Constantly on the verge of new scientific and technological breakthroughs, our society has been integrating itself deeper and deeper into the ‘digital age’. Around us, smarter computer programs are being developed, phones are becoming flashier and smarter, and even our houses are becoming ‘smart’. Although technology has positively affected millions of lives, specifically in the fields of medicine and mechanical engineering, it also has created its own set of issues. In particular, technology has brought about exponential growth of the social media and advertising industries, both of which impact our school community.

The pressure to assimilate has been around since the start of society, but with social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, our social paradigms have changed. Because we want to integrate with other people, it’s now strange if you’re not a part of this new social platform or that trending one. The ‘everywhereness’ of the internet also unfortunately brought the issue of cyberbullying. On the flipside, it is easier than ever to talk with people all over the world, find people through online dating (which, like everything, has its own set of negatives), share what we like, and collaborate with more people. In our culture, networking via social media is greatly beneficial for jobs, but what is lost when we apply that term to online ‘friends’ and followers?

Social media seems to be designed to foster more connections and appears to be a form of personal expression, in a way. Social media has progressively become the best new way to advertise. A variety of industries market their products to us through social media, but slowly, we’ve also started to market and advertise ourselves. It parallels to the advertising industry; our product is our life and the currency is happiness. What you like or do not like online is tracked by companies so they can curate advertisements to you. Similarly, we can track down other people and curate content we want to see by the means of following/unfollowing. When we ‘like’ things online and build up social media profiles, we are in a way marketing ourselves. Turning our interactions into a stock market of sorts is dangerous in a lot of ways.

Social media is attractive in the way it allows you to share your interests with others. Not only that, but it offers a reward for sharing what you love. Generation Like, a documentary by PBS, proposes this thought: “[social media] is cool because when a kid likes something and that thing likes her back, other kids notice, and then they like her too.” Advertising is easier than ever now; you don’t need to market when the target audience will market themselves.

This constant need to belong is prevalent in every generation, in every age and place. Social media offers an illusion of belonging and it can be dangerous if we are too engaged in the online world instead of the real one with real cute dogs and holistic relationships with people who are physically present. It would be inaccurate to say relationships online are not real, though it becomes a problem when relationships are ignored in favor of online ones. When somebody feels liked online, it really drives them to post again and again and want more attention and ‘approval’. The social media game can be addicting and often self-centered and rarely leaves a person satisfied.

Social media’s like/favorite, friend-follow design is not conducive to real happiness, though. What value does a ‘like’ have? And why are we so obsessed in counting them? Is happiness really measurable? Can you count social approval? To what extent does this reflect our own artificiality? On reflection to all of these questions, the numbers game associated with social media is unhealthy and causes us to analyze our way to sadness.

Phones, which are technological marvels in their own right, allow us to do lots of cool things and also use social media on the go. There are some good things about it, but how much of our lives are going into mindless content absorption? Most of the feeds on social media platforms are designed to constantly scroll and refresh, which doesn’t encourage us to remember or reflect on whatever we have just seen. It supports an immediate gratification lifestyle where it is easy to fall into the trap of obsession. Liking, but more so receiving likes can make you feel good about yourself, until you start comparing yourself to others and it becomes a contest that ends up making you feel much worse.

Phones also provide us with lovely search engines like Google. Searching information in just a second is pretty amazing. We can learn a lot more in less time, but we also lose motivation to want to actually learn things for an extended time. Search and forget is not that good, and do we sometimes do that with people online too?

The problem with phones and social media together is that they have substituted for real conversations with real people about topics that have depth and substance. The internet allows us to lose ourselves in a massive ocean of entertainment and information while activities like interacting with the real ocean often require more patience and observation to enjoy. It is easy and it is fun to read a funny story somewhere and hit like.  In fact, it is extremely addicting. It’s fun to go through a feed and like the things you do; it makes you feel like you are not alone in what you appreciate.

From a scientific standpoint, liking something on a social platform triggers dopamine, the same chemical that the brain triggers when you eat, do drugs, or love someone. A study done by Diana I. Tamir and Jason P. Mitchell found that when participants put themselves out there, that in itself plus the possibility of being liked was an intrinsic reward (8042). These positive interactions seem great on the surface, but looking at it more closely shows that it really is not. Humans have a need for personal expression and human contact, not a changing number on a glowing brick. Screens don’t provide for those things in any permanent way and they encourage rather degrading and self-centered behaviors, like the overabundance of the ‘selfie’.

The ‘selfie’ and the group picture are some of the most dominating types of images found on visual social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. They give a reward for looking good/being around others and many people receive compliments in the form of comments. This illusion seems almost perfect. In reality, likes and comments don’t represent the person you are or how actually likeable you are in real life. What do we really get when we post a picture of ourselves and our friends? That doesn’t helps you connect with somebody else, especially if you are on your phone posting about what you’re doing instead of doing things with the people you are with. It comes to the point where people sometimes hang out with other people and get more excited over the picture that they can show to other people.  Sometimes, non-digital conversations about likes and ‘follower ratios’ come up, and that because social media causes us to ‘count’ our popularity and therefore ‘happiness’, it negatively impacts our self-esteem a lot more than it helps it. Happiness is not measurable and is relative to each person and an obsession with social media encourages the comparison of one’s happiness to another’s.

The root of many problems with social media is that social media encourages the gamification of life. You post, you get rewarded and then you want that over and over again until you can’t stop. Lots of people use social media to fundraise, inform, and inspire. However, once the thing you’re marketing  becomes yourself, that’s when problems start occurring. A feed should not be the only thing that browser or identify yourself because virtual reality and reality are two very different things.