COVID-19. I’m sure we all remember the disaster that was distance learning, and quite frankly, I can see the damage no social interaction did when I look around this school (sorry).
I remember the Zoom days vividly. I’d like to pride myself on having been a disciplined student, straight As and all. Until Zoom and online schooling; it’s like a switch flipped. My screen time was atrocious. My Instagram stories spanned so long that the white bar at the top to show the number of posts was full of dots, not lines. Yes, it was that bad. But at the same time, I was at my loneliest. So much for the “social” in “social media.”
I think the school system saw a huge shift in student attitude after the pandemic, and—let’s be real—phone time does have something to do with it. You don’t just pop out of social isolation and immediately know how to talk to people, not as a kid who spent their formative years away from their peers. So we got hit with this phone ban. And our sweet class time Snap streaks just couldn’t survive the fallout.
You can’t argue against the fact that right now is probably the most convenient time to be alive. You don’t even have to leave the couch to get groceries, find a new relationship (or fail trying), or figure out if a piece of media is any good. People have made a living riding the wave of trends. A whole new sector of the economy opened up. Kids were chewing on Tide Pods. Even teachers use the word “cooked” (never change, Mr. Denvir). Social media has turned the world into this big bag of cultural trail mix; it’s possible to look over to the other side of the world and argue with those folks in real time under a TikTok post (rest in peace, by the way).
It seems like we can’t go without social media these days. Social media interaction is the new coffee shop small talk. But since that horrendous COVID-fueled Instagram echo chamber, I’ve always wondered: Has social media really made us more social?
Now I’m no scientist, but I know that every experiment needs a control: civilization pre-social media. Unfathomable. Back in the olden days, making a friend took a lot more than commenting under someone’s post. Way way back when, messages sometimes took weeks or months to deliver. The telegraph sped things up, and then the telephone.
By the 20th century, we had newspapers, radios, TVs, etc. All things we still use today, great. But there still had to be some sort of physical interaction. You met at third places—neutral zones to chat with new people—like coffee shops or parks.
Then in 1997, it came. Social media. First it was Six Degrees, then Friendster, then Myspace, yadda yadda yadda. The point is that social media brought a major increase to the speed of communication by making it much more accessible and convenient. Eventually, we’d get the social media platforms we use today, like Instagram and Youtube. At this point, over half of the globe uses at least one social media platform and over 720 billion minutes per day are spent on it. That’s impressive.
The Good
Now, let’s give credit where credit is due. Making plans was a logistical nightmare when all you had was a rotary phone and the hope that they’ll be there to pick up while you’re still available. And if you wanted to keep in touch, good luck doing that across the country, or across the world. Social media has bridged that gap like nothing before. Chatting in real time with someone over in Japan with a 14 hour time difference? Easy. Just gotta hope their sleep schedule’s all outta wack. Or maybe yours is.
I mean, look at our academy as well: Global Studies and World Languages. Social media is wildly convenient when it comes to finding language exchange opportunities and learning about other cultures.
What’s more, for those who find it difficult to make meaningful physical interactions, like those with social anxiety, social media can be a godsend. The threshold is low; if you don’t want to interact that day, you don’t have to. And if you have niche interests that may be shunned by your IRL community, you’re bound to find folks online who rock with it. Studies even suggest that social media interaction in those cases can reduce social anxiety. So it’s not all that bad.
The Bad
There’s a catch, though. Too much of a good thing is almost always bad. That constant connection can become detrimental after a point. Take this study done on a Saudi Arabian university, for example: most of the students used their phones for social media, not academics. I’m sure that’s also the case for most of us. This behavior can negatively affect not only academic performance, but sleep duration and physical activity.
Another study found that cutting back on your social media usage—and I mean REALLY cutting back to some 10 minutes a day—is linked to a dramatic decrease in depression and loneliness. Because that time is likely spent actually seeing other people in front of you.
Social media may make interaction more accessible and frequent, but it definitely waters social interaction down, too. FtF (face to face) interaction increases life satisfaction and mental health across the board in ways that social media just can’t.
I mean, just look at COVID. We’re lucky to have had it happen while we weren’t too young. Seniors were in middle school, freshmen in later elementary. But even then, we struggled a bit coming back into the real world. For younger children, they essentially had a crucial period of their life ripped from them. The NIH acknowledged this: “With limited social interactions, disrupted routines, and imposed lockdowns during the pandemic, children encountered unusual early social, cognitive and emotional development challenges.”
The Paradox
Social media connects us like never before, but we may be feeling as disconnected as ever. Everything is good in moderation. Think of social media like a good seafood boil: Eat it every now and then, and savor it. Eat it every day (if you even have the money for that), and enjoy cardiac disease.
These algorithms aren’t built with your health in mind. They’re meant to keep you on the platform for as long as possible to squeeze out as much revenue as they can while you’re engaged. And with the recent flood of bots on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, online interactions are becoming more and more unfulfilling and disingenuous.
Social media can be a great thing, given that you don’t overuse it. Without the proper barriers right now in place to prevent overuse, it’s important that you do the work yourself to moderate your screen time. Sucks, but that’s just how it is.
