Social Media and Mental Health

In modern life, we often see immense hubris by people and the rise of social media has proven an almost inexhaustible source of fuel to achieve new levels of pride. There are so many people now on social media who cite personal success as the reason that they should now be listened to for advice or be trusted to influence others lives. More concerning, there is a rise of many who seek to become influencers by generating interesting content and then seek to leverage their audience for monetary success. In these scenarios, members of the audience are the product being assembled in order to be monetized, usually by marketing or advertising efforts. The members of the audience receive a considerable amount of positive dopamine by engaging with this content so in many ways it is comparable to sugar for one’s brain - not necessarily unhealthy in natural forms but when made more potent and constantly available, has a profoundly negative effect over time.

With so much noise, there seems to be a growing assumption that all the things people have to say are interesting and worth sharing with the world. I have had mixed feelings about social media ever since I joined Myspace and GeoCities but it always felt like I had to participate to avoid being left out. Going through a painful divorce and experiencing many personal attacks finally forced me to confront the fact that social media was having an increasingly negative effect on my life. I deleted all the apps from my phone, purged most of my content, and focused on avoiding it for now.

Longer term, I am working on creating a fediverse model that allows communities to easily self-host and build networks and hopefully I will be able to convince my friends to join me there but in the meantime, I am quite responsive to email and SMS/signal because I have eliminated the mindless scrolling in my life!

“Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori."