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Never before in history have a handful of people at a handful of technology companies shaped how a billion people think and feel every day with the choices they make about these screens.

—Tristan Harris, former Google employee, co-founder of Time Well Spent1

Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.

—Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self2

You're part of a controlled set of experiments that are happening in real time across you and millions of other people…. We've figured out, to some extent, how these pieces of the brain that handle addiction are working; people have figured out how to juice them further and how to bake that information into apps.

—Ramsay Brown, co-founder of Dopamine Labs3

This is your life and it's ending one moment at a time.

—Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club4

Several years ago, I stayed at the Las Vegas Hilton and explored the hotel's casino during one of my amateur anthropologist moments. I wandered among the natives, hoping to learn something about what they gained by losing money. I saw excited eyes follow a little white ball as it orbited the roulette wheel. Trembling hands motioned the dealer for one more card at the blackjack table. That was all interesting enough, but nothing compared to the sight of the slot machines. Row after row of them stood strong, shining under the lights like the altars of some bizarre future religion. Beeping and flashing, each one had before it what looked to me like a semiconscious human being, frozen in reverent devotion. Was this a symbiotic relationship of some sort, a parasite-host scenario? If so, which were the parasites and which were the hosts?

I continued exploring, up and down the aisles, excited by the profound weirdness around me. I could approach and closely observe these techno-gamblers because I did not exist to them, such was the depth of their spellbound state. The glassy-eyed people stared into intoxicating flickering images of what I guessed was for them a mix of hope, excitement, and, perhaps, danger and despair. The glow of the machines illuminated their vacant faces and I studied their blank expressions. No one looked happy, but neither did anyone seem sad. They were just there, doing what one does in front of a slot machine. Play, play, and play again. The minds within these people may have been razzled, dazzled, and excited; but from my perspective, looking at them from a few feet away, they seemed barely alive. They were gone, away in some strange zone of disconnect from the outer world. Most of the players had magnetic game cards clipped onto lanyards worn around their necks. With their cards plugged into the machines, the dangling lanyards between human and machine took on the look of a feeding tube or energy hose, the gambler's umbilical cord. The cards’ real purpose, of course, was to make the slow and ceaseless draining of money and time feel more comfortable and convenient. Dropping quarters all night might feel too much like work. And carrying the weight of so many coins or tokens might awaken some of the players to how much money they are losing.

Odd as it all was to me, I stopped short of drawing too many conclusions that night. I was an outsider there, a bewildered visitor, and as such I reserved judgment. I didn't know enough to call it bad or wrong. For all I knew, those were the happiest people on Earth. Besides, I'm sure many of those seated zombies were probably on vacation and would return to lives that did not include long stints of drooling before slot machines. Out of curiosity, I did some research on slot machines after that casino fieldwork. It turns out that the science and engineering behind them is nothing short of amazing.

Slot machines are not silly games. It varies by country, but these high-tech, big-money earners commonly bring in from 70 to 80 percent of a casino's revenue.5 Over a period of eleven years, the Pennsylvania state government took in $3 billion from all casinos’ combined table games, such as blackjack, baccarat, and roulette, while earning an astounding $17 billion from slot machines alone during that same period. There are nearly one million slot machines in the United States today, which is equal to about double the number of ATMs, and Americans today spend more money playing them than they do on movies, baseball, and theme parks combined.6 These are brilliantly engineered tease-and-reward boxes. They are designed to keep a human brain engaged with them for as long as possible, because more play means more money.

The details behind the remarkable success of the slot machine pile up fast, but the core concept is simple. To keep a player engaged, you vary input so that the player is repeatedly placed in suspense, not sure what will happen next. This builds tension. Then you deliver adequate rewards, not so little as to frustrate but not so much as to satisfy. This relieves tension without allowing the player to feel a sense of completion. Repeating the process of anticipation/tension, followed by reward/release, over and over, keeps players stuck in place, until their money runs out, of course.

Natasha Dow Schull, an MIT anthropologist who has studied gambling, says that slot machines are the most potent form of gambling because they are solitary, fast, and continuous. “When gamblers play, they're going into a zone that feels comfortable and safe,” Schull told the New Republic.7 “You're not playing to win, you're playing to stay in the zone—a zone where all of your daily worries, your bodily pains, your anxieties about money and time and relationships, fall away.”

Casinos encourage or require players to use those magnetic game cards, or “rewards cards” that I saw in Las Vegas, to track and accumulate valuable details about them. The data enable the casinos to learn how long an identified individual plays, how much he or she typically spends before quitting, and what minimal trickles of success work best to keep him or her playing and spending money.8 Does any of this sound familiar?

Can you think of another multi-billion-dollar industry today that might be tapping into the same anticipation/tension, reward/release cycle to hook people and keep them engaged and staring at screens for as long as possible? Does anyone you know come to mind, someone who spends a lot time in a state of semi-disconnect while swiping and poking, hoping for a reward, maybe one in the form of an interesting photo or comment to pop up?

YOUR SMARTPHONE VS. SEX, CHOCOLATE, AND SHOES. WHO WINS?

The explosion of smartphone ownership is a key factor in the rise of social media use. Together, these mobile devices and online social networks have found a fruitful symbiotic relationship. Therefore, it can help inform us about where the popularity of social media may be heading by looking at the current affinity for and reliance on smartphones. The Pew Research Center reported in 2017 that more than three-quarters of Americans, 77 percent, now have smartphones and 92 percent of US eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds own one.9 That same Pew study reports that “smartphone ownership rates have skyrocketed in many countries since 2013. This includes increases of over 25 percentage points among the total population in large emerging economies such as Turkey (+42 points), Malaysia (+34), Chile (+26) and Brazil (+26).”10

Popularity aside, it's also clear that people want and need smartphones to a high degree. I will refrain from invoking the word addiction, but some of these human-device bonds are strong. A United Kingdom survey by the Physiological Society found that the idea of misplacing or having your smartphone stolen is viewed as a major stress event. “Losing your smartphone” ranked just below “terrorist threats.”11 Among eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds only, losing a smartphone was ranked close behind “serious illness” as a significant stressor.12

Another study, conducted by TeleNav, an international wireless and GPS service corporation, revealed just how deep the love of smartphones can run for some people.13 It is difficult to know whether we should be disturbed or amused by their findings:

  • One-third of those surveyed say they would rather give up sex for a week than their smartphone.
  • More than half, 54 percent, would prefer to sacrifice exercising for a week than lose their phone.
  • Seventy percent would sooner abstain from alcohol for a week than go without their smartphones.
  • Sixty-three percent would choose phone over chocolate.
  • Fifty-five percent say they would give up caffeine for a week rather than their phone.
  • Twenty-one percent say they would surrender their shoes for a week before their phone.

THE DEFECTOR

Every time I check my phone, I'm playing the slot machine to see, “What did I get?”

—Tristan Harris, former Google employee and founder of Time Well Spent14

Tristan Harris had a job most people would likely consider very cool. He was Product Philosopher at Google, responsible for studying how technology impacts people's attention, well-being, and behavior. But he took the task so seriously that he quit over concerns that there is too much industry emphasis on hooking people with apps and devices—by any means necessary—to keep their eyes on screens solely to harvest data and sell ads. This comes, he believes, at the expense of what could be and should be happening: working toward making technology more helpful and better able to improve our lives. He looks around today, sees people everywhere staring down at phones, and worries that society may have taken a wrong turn.

Harris describes what is going on at many tech companies and social media platforms a “race to the bottom of the brain stem, to get people's attention at all costs.”15 He charges Apple, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and the rest with gaming us, erecting a stealth casino around us and selling us pocket-sized gambling machines.

“If you're an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine,” Harris writes on his website.16 “The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices? How often do you check your email per day? One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines: intermittent variable rewards. If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user's action, like pulling a lever, with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward—a match, a prize!—or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.” Harris continues:

When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we're playing a slot machine to see what notifications we got. When we pull it out to refresh our email, we're playing a slot machine to see what new email we got. When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we're playing a slot machine to see what photo comes next. When we swipe faces left/right on dating apps like Tinder, we're playing a slot machine to see if we got a match. When we tap the # of red notifications, we're playing a slot machine to what's underneath. Apps and websites sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it's good for business.17

Social media companies make their money based on how long users stay on their sites and apps. So how are they doing with that? “Very well” would be an understatement. In 2016, Facebook took in a whopping $27 billion in advertising, while Google earned an astonishing $90 billion.18 This money comes as a direct result of keeping people interested, entertained, engaged, hooked, addicted—whatever you call it. Nearly three-quarters of Americans, 73 percent, go online daily; 43 percent go online several times per day; and 21 percent are online “almost constantly.” Younger people, ages eighteen to twenty-nine, are dedicating even more time to the Internet, including social media sites, of course. According to a Pew study, 36 percent of these young people are online “almost constantly.”19

According to a 2016 study by dscouts,20 a Chicago research firm, smartphone users tap, click, and swipe 2,617 times per day on average. The heaviest users doubled that with 5,427 daily touches. This equates to about a million touches a year, two million for the most active users. The average user engaged with his or her phone in seventy-six sessions per day. The top 10 percent of users averaged 132 sessions a day. “Checking your likes is the new smoking,” says comedian Bill Maher.21

“Notification numbers appear on the app icon to draw you in, then on the top or bottom menu to draw you in further,” explains Mike Elgan, a writer for ComputerWorld.22 “They play the same psychological trick on you that clickbait headlines do—they tell you that there's information you really want to know, but they don't tell you enough to satisfy…. The biggest tool in the social media addition toolbox is algorithmic filtering. [They] tweak their algorithms, then monitor the response of users to see if those tweaks kept them on the site longer or increased their engagement. We're all lab rats in a giant, global experiment.”

With so much time being invested now, it is clear that wise management of it should be a priority for users. Going online is not inherently bad. What matters is what we do online with all of that time and how well we resist against all of these attempts at psychological manipulation coming at us. It is vital for more social media users to learn and accept what these companies are attempting to do. Simply knowing and always remembering that you are a target, that smart people are working hard to hook you with digital bells and whistles, can reduce the power of these apps, games, and sites. With awareness may come the motivation to better monitor and self-regulate time spent online.

“They run thousands of tests with millions of users to learn which tweaks work and which ones don't—which background colors, fonts, and audio tones maximize engagement and minimize frustration,” explains Adam Alter in his important book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.23 “As an experience evolves, it becomes an irresistible, weaponized version of the experience it once was. In 2004, Facebook was fun; [today], it's addictive.” Alter, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business, believes that individuals, companies, and all of society can take meaningful steps to reduce the problem of overuse/addiction. Here are some of his suggestions:

HOW MUCH TIME?

All of these problems—Internet addiction, wasting too much time online, sacrificing face-to-face interactions—may be alleviated with balance. By finding a reasonable balance between our online and off-line lives, we can have it all. We can have the best of the Internet and social media, all of the many wonderful things they offer us, and we can have each other too. Balance is the key. Alter writes:

Our attitude to addictive experiences is largely cultural, and if our culture makes space for work-free, game-free, screen-free downtime, we and our children will find it easier to resist the lure of behavioral addiction. In its place, we'll communicate with one another directly, rather than through devices, and the glow of these social bonds will leave us richer and happier than the glow of screens ever could.42

Harris now devotes much of his energy to Time Well Spent, an advocacy group he co-founded. The goal is to push tech companies toward making devices and social media platforms less addictive and more useful to people. In other words, “Harris is the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience,” as Bianca Bosker wrote in the Atlantic.43 The following is a sampling of the kinds of questions Time Well Spent is raising and encouraging people within the industry to address:

THE CURIOUS CONCEPT OF INTERNET ADDICTION

Are you or anyone you know addicted to the Internet, to social media? Is that even a real thing? Some experts say yes, others no. One argument against the concept of Internet addiction is that the Internet is a means to do things, and if one is addicted to anything it would be to those things—gambling, sexting, playing Farmville, posting selfies, and so on—rather than to the Internet itself. It's a point worth considering. After all, repeat drunk drivers have issues with combining alcohol and the act of driving. Roads are not really the problem. Maybe those who find themselves in crisis or living a significantly compromised life have problems with depression or some other mental illness, and social media or Internet use is just the visible outer layer of the real problem. Regardless of whether or not cyber-addition is technically an addiction or valid health issue, this much is certain: Thanks to smartphones, billions of people now have easy and instant access to the targets of their potential compulsion all of the time, anywhere. It's not difficult to imagine, therefore, how people might get hooked to some degree and find their lives becoming a bit degraded, if not derailed, as a result. And should Internet addiction or at least excessive, harmful use be on the rise, as some say, we all had better learn something about it so that we may guard against it. Sure, there is hype, exaggeration, and maybe a fair bit of fearmongering attached to this topic, but this does not mean there is nothing to be concerned about.

