Kaley first began using social media at the age of 6, initially, it seemed harmless. It seemed like it was just another activity. “Anytime I tried to set limits for myself, it wouldn’t work and I just couldn’t get off.” she said.
She was still on social media “all day long” as a child.
One video showed her tears of joy when she finally surpassed 100 YouTube subscribers. But then, she quickly turned to her looks, apologizing for her “ugly appearance”. “I look so fat in this shirt,” she said.
Over time, she felt more and more dependent on social media creating multiple accounts to receive notifications because it gave her a sort of “rush”. She would receive them throughout the day and would go to the bathroom during school to check them — something she still does.
Though this isn’t something exclusive to Kaley this is also true for so millions of people along age groups. Kaley’s experience reflects our pre-existing habits that often go unnoticed and have disguised themselves as “just another daily activity”. With social media’s addictive design, it has become so incredibly difficult to escape from the endless loop.
Scrolling on social media has just become something many of us do for hours without even noticing. It almost feels automatic, we use social media as a quick fix for any moment we feel bored but we never ask “how did we get here?” or “what was I doing before?”.
Within Kaley’s experience with checking notifications she was increasingly focused on the amount of likes she got, checking notifications about comments and likes from others. These notifications drag us back in and for Kaley it has become a routine habit.
Ms. Brown, a teacher at the iSchool, explained that, “For teens, the brain isn’t fully developed. Their prefrontal cortex—the part that says “no”—is still developing, but their limbic system, which responds to that dopamine, is very active.” In addition she said that this delay in development may cause them to be “more likely to click a notification even when they shouldn’t.”
When the app would notify us every time someone liked, commented on your post or messages the app is designed to notify you for every social affirmation that often distracts us from real life events and we end up scrolling through anyway.
In a study evaluating the effects of feedback such as likes or comments from social media on adolescents stated that “insufficient validation on social media was a brief yet powerful emotional event that threatened adolescents’ social status and elicited emotional distress.” which were then correlated with “ecologically-valid risk factors for depression in adolescence and greater increases in depressive symptoms over 8 months.”
The study also proposed a potential negative feedback loop where previously victimized individuals would turn towards social media for validation and when there is insufficient positive feedback compared to their peers leading to feelings with rejection and elicit “greater characterological self-trait attributions (e.g., “maybe I am not a likable person”)”.
This reflects on Kaley’s experience too, with her mental and emotional state being closely related with her social media which can “make or break her mood.” according to her therapist.
But when the content that we consume are so highly curated, the self comparison is often unrealistic especially when it comes to social recognition as well as when it extends to self-trait attributions.
“You see curated images and think that’s how you’re supposed to look all the time. That’s impossible and not real. People get a false sense of what they are supposed to look like, especially at a critical age when your body is changing and your brain is primed to care about what your peers are doing. Now, those comparisons are quantifiable by how many “likes” something gets.” Ms. Brown explained.
Another iSchool Teacher, Ms. Gray expresses concern over a lot of fashion content, lifestyle, diet, exercise and content obsessing over macronutrients that can potentially be harmful. “I feel like that comes from an oversaturation which is potentially dangerous for young people.” she explained.
In another recent study involving EEG devices to measure brain activity when using social media found that “social media engages in brain reward pathways akin to those seen in addictive behavior, with extended Beta and Gamma activity having the potential to interfere with emotional regulation and attention.”
In addition, the study has shown “delayed Alpha recovery and increased Delta activity,” suggesting prolonged mental strain or cognitive activity after a session on social media. Especially after cognitively overloading content that many content creators optimize to increase engagement as much as possible.
Content like this is intended to create as much stimulation as possible and is what we usually associate with content that lowers our attention span. We continuously subconsciously crave stimulation like this and this eventually leads to algorithms to recommend content like this more and more.
Instagram’s own internal surveys found that 8.4% of teen users aged 13-15 reported seeing self-harm content over a week.
The current solutions being implemented in some countries such as the UK have laws that require age verification and thereby enforce age limits for many social platforms often involving ID scans or face scans. Though more recently these identity verification platforms have gained a bad reputation for getting data breaches, exposing people’s sensitive information or just simply failing to correctly evaluate the age of their users. A age verification service, persona even recently got a data breach leaking peoples face scan data.
While social media is more prevalent in adolescents they are also not exclusive to them.
But for many, like Kaley the solution is for legal action to be taken to directly make change within the platforms themselves. With Kaley’s story all over news headlines for winning 3 million dollars from Instagram and Youtube, the very platforms that harmed her, it’s a first step for change in these platforms and to be free from the endless feedback loop.
