A modern man has found himself in a new environment for which he was not quite ready.
information crowd
Information "jungle" deprived him of his flour of modernity, returning to a more primitive form, when the individual is completely dissolved in the team. Social fears and desires, maximally transmitted through social media, become his own, and this creates a single form of psychological perception and response. "We" and "They" have merged in many ways.
The herd instinct is activated. This is partly due to the expectation of future social upheavals, which has already been realized in the form of populist elections around the world. Trump or Orban must save their citizens from the horrors of the world to come. It is likely that social media have increased individual fears of the future, taking them to the social level.
The negative impact of social media has already come out. In the UK, doctors are asking the government to charge Facebook and Instagram additional fees to address the mental health problems they cause. For example, anxiety, misfortune and depression have reached epidemic levels in children and teenagers, causing damage to one in five teenage girls.
As for adults, British scientist William Van Gordon has proposed a new, third type of addiction, similar to drug addiction. Chemical dependence is on drugs and alcohol, and behavioral dependence is on games or computer games. He called the third one an ontological addiction to himself. The scientist says: "Dependence on yourself becomes depleting after a period and forces us to ignore the truth and wisdom of reality.
For Gordon, this is the image of Narcissus from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Today they are people who fast selfies to demonstrate their way of life.
Van Gordon stresses that with the help of social media people build a different level of themselves, relying on likes, posts and fellow believers, which does not reflect the real nature of the person. It is also interesting to hear his opinion that technology takes us away from reality, from the current moment. Here too, the mental practices of Buddhism can help.
Gordon himself was a Buddhist monk for 10 years. He sees ontological dependence in the way we see ourselves: "People who have a wrong or erroneous view of themselves begin to think that they are the center of a world in which all other forms of life, objects, concepts are less important. This perception of the world gives rise to a feedback of dependence that constantly supports this self-confidence, which can lead to functional impairment and mental illness.
At the same time, it must be recognized that it was not the social media that created this "trap" for man. It has always been. Social media have only made it easier for modern people to get into it, because they allow us to create an artificial world for ourselves.
If we think about this phenomenon in a slightly different direction, expanding it, then the ontological dependence of the Soviet man was not depending on himself, but on the state. He was told that all his thoughts and happiness were connected only with the state. This could not have been the case for a Western man whose individualism had been established much earlier. Collective happiness, life is always stronger than individual life, that is why the heroes give their biological life for social survival.
Another manifestation of this dependence, already again individual, is the colossal distraction of a person from his work, which creates a social media. Research conducted at the London Institute of Psychiatry emphasizes that constant distraction and interruption have a very strong effect. E-mails and phone calls cause a drop of 10 points in the IQ level, which is twice as strong as smoking marijuana. Constant interruptions have the same effect as night sleep deprivation.
In 2018, the UK found that people check their smartphones on average every 12 minutes when they are awake. 71% never turn it off, 40% check it in the first five minutes after sleep.
Apple and Microsoft ex-consultant Linda Stone suggested that the term "constant partial attention" be used to describe this problem. On her website, she says: "When I interviewed 18-22 year old, I noticed that they use communication technology in a way that I designated as "semi-synchronous. It's not exactly synchronous and it's not asynchronous either. Text correspondence is often used in a semi-synchronous way. That is, full attention is not used nowadays.
Recently, much has been said that the younger generation has the ability to do several things at once. Even a corresponding term appeared - multitasking. But in fact, they switch quickly between different activities rather than doing them at the same time. This requires physiological adaptation to new loads, in which the release of adrenaline and cortisol helps. However, cortisol affects serotonin and dopamine, preventing us from becoming happy and relaxed. Hence the effect on our sleep and heart rate.
There is a certain connection of mentality with the preferred variant of social media. Analysis of American online political advertising showed that organizations with left-wing views are more widely represented on Facebook and Twitter than the right. At the same time, right-wingers spend more on Google advertising than liberal groups. Because that's where their supporters are.
The phenomenon of polarization of views has arisen. This is partly due to the disappearance of the "mainstream" media - the press and television - which were more moderate and dominant. These media outlets were more oriented towards everyone, and today's social media can be oriented towards different groups.
The current person does not want to listen to the other person, does not want to admit that he is right, considering himself right in everything. He was helped in this social media, where now any look can be found. People with asocial views easily find their supporters. That is, the information herd can now be formed on the basis of any belief. It does not matter how true they are. The only thing that matters is their ability to start the process of self-propagation. This is where the prevalence of negativity in such viral messages comes from.
At one time, M. Kosinski and Cambridge Analytica took advantage of psychological targeting to reach out to the people who would launch this process of viral propagation most actively. Psychological portraits, made on the basis of Facebook likes, allow us to determine their system of representations, its "pain points". It is this that allowed Russian information interventions to influence the American presidential election.
Living in a "herd", even an informational one, is much safer and more comfortable than living on the outside. But the long history of creating and educating a free man with the help of education, books, and newspapers should not come to an end with us. Let us leave at least a little freedom to the next generations.