Our smartphones and online networks may give us the means to connect in positive ways with astonishing numbers of people all around the world, but they also sometimes harm traditional relationships as well as cause real-world problems for some individuals. If we add true addiction into the mix, we have bad recipe to contend with. Some research has found, for example, that the mere presence of smartphones or digital tablets can negatively impact “closeness, connection, and conversation quality” during face-to-face interactions.45 The psychological gravity of a smartphone in the room “can interfere with human relationships, an effect that is most clear when individuals are discussing personally meaningful topics.”

University of Albany psychologist Julia Hormes led a team of researchers that studied the addictive potential of Facebook. According to their data, an estimated 10 percent of users experience what Hormes calls “disordered social networking use.”46 Returning to the slot machine model, she cites the cycle of variability of input and reward as the key. “New notifications or the latest content on your newsfeed acts as a reward,” she explained. “Not being able to predict when new content is posted encourages us to check back frequently. This uncertainty about when a new reward is available is known as a ‘variable interval schedule of reinforcement’ and is highly effective in establishing habitual behaviors that are resistant to extinction.”

Lawrie McFarlane, former deputy minister of health in Canada and president/CEO of the Saskatoon Regional Health Board, worries that skyrocketing Internet use and social media engagement deserve more scrutiny for the sake of safety, especially when young people are concerned. He worries about social media having a negative effect on traditional means of socializing. “Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and so forth revolve around built-in metrics of attention—Likes, Retweets, Followers and so on—so when we use these apps, we are playing a very addictive game of vying for attention points. As our scores get higher, our desire for attention points increases. When we value another person's opinion, or want to express that we care about them, we pay them in attention points. We desire more and more quantities of attention, while investing less time and energy into the quality of our social lives.”47

Some research suggests that 1 in 8 Americans now suffer from what we can at least describe as problematic Internet use. In China, Taiwan, and South Korea, 30 percent or more of the population may be suffering to some degree with compulsive and harmful Internet-use issues.48

Even the most committed fans of Facebook and other platforms stand to learn things by listening to criticisms, even when they're difficult to digest. Here's a bit more of the bad, according to McFarlane: “Social media confronts us with a disembodied form of communication that results in social isolation, crude and primitive uses of language, likely alterations in brain chemistry, shorter attention spans, and a scary lack of self-awareness and meaningful knowledge of others. Moreover, we must not forget that the relevant technology is still, more or less, in its infancy. Text messaging is only two decades old. Digital cellular networks emerged in the early 1990s.”49 McFarlane compares the explosion of social media upon the modern landscape to the Industrial Revolution. A century or so passed, he notes, before societies finally began correcting in earnest the abuses and horrors it inflicted on workers, children in particular. He worries that, once again, it may take an unacceptably long period of time before societies react in meaningful ways to the possible harmful effects of the Internet and social media on children today.

IT'S COMPLICATED

Recent research suggests that use of social networking sites can be addictive for some individuals.

—Journal of Behavioral Addictions50

Addiction is complicated. No surprise there, since it happens in the human brain, the most complex thing we have yet encountered in the universe. Addiction can also be an emotionally charged and contentious concept, with some seeing disease and others seeing only willpower issues. It doesn't help that most of us tend to use the term far too loosely, calling ourselves and others “addicted” to everyday things and behaviors when it's really nothing more than a desire, a tendency, or a mild habit. For example, it may be tempting to point to the frequent use of electronic devices by a teen as addiction, but maybe it's not. Maybe she just uses her smartphone and tablet a lot because they help her do what she wants and needs to do with greater ease and efficiency. We must keep in mind when thinking about Internet addiction that true addiction refers to serious problems with thought-out medical criteria. If we or even a relevant medical professional cannot determine whether a child or teen is addicted to computer gaming or social media, we still should be aware and concerned about serious problems that don't require addiction to be present. Excessive media use might harm a child's ability to focus and pay attention in class, for example, or damage emotional well-being. No matter if, when, and how the research community comes to a consensus on Internet addiction, it is clear there are some people who are falling into real problems, problems that require our attention now.51

UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences Gary Small, named one of the world's top innovators in science and technology by Scientific American, takes Internet addiction seriously and advises everyone who ventures online to at least be aware of it. “When we think of addiction, we usually associate it with alcohol or drug abuse,” he writes in his book iBrain.52 However, the same neural pathways in the brain that reinforce dependence on those substances can lead to compulsive technology behaviors that are just as addictive and potentially destructive…. Internet addiction afflicts people from all walks of life: homemakers in their thirties and forties, teenagers, businesspeople in their fifties and older, college students, and even kids under ten. Everyone is at risk of getting hooked on Web applications.”53

Most addictions of any kind begin with occasional, recreational use and progress from there. Once they reach a higher threshold, negative consequences such as damaged relationships, insomnia, and missing work or school impact the addict's life. “That's the natural narrative arc of any addiction, and the same is true with an Internet addiction,” says Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and addiction expert.54

FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS…

Are you addicted, hooked, or a mere casual fan of electronic devices and social media sites they connect you to? Whichever it is, you would be wise to give some thought to how they might be effecting the quality of your sleep. Is it possible that a smartphone, tablet, or laptop is stealing an hour or two of sleep from you at night? If so, you might need to put down the magic boxes and step away. Here are a few things to know that may help motivate you.

Sleep is much more than rest time. Critical brain activity and maintenance take place during the night. It's during deep sleep that our brains sort and file new memories and lay down the neural networks needed to retain any new skills acquired during the day. Cell waste left behind in the brain after a long day of thinking, is cleared away during sleep. Not enough sleep can mean a compromised cleanup job. Leftover debris can lead to less than optimal brain performance the next day and may increase one's risk of Alzheimer's disease.55 Cancer risk goes up as well when sleep quality go down. And it's the same with diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and obesity.56 Do not overlook the serious problems sleep deprivation can cause. Bad sleep is incompatible with good thinking and good health. If your devices and Internet or social media activities are compromising your sleep, it's time for change.

If you can manage it, turn off all of your devices at sunset. Read a book or listen to music in the final hour or so right before going to sleep. Keep your smartphone and other devices out of the bedroom so that you won't see them and be tempted to “just check Facebook one more time.” There is a physical reason why you should do this, beyond just to resist temptation. Shortwave blue light, which is generated by phones, tablets, and laptops, can reduce melatonin levels in the brain by 22 percent before bedtime.57 Melatonin is a crucial sleep hormone, and when it's reduced, we can take longer to fall asleep and experience less REM or deep sleep later in the night. If you must stare at a screen right before going to sleep, try adjusting the device's settings to remove the blue light. If your device doesn't do that on its own, there are apps available that can. Television is not as harmful to melatonin rates, by the way. Probably because the screen is relatively far away.58

Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist and the director of Stanford's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Clinic, says there's more physiological evidence than ever that indicates that the Internet is addictive: “There are studies that have looked at people's brains while they're online, and their brains start looking like those of someone who has a substance abuse disorder. Similar pathways seem activated.”59

Problems related to compulsive Internet use are diverse and wide-ranging. The Center for Internet Addiction reports that perhaps one out of eight Americans has some form of significant problem with Internet use.60 China was one of the first countries to officially recognize Internet addiction and reportedly has more than 20 million people suffering from it today.61 As much as 30 percent of the populations of China, Taiwan, and South Korea may be dealing with serious Internet use problems to some degree. There are now more than five hundred hospitals in South Korea that treat Internet addiction.62

The Center for Internet Addiction, mentioned above, is a treatment facility that bills itself as the first “evidence-based Digital Detox recovery program,” and it was founded in 1995 by Kimberly Young, a pioneer in the field. The center defines internet addiction as “any online-related, compulsive behavior which interferes with normal living and causes severe stress on family, friends, loved ones, and one's work environment.” Internet addiction has also been called “Internet dependency” and “Internet compulsivity.” The key identifying factor, according to the Center for Internet Addiction, is compulsive behavior that “completely dominates the addict's life. Internet addicts make the Internet a priority more important than family, friends, and work. The Internet becomes the organizing principle of addicts’ lives.”63

The concept of Internet addiction is still relatively new and remains controversial among experts. Even naming it, whatever it actually may be, has not yet been widely agreed upon. Some prefer to call it simply “Internet overuse.” Other names include the aforementioned Internet dependency and Internet compulsivity, as well as the following: Internet addiction disorder (IAD), compulsive Internet use, problematic Internet use, pathological computer use, problematic computer use, and problematic Internet use. Internet addiction, by any name, is not included in the most recent DSM manual (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed.).64

According to the Center for Internet Addiction, there is no single behavior or pattern of behaviors that indicate Internet addiction. Time spent online is much less an important factor than the impact that Internet use is having on one's life. The following are warning signs65 that may indicate a problem:

Common Sense Media, a parent advocacy group that studies social media use among children and teens, as well as other issues, reports that 59 percent of parents think that their teens are addicted to smartphones and other mobile electronic devices. Interestingly, half of the teens surveyed feel that they are addicted.66

The problem isn't limited to children, though. “I really think the only way that I could stop using social media would be if it became unavailable to me,” admits Susanna Cline, aged fifty-five, of Tennessee.67 She says that she spends an average of about four hours per day on social media, mostly Facebook. “Yes, I am addicted to social media. If I were not spending so much time on it, I would have a more organized home and I would make more of an effort to be with friends. I would also write and work on my music much more than I do…. I am very concerned, but apparently not concerned enough to cut back…. I do contemplate it, though, because it often leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

Florida attorney Natasha spends a lot of time on social media every day but says she could stop if she wanted to. “Actually, I said I was going to deactivate my accounts today so I could focus on some new ideas for my social media platforms…. Super ironic.” This comment by Natasha makes me aware of the fact that while writing this book, I found it necessary to devote significantly less of my time to social media. Social media, it would seem, can be an obstacle to thinking and writing about social media.

Alera, a bright twenty-two-year-old San Diego college student with a global outlook, expresses herself on several social media platforms, mostly Snapchat. She admits to worrying that the two or three hours she devotes to social media on average every day might be too much: “I'm spending time using social media when I could be doing more productive things,” she said.68 “I could stop using social media today, but I would feel disconnected. I think I might be slightly addicted to it, because I depend on it a lot. I use it as something to focus on in awkward situations, use it for some of my news, and as a way to stay in touch with people.” Alera appreciates the positives of social media but doesn't deny that there some negatives. “Lack of accountability. Echo chambers. The last election showed me how much of an echo chamber I was living in. I naively assumed that most people agreed with the people I interacted with on social media. Regardless of your belief, you can find numerous think pieces to validate your viewpoint.”

Randall, aged thirty-two, lives in California. He uses Twitter and Instagram sparingly but is on Facebook a lot and wonders if he may be approaching the social media addiction danger zone. Millennials are commonly stereotyped as being glued to their phones, but I see many adults similarly fixated on their phones…. The most troubling thing about all of this is that I get it. I get how addicting it can be. Like a fellow drug user who tries not to fall completely into addiction, it is easy to see why so many have already succumbed, and, simultaneously, it's easy to reassure myself that I'm not that bad. At least, not yet. My wife thinks I'm already too addicted. I disagree, but then again there was certainly a time in my life [when] I didn't check my Facebook updates at least once every few hours or have access to games wherever I went. Maybe I'm already just a phone-distracted moment away from being another statistic.69

Randall continues,

As a person born in the eighties, at one point I most certainly enjoyed daily life with friends without using social media; but as of now, I doubt that I could quit of my own volition. I'm not even sure how I'd respond if I were forcibly removed from Internet access. It's easy to say that I'd be just fine, especially if there were other activities to focus on, but it's been so long since I lived without social media access that I honestly don't know if I'd express symptoms of withdrawal. Even considering it gives me an ever-so-slight pang of anxiety. Controllable, negligible, but still there…. My wife says I'm addicted to my phone, as she often catches me using it while out at restaurants or doing activities. At home, although she uses her phone regularly, I spend even more time on my phone as well as on the PC. It's not a serious area of conflict so far, but it's certainly something she finds annoying enough to point out, which is usually my cue to put the phone down and pay attention.

