HOW SOCIAL MEDIA RUINS OUR LIVES; AN ANALYSIS, A SYNOPSIS OF THE BIGGER PICTURE.

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA RUINS OUR LIVES; AN ANALYSIS, A SYNOPSIS OF THE BIGGER PICTURE.

     A productive day means different things to different people. To some, it’s simply a day when you achieve all your set goals. To others, it might mean having a relatively stoic day, and to others, well it could mean the avalanche of definitions productivity has been given over the past couple of years.

WHAT TRULY IS PRODUCTIVITY?

    While there might be a myriad of philosophies as to what productivity truly typifies, productivity simply means being productive.

    When humans joined the existential race they were faced with the bleak possibility of elimination by competition, in short; only those with favorable traits that can aid their survival get to reproduce and pass their favorable characteristics to their offspring.

   It has been an ever-competitive world and the competition only gets even fiercer with an increased population. To survive, to be able to cater to basic life requirements, and even to successfully reproduce… man has to be reasonably proficient in the skill of maximizing his available resources to make more. The resources to start with are usually candidates to paucity. The resources could be fiscal, material, Immaterial, or otherwise but the resource of interest to us for this particular article is a fragment of the immaterial category called TIME!

   As Anas Nuur Ali put it, ‘Normally we have a lot of things to do during a given day we tend to focus  on only the productive tasks we’ve done, what we’ve checked off from our to-do list, we feel happy about our completed tasks but we forget about the failures in-between’. Specifically for the purpose of this article, the ‘failures in-between’ refer to our waste of Time

 HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CONTRIBUTES  TO THE FAILURES IN BETWEEN':

                'The hook model'.

Nir Eyal in his 2004 book, HOOKED proposed the hook model methodology. he prescribed that for product development to be effective, the proposed users should fall into a habitual behavior, usually via a looping cycle that consists of a trigger, an action, a variable reward, and ongoing investments.

read more about Eyal's work here

the hook model.

    Social media companies are very much aware of these tactics almost the entire of their operations are based on this psyop.

The first phase of the hook is the trigger which could be internal or external, for example, boredom(internal), the sight of a notification from the app(external), and so on. Once the trigger is justified, the next phase (action) becomes almost inevitable. 

The action is usually executed in anticipation for a reward, the action could be picking up your phone and opening the social media app of interest. 

Then comes the variable reward, which is the problem solved or perceived to be solved after the action is taken. In this case, the reward could be a perception of social acceptance, a similitude of escape from boredom, an escape from reality and problems, and so on. 

The last but equally important phase is the investment phase and it is a very strong driving force. the mere knowledge of how much you've invested in time, money, and ideas in social media draws you back to the application more often than you desire. That's why you open WhatsApp more often when you have something on your status than when there is nothing.

Once all the cues are completed the hook is complete and it gives you an allusion that the app is essential for your survival. 

In Anas Nuur Ali's words, 'I don't feel like I'm going to have a form of withdrawal(symptoms) if I don't go on my Instagram for a day, it's more as if it's become a habit'

HOW TO FREE YOURSELF FROM THIS HOOK

     Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz proposed the concept of self-directed neuroplasticity. It was however popularized by Dr. Rick Hanson, a psychologist and senior fellow at UC Berkley's Greater Good Science Center and author of the book 'handwriting of Happiness'.

     Experience-dependent neuroplasticity is a passive process that reinforces habits be they good or bad by doing them unconsciously over and over again eg. mindless scrolling. Self-directed neuroplasticity is a conscious effort to break loose from negative habits created by experience-dependent neuroplasticity.

images from: healthline.com

      According to the self-directed neuroplasticity model, bad habits can only be eliminated by replacement with new(good) habits. So in the action stage of the hook model, it is advisable to replace opening the social media app with healthy activities such as listening to a podcast, taking a free course online, exercising, listening to music, and so on.

     My personal proposition though would be to cut the habit right from the trigger stage. Untraditional and controversial measures may need to be taken such as deleting all social media applications from your phone only to download them when you really need to use them as Anas Nuur Ali proposed, or fine-tuning your phone's notification system to disable distracting notifications from sending once more round the hook and any other actions that can help you subdue the external triggers. For the internal triggers, when boredom hits learn to do healthy activities to make you busy, when you feel sad learn to talk to people about how you feel, and spend more time with family and friends than you spend with strangers on social media.

CONCLUDING... 

More often than not, actions that are performed spontaneously without much-forethought end up throwing us into the cul-de-sac of bad habits and addiction. Mindfulness is key to breaking this gridlock. Social media shouldn't always be our go-to when we are in a boring meeting a long lecture or trying to avoid a conversation. It should be something we use only when it is expedient that we use them.