The irony is deafening. We joined Facebook to connect with long-lost friends across the globe. Only to lose the ability to hold uninterrupted conversations with friends right in front of us.
As the lines between real and digital lives get blurred, it’s easy to conflate Facebook friends with real-life ones. But to those who know what meaningful relationships look like, the difference couldn’t be starker.
As a character in ‘Kho Gaye Hum Kahan’ (KGHK, Hindi movie) ponders: “Social media makes you feel that you are more connected with people around, but in reality, you have never been more lonely than this”.
Visit any café. Look around. If you’re like me, you are likely to spot many couples who seem ill at ease with each other. More the compatibility issues, I think the problem is simply the inability to pay full attention to the person before you without casting secretive glances at your mobile phone every now and then.
Precisely this predicament has led philosopher Alain de Botton to define “true love” in the modern era as “a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.”
The dopamine highs from social media use affect every relationship. Because, a big chunk of our lives are dull, mundane and full of routine. A few decades ago, people would pass off such a life as a happy one even. But to a ‘social addict’, this normal life is unbearable drudgery. As another character in KGHK says, “Nothing ever happens, maybe that’s the problem.”
In Botton’s words: “The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.” That’s an incredibly high bar for ordinary humans to meet. And at this rate, we successfully set ourselves up for lifelong ennui.
Perils of Phone-based Childhood
If the problem is this severe for millennials, we can only imagine the damage being inflicted on the next generation.
Author Jonathan Haidt , in his recent book “The Anxious Generation”, discusses internet’s impact on children at length:
“The book lays out how childhood underwent a “great rewiring” in the blink of an eye, between 2010 and 2015.
The result was a new “phone-based childhood,” which altered the developmental pathways of children and adolescents, bringing them minimal benefits while reducing the time spent on beneficial real-world activities such as sleeping, playing with friends, talking with adults, reading books, focusing on one task at a time, or even just daydreaming.”
In his popular newsletter, Scott Galloway praises this book that, according to him, makes “the most forceful case yet that social media is hurting our children.“
It all “boils down to the assertion that these multibillion-dollar organizations, who’ve assembled vast pools of human capital that wield godlike technology, can’t figure out how to build effective, efficient, constitutionally compliant age-verification systems to protect children.”
I strongly suggest you read Galloway’s entire newsletter.
Many young parents boast how easily their child has taken to devices. Little knowing how much damage it’s causing to the kid’s well-being.
So what can young parents do to wean their children from screen addiction?
I liked the honest approach a parent suggested in his blog: “We made a mistake in letting you use your devices too much. We’re sorry. Now, let me explain why.”
What Can We Do About It?
I have just one social media app on mobile, Twitter (ex-name of X). And I still struggle. I wonder how much more difficult it is for people who have more apps on their mobiles.
Asking people to develop the will-power to control their social media usage misses the point.
As James Clear emphasizes in “The Atomic Habits”, your reserves of will-power are finite. Therefore, if you are required to exert willpower at every step of your journey, you’ll soon exhaust it all.
The idea is to build a daily routine in a way that requires you to exert as little willpower as possible.
I’m partly (and with feeble success) experimenting with removing all social media apps. Because having auto-login enabled for your social media accounts, particularly when you’re struggling with social media addiction, is the fastest way to exert and exhaust your willpower. Instead, if you’re required to manually login every single time, the friction involved replaces the need for willpower.
Design systems that have in-built buffers against occasional failures and slip ups. Because, as they say, events unsettle the best-laid plans. That’s about my efforts.
If you have been able to successfully resist social media addiction, I would like to hear how you managed it.
Musings by Madhav 
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