THE MIRAGE OF MULTITASKING

Multitasking is often admired as a key skill of super-achievers, those who get more done in less time than other mere mortals. But there's a problem with attempting to juggle three or four tasks at once: It's stupid.

Despite the public's (mis)perception about it, multitasking is actually inefficient and counterproductive. Regardless of how busy and productive people may feel while bouncing their brains back-and-forth between Facebook, Instagram, and doing their homework, they are fooling themselves. They are not doing their best work. By far the best way to get things done well is to tackle them sequentially, one after the other, rather than all at once. A strong body of research shows that multitasking can reduce productivity by as much as 40 percent. The choice is clear: look busy by flitting around unfocused, or pick a single target and perform at your best.

Think of the human brain as big, heavy truck. It's slow to get moving, but once rolling it can take you far. Stopping to change direction means dealing with momentum issues and then having to once again build up to optimal speed from a dead start. Better to drive in a straight line to one destination, then on to the next one, and so on.

A 2017 study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of brains in action and revealed how the normal activities of the brain are disrupted by multitasking. Neuroscientist Iiro Jääskeläinen, one of the study's authors, recommends allowing the brain to do what it does best—focus on one task, settle into deep thought, and get it done. “It's easy to fall into the trap of multitasking,” he said.70 “In that case, it seems like there is little real progress and this leads to a feeling of inadequacy. Concentration decreases, which causes stress. Prolonged stress hinders thinking and memory.”

Jääskeläinen views social media as problematic because it often encourages multitasking: “Social media is really nothing but multitasking, with several parallel plots and issues. You might end up reading the news or playing a game recommended by a friend. From the brain's perspective, social media only increases the load.”71

WHO'S IN CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE?

The one thing you can't Google is what you ought to be looking up.

—William Poundstone, author of Head in the Clouds and Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos72

Frances Booth, author of The Distraction Trap: How to Focus in a Digital World, says it is still possible to live without social media in the modern world if you desire it. It is also possible, she says, to be a sensible user of social media, one who doesn't let it dominate the daily agenda. It is important, she told me, to be aware of how you feel during and after a session on social media. If engagement on Facebook or Twitter consistently leads to bad feelings, then it's time to do some self-analysis and decide whether or not it's worth it. She doesn't recommend dropping social media immediately if you recognize that there are problems but to seek a solution in structure. “Social media can trigger a whole range of emotional responses. Notice exactly how it is making you feel. Do you want to feel like that? Also, notice whether you are always responding to other people's demands. Set your own agenda, and set boundaries.”73

“Wasting time” is perhaps the most common charge levied against social media use. Remember, as mentioned previously in this chapter, more than two out of every ten Americans say they are online “almost constantly.” Booth says it's not that difficult to take control if you simply set limits and keep them. “Do an accurate assessment of exactly how much time you are spending on social media. You might be surprised at how much time it is eating up. Start setting yourself a set amount of time for each session—for example, thirty minutes. When your time is up, step away! Decide what you want to use social media for. For example, keeping in touch with certain people, as a way of getting information, or for marketing. Keep focused on that aim and watch out for getting distracted and going off on a tangent.”

It may be helpful when assessing your time investment in social media to keep in mind the basic truth that the priority for the big and successful social media companies is to make money off your engagement with them. We aren't plugging into charities or nonprofit organizations focused on nothing but helping us be happy and productive citizens. No, these companies are dedicated to serving their paying clients first, not you or me. This doesn't mean that they are necessarily evil, of course, only that they are focused on something other than your best interests. Nothing personal, it's just business. But you need to be aware of this reality when attempting to assess how much of your time you are comfortable devoting to social media. It's a relevant factor. They use you to make money in the same way that CNN devotes thousands of hours to covering a missing plane or meaningless celebrity scandals that have zero impact on their viewers’ lives. CNN does these things not to enlighten society, obviously, but to make money. Clearly, cable news networks have pushed the viewer's desire to be informed about important current events down their lists of priorities. Their number one mission is attracting and keeping advertisers. Cable news viewers, like social media users, don't stand a chance against the power of all of that advertising revenue. The game is luring in eyeballs and keeping them on screen for as long as possible—whatever becomes of the brains attached to all of these eyes is of little or no concern. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and so on engage in a game in which you are not even a player. At best you are the ball, something to be kicked around. So long as you stay on the playing field, they're happy. I say all of this not to upset you but make sure that you know your place in their pecking order. You and I are products, not customers. When you run around in these social media ecosystems, you are working to help billionaires get richer. Understanding this doesn't mean you can't still use and enjoy social media, of course. But do be aware of it.

MIT professor and social media expert Turkle is uncomfortable with excessive use or overreliance of that word “addiction,” at least when referring to the bulk of people who are not necessarily destroying their lives due to Twitter trolling, World of Warcraft binges, or even a bit of Facebook obsession. She warns that talking about addiction can suggest to people that, as with most addictions, the only solution is to get rid of the addicting substance. But we all know that the Internet, e-mail, and social media are not going anywhere. And again, attacking only the supply side of the problem does not fix the problem itself. “We will not go ‘cold turkey’ or forbid cell phones to our children. We are not going to stop the music or go back to the television as the family hearth.”77 She is cautiously optimistic, however. “I believe we will find new paths toward each other, but considering ourselves victims of a bad substance is not a good first step. The idea of addiction, with its one solution that we know we won't take, makes us feel hopeless. We have to find a way to live with seductive technology and make it work to our purposes. This is hard and will take work. Simple love of technology is not going to help. Nor is a Luddite impulse.” She encourages skepticism about linear progress and emphasizes a need for humility as key. She believes that the Internet and related technologies are still young, young enough for us to tackle the difficult problems and come up with meaningful solutions before they become impossible problems.

