this article is enough motivation for you to at least discover for yourself the benefits you will experience. Thank you for reading, hope you learned something of value.
Side Note
I want to point out that I have a hard time stopping myself when writing these articles. I keep perfecting it, keep sharpening my points. I’m not going to blame my inconsistency of publishing articles all on this, I am lazy and procrastinate more than I should that results in articles coming out on Tuesdays instead of Sundays. I promise to deliver quality over quantity always, but I need to be better at not using that as an excuse to not publish as much. Something I’m working on, bear with me as I continue to find my footing.
I can see why Kanye always pushes back his albums. When you’re creating something, it is so easy to continue to perfect it forever. It feels impossible to fit in everything I know about these topics into one article as perfectly as possible. Ye if you are reading this, I feel for you.
Loved the comments from the last article and would love to continue to hear from people. Recommendations about what to write about, counter arguments to my ideas, or just saying that my writing resonated with you are all appreciated. Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter, it’s free and a great way to show support. And if you take my advice and quit social media, it’ll be the only way to receive updates when new articles are published.
Thank you for reading!
References
Cool video on why you should quit social media from Cal Newport. I quoted him in the article as well.
One of the first videos I saw on this topic. If you can’t quit social media out right, or want to take steps toward doing so, participating in something called dopamine fasting is an excellent way to take control over your impulses. Check out this video that explains this process very well.
The introduction of this article starts with a quote from Stefan Aarnio. He is the author of Hard Times Create Strong Men, an incredible book I just got done reading. If you want to be a strong man and reach your potential, this is an excellent read for that. He gives real world and historical examples of what it means to be a man and I’ve found it very insightful.