THE INBOX TRAP: STOP WASTING YOUR BRAIN'S TIME

You and your fellow humans send an estimated 247 billion e-mails per day.74 All of this writing and sending, receiving and reading of electronic messages eats up human time. In his book, The Organized Mind, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at McGill University Daniel J. Levitin explains why so many people check their e-mails and social media accounts so frequently: “Each time we dispatch an email in one way or another, we feel a sense of accomplishment, and our brain gets a dollop of reward hormones telling us we accomplished something. Each time we check a Twitter feed or Facebook update, we encounter something novel and feel more connected socially—in a kind of weird, impersonal, cyber way—and get another dollop of reward hormones. But remember, it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of the brain driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centers in the prefrontal cortex. Make no mistake: email-, Facebook- and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.”75

Levin, like many time-management experts, advises turning off e-mail notifications on your phone or computer and allotting only a few specific time periods to deal with e-mails, maybe once in the morning, again in the afternoon, and then one last time in the evening.76 Reading and responding to them in specific and designated chunks of time tends to be more efficient and productive than stopping work to do it many times throughout the day. The first step is turning off that bell, to stop behaving like Pavlov's dogs. Once an e-mail alert is heard or vibration felt, the subconscious mind will not rest until you drop whatever work you were attempting to do and look at it. Obviously the same goes for text messages, Facebook Messenger, tweets, and so on.

“I THINK I'M OFF FOR GOOD THIS TIME.”

Shanika, aged thirty-four, is a thoughtful New York preschool teacher. She took a break from Facebook because she felt that it was stealing away time she needed for other things. “I felt that I was not able to achieve some of my personal goals—practicing my guitar and getting through my reading list. Facebook was taking up all of my alone time. Instead of spending time thinking or reading or playing, I'd spend it reading posts. I decided to return to Facebook [after a break] because I wasn't hearing from anyone. Although I'd left my personal information for friends to contact me, no one did. While I want to get off of Facebook, I'm afraid of losing contact again with so many people.”78

Shanika estimates she spent about two hours per day on Facebook. She went on it at home, at work, on the ride home, and before going to bed. “There are so many things I know that I want to do when I have time alone that I am just not doing, and it has been hard to focus because of the distraction [of Facebook]. There is something very enticing about it, checking to see how many people ‘like’ or agree with a post I make, reading other people's posts, being entertained by videos and memes, being educated by videos and posts, reading opinion pieces. All of these things, but ultimately they have distracted me from things that are important to me that I always say I have no time for.”

“I do think that I'm addicted to a certain degree,” Shanika said. “There is a part of me that can go on without thinking about it, but only after about a week or two of being away. The initial departure is much more difficult. I have found myself typing ‘Facebook’ in the search engine when that wasn't what my intention was.”

“I don't think social media is necessarily anti-intellectual,” Shanika continued.

I think it depends on how and who uses it. I've come across many posts on Facebook that have made me think about myself and the world. It all depends on the type of people you decide to engage with on it. I do, however, think that the fast and flashy nature of social media decreases one's attention span. I find myself struggling to get through books, a pastime I once enjoyed. I used to be able to zip through at least two to three books a month. Now, I can barely get through one book at all. I feel that it is because I am used to reading through so much information at once on the Internet, having more than one tab open at a time, while simultaneously responding to texts or e-mails or commenting on posts. I recently deleted my Facebook account again, and it is taking me time to get back to the habits I consider good: reading, playing my guitar, writing. It was, for me, like an addiction, and I feel like I am now slowly rebuilding myself again. The last time I deleted my account, it also took me a while to readjust. I think I'm off for good this time.

I sometimes see a wisp of fear in people who spend of a lot time reaching for and staring into a smartphone. They seem at times to be in weird state of urgency, presumably worried that an e-mail or post on social media is in their phone screaming at them, in need of urgent attention. Sure, important information does show up in our inboxes and Facebook feeds every now and then. But how often? How much of this kind of fear and concern is justified? Do truly earth-shattering bits of information come to us through social media on daily basis? For most people, I suspect, there is no sensible justification for checking their phone every five minutes throughout the entire day. Perhaps social media users can enhance their lives a bit by taking the intensity down a notch or two. This is not a trivial concern. A human brain in a constant state of distraction and urgency is stressed and therefore inefficient.

COULD YOU BE SUFFERING FROM “SMARTPHONE-INDUCED BRAIN-DRAIN”?

Before doing anything that requires significant brainpower, you may want to put your smartphone somewhere out of sight—as far away as possible. A fascinating—though disturbing—2017 study suggests that a smartphone's mere presence can so distract one's mind that cognitive performance drops, to a significant degree.79

Researchers at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin conducted two experiments with more than seven hundred smartphone users. Results indicate that even when people are able to maintain sustained attention, and do not physically check their phones, the phone's presence still manages to degrade their cognitive capacity. Furthermore, those who self-report a higher dependence on their smartphone show more negative cognitive effects if a phone is present during testing than do those who report less dependence.

To be clear, these experiments were not about the problem of being interrupted by a ping or vibration from the phone while thinking. All phones were turned off or set to silent. Interestingly, those who were asked to place their phones in another room before taking a cognitive test outperformed not only those with their phones near them, but also those with phones in their pockets or a bag nearby. The mere presence of the phone, even one not visible, degrades mental function, according to the researchers.

“We see a linear trend that suggests that as the smartphone becomes more noticeable, participants’ available cognitive capacity decreases,” explained Adrian Ward, lead author of the study. “Your conscious mind isn't thinking about your smartphone, but that process—the process of requiring yourself to not think about something—uses up some of your limited cognitive resources. It's a brain drain.”80

Ward and his coauthors write: “One's smartphone is more than just a phone, a camera, or a collection of apps. It is the one thing that connects everything—the hub of the connected world. The presence of one's smartphone enables on-demand access to information, entertainment, social stimulation, and more. However, our research suggests that these benefits—and the dependence they engender—may come at a cognitive cost.”81

Never forget that your mind is mostly a bustling hive of thinking and decision making that “you”—your conscious mind—are unaware of. A whirlwind of constant cognitive activity is occurring below the surface. If you are checking your phone more than a hundred times per day, just to make sure you don't miss the greatest tweet of all time, then your capacity for higher thinking is constantly compromised. You won't be your best creatively or when it comes to making sound decisions. In this kind of state, no one can be their best, because it means living in a perpetual crisis behind the scenes, with the silent scream of the subconscious always demanding immediate action: “Check the phone now!” Simply being aware of this may help you exercise more rational control over the almighty smartphone and all of those seductive social media sites.

California State University psychologist Larry Rosen researches how technology and social media impact our anxiety levels. He says that heavy smartphone/social media users are relentlessly tormented by internal cortisol shots that nag them to pick up their phones. “What we find is the typical person checks their phone every fifteen minutes or less,” he said in a 60 Minutes interview, “and half of the time they check their phone there is no alert, no notification. It's coming from inside their head telling them, ‘Gee, I haven't checked Facebook in a while. I haven't checked on this Twitter feed for a while. I wonder if somebody commented on my Instagram post.’ That then generates cortisol, and it starts to make you anxious. And eventually your goal is to get rid of that anxiety, so you check in.”82

DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM?

The Internet Addiction Test (IAT)83 can be used to measure Internet use in terms of mild, moderate, and severe levels of addiction. Kimberly Young, a professor at St. Bonaventure University and director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, developed the IAT to assess symptoms of Internet addiction.

Based on the following five-point scale, select the response that best represents the frequency of the behavior described in the following twenty-item questionnaire.

0 = Not Applicable

1 = Rarely

2 = Occasionally

3 = Frequently

4 = Often

5 = Always

___How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?

___How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?

___How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?

___How often do you form new relationships with fellow online users?

___How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online?

___How often do your grades or schoolwork suffer because of the amount of time you spend online?

___How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?

___How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?

___How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do online?

___How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?

___How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go online again?

___How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?

___How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online?

___How often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?

___How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when off-line, or fantasize about being online?

___How often do you find yourself saying “just a few more minutes” when online?

___How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend online and fail?

___How often do you try to hide how long you've been online?

___How often do you choose to spend more time online over going out with others?

___How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are off-line, which goes away once you are back online?

After all of the questions have been answered, add the numbers for each response to obtain a final score. The higher the score, the greater the level of addiction and creation of problems resultant from such Internet usage. The severity impairment index is as follows:

NONE 0–30 points

MILD 31–49 points: You are an average online user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.

MODERATE 50–79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.

SEVERE 80–100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.

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The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale84 is aimed specifically at Facebook use. Cecilie Andreassen, a researcher at the University of Bergen, and her colleagues list the following six basic criteria as a means of identifying possible addiction to Facebook. Participants are asked to give one of the following responses to each statement:

1 = Very Rarely

2 = Rarely

3 = Sometimes

4 = Often

5 = Very Often

___You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or planning how to use it.

___You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.

___You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems.

___You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.

___You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.

___You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.

Scoring “often” or “very often” on at least four of the six items may suggest that a person is addicted to Facebook, according to Andraessen.85

WHAT HAPPENS IF WE TURN IT OFF?

“It's amazing how quickly, once we let go of that fear [of being disconnected from the Internet and social media], we wake up from the illusion,” explains tech expert and former product philosopher at Google Tristan Harris. “When we unplug for more than a day, unsubscribe from those notifications…the concerns we thought we'd have don't actually happen. We don't miss what we don't see.”86 Don't allow yourself to get too wrapped up in waiting for the next friend request, like, or “follow.” This is not the measure of a full life. According to Harris, many social media companies exploit an “asymmetry in perception.” We get an invite from someone on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example, and reasonably assume that that person thought about us and decided that it would be nice to connect, so he or she reached out. But, Harris points out, most of the time a machine is behind it and leading the interaction. It's more likely that the person merely reacted to a prompt or suggestion from the platform and complied with little conscious thought. But it may feel like a social obligation to “return the favor,” so naturally you stop what you are doing and respond in kind. “Imagine millions of people getting interrupted like this throughout their day,” Harris said, “running around like chickens with their heads cut off, reciprocating each other—all designed by companies who profit from it. Welcome to social media.”97

TIPS AND APPS TO HELP YOU REGAIN YOUR BRAIN

Ashani, aged twenty-two, is a marketing assistant in the Cayman Islands. She believes that she could stop using social media, but she doesn't want to. “It would definitely be difficult. At my age, it seems you have more of a problem if you're not on social media than if you are. That being said, I have described my social media activity as an addiction before. I think I would attribute part of that ‘diagnosis’ to the mindless way I open Instagram without thinking about it—even when I've just closed it!”98

Michelle, aged forty-one, is a Texas business owner who suspects that she spends too much time on social media. “I once utilized an app to monitor myself for usage on devices and apps and although I expected it to be high, I was still surprised.”99 She loves Facebook for the “efficiency of communication with many people and the ease and speed with which you can reference personal information. I've had countless positive interactions…. I've caught up with old friends and made new ones. I have been able to contact and develop relationships with people I may not otherwise have had the opportunity to. I fostered and have further developed relationships in the community and ‘real world’ via social media that I likely would not have otherwise.”

Michelle thinks that the worst thing about social media is the way it can distract you and rob time from your other priorities. She also had to deal with the discovery that her then twelve-year-old son had opened a Twitter account that had received tweets “of an adult nature,” including some “displaying materials inappropriate for children.” Michelle says that she was “shocked, even mortified” by this. Her son said he had deleted it, but he didn't understand that removing the app from his phone was not the same as deactivating the account; so it was still live.

Furthermore, Michelle is concerned that she spends too much time on social media, and using digital devices in general, and that she pays a price for it with negative changes in her eyesight, posture, attitude, and overall health. But she can't bring herself to stop using these platforms and devices because it benefits her business. “An analogy that comes to mind would be an alcoholic having to work in a bar serving alcohol and having to monitor themselves while not abstaining from [alcohol], but taking in only a controlled amount. It [social media] is no doubt addictive, and designed to segue you from one subject to another.”

“It takes you away from the issues at hand in your real life,” she said. “Oftentimes it's a needed break from work, but just as often a hindrance to it…. With some guidelines, boundaries or usage limits set and agreed within the home or workplace, it can be quite positive. If left to run rampant and unchecked, undoubtedly [it] can cause damage. [Spending time on social media sites] is a shallow form of entertainment. Overuse certainly can decrease your attention span, patience level, and ability to engage with people and other things, on a deeper level.”

In one of life's silly little twists, Michelle says her spending a lot of time on social media used to be a source of irritation for her husband. But that is no longer the case—because Michelle encouraged him to start using it too, and now he's on it as much as she is. “It's not a source of conflict,” she says, “but certainly [an] annoyance at times, for us both.”

Leo Igwe, a forty-six-year-old researcher in Nigeria, spends six to eight hours per day on Facebook. He says he is concerned that he may be giving too much time to it, but stopping concerns him as well. He worries that pulling the plug would make him “restless and unable to concentrate fully on other things.”100

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the following guidelines101 for children using digital devices:

CUTTING BACK

Those who are concerned that their Internet/social media use is a serious problem might try reducing the time spent by simply making a clear decision to do so and then relying on willpower to make it happen. Reducing online time in small step-by-step increments might work well for some. Others might do better by cleaving their online time in half or more and moving on with life. The best way to tackle it depends on the individual.

Adding new activities might help. Replace one habit with another habit, so long as it's less problematic. Spend time with friends doing fun things that don't allow for screen time. Try hiking, archery, rock climbing, chess, running, singing in a choir, surfing, knitting—anything you think might keep you engaged and happy off-line.

Whenever possible, put some physical space between you and your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. The problem of mindless reaching for a device is eliminated when the device is out of reach. Try setting boundaries of time and place. No electronic devices after sunset, for example. No electronic devices allowed in the dining room and bedroom at any time, ever.

Those who continue to struggle can try one or more of the technological aides listed previously in this chapter (“Tips and Apps to Help You Regain Your Brain”). It may seem odd that there are apps designed to help you stay off of apps, but it just might work. For others, however, this may be a problem that runs too deep and requires professional help. Full-blown Internet addiction, excessive time spent online, or suffering negative consequences from online activities that you can't stop might be too much to correct alone. As mentioned earlier, difficulties might be connected to a larger mental-health issue such as depression or anxiety. If there is a significant problem, the best advice is to seek out the necessary help. Do not ignore, deny, or surrender. No one should passively accept his or her ongoing behavior if it is diminishing the quality of life. Get help.

YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET

The fast-changing landscape of social media is about to get even more interesting. Facebook's push to incorporate virtual reality into its platform,102 for example, may be a significant move toward revolutionary changes, not just for social media but for our entire species. Virtual reality promises so much. We will spend time with faraway friends and family and it will feel as if they are in the room with us. We will be able to walk on the Moon, watch the Super Bowl from the vantage point of a premium seat, and stroll through the world's greatest museums at our own pace. VR is definitely something to be excited about—and to be worried about. If the current versions of Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook—which are nice but hardly mind-blowing—have been able to hook tens of millions of users, what will social media with VR do to us?

Alter, associate professor of marketing and psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business, is also concerned about where VR may take us: “Since mainstream VR is in its infancy, we can't be sure that it will dramatically change how we live. But all early signs suggest that it will be both miraculous and dangerous…. Wielded by big business and game designers [it may] prove to be a vehicle for the latest in a series of escalating behavioral addictions.”103

WHO YOU CALLING AN ADDICT?

Some heavy social media users take a different view of spending countless hours online. They see no problem with devoting substantial chunks of their life online because time spent is not necessarily a measure of anything harmful. They claim that one has to consider the value in whatever it is people are doing on these sites and apps. Daniel K. Minto, aged thirty-one, is an electronics technician in the US Navy who says he spends about half of his waking hours on social media. And it's not a problem. To the contrary, he is sure that it enriches his life.

I'm not concerned that I spend too much time on social media. I would say that online social connection is a truer form of interaction with regard to expression because it eliminates the stresses and constraints of physical presence. The worst thing about social media is its tendency to blur the line between the real world and a virtual one. However, I can't say that that's a bad thing; it's just different than what we've grown up with. We're a social animal and we thrive off interaction and expression. Social media allows for that in the easiest way we've ever thought of. To younger millennials and those who will come after them, social media is natural. In its beginnings, it sometimes seemed like people were spending less time interacting in “real life” and more time on social media, and that was considered a bad thing. Today, as social media becomes just another aspect of daily life, asking someone if they're spending too much time using it is like asking if they're using their eyes too much, or listening too often. I could stop using social media at any time, but it would be a decision to seclude myself in the corner of the room with blinders on and earplugs in. Could I stop? Of course. Would I? Only if everyone else did at the same time. Otherwise, stopping the use of social media is a willful disconnect from each other. I don't think anyone can be addicted to social media, because it's a part of life now. You often hear people accusing each other of being “addicted to their phones,” but what does that really mean? Interacting with friends, family, and colleagues too much? Watching and reading and listening to things that you like too much? Being relevant, opinionated, engaged, and educating yourself too much? Social media becomes a problem only when it's a distraction from responsibilities. But that goes for anything.104

Minto makes a crucial point. Though some people clearly do seem to have harmful compulsive disorders that involve social media, he is correct in that we can't be too loose and quick with our fears and condemnations. Someone spending many hours per day on social media may appear to some to be suffering from a negative addiction. But that cannot be determined without first analyzing what the person is actually doing on social media and how it is impacting his or her life. The behavior and long hours may be positive and productive for him or her. As such, you have to examine the net costs, net benefits, and the circumstances surrounding each individual's use. For example, social media may provide a substantial boost to the quality of life for some children and teens with autism.105 Additionally, it may be useful to note that it's not as if everyone was devoting his or her available time to such illustrious activities as reading Plato, building homes for the homeless, practicing the violin, and running marathons before Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat stormed onto the scene to become everyone's favorite time-sucks. Many of the hours eaten up in the silliest and most trite corners of social media today were once squandered in ways that were equally as, or even more, trivial in the past.

BUT I'M SO INTERESTING

No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity.

—Shu–saku Endo–, Silence106

Talking about oneself is a quintessential human move. We can't help ourselves. Self-exposure comes to us like breathing. We may mock and condemn the most arrogant, overexposed celebrities for being “so full of themselves” but, truth is, the stars are just excelling at the same game we all play. Even the humblest among us can't resist slipping into publicist mode and talking about him- or herself on a regular basis. It's natural, normal; it's human. One of the reasons social media is so attractive—addictive, perhaps—to many people is that it is such a convenient stage for sharing ourselves and for self-promotion. Research shows that we are highly motivated to communicate personal things about ourselves both off-line and online. We even get an internal chemical reward in our brains when we share something about our successes, failures, problems, hopes, and dreams with others. Self-disclosure, opening up, feels good to us, if not necessary. “People dedicate close to 40 percent of their time talking about themselves,” write Diana Tamir of Princeton and Harvard's Jason Mitchell, researchers who conducted experiments on the value and rewards of self-disclosure.107 “This number reaches 80 percent in [online] social networks with the possibility of feedback and immediate rewards. Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system…. Moreover, individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self.”

Yes, much as we humans tend to love money, it seems we are willing to sacrifice it simply to experience the pleasure of telling other people something about ourselves. “Just as monkeys are willing to forgo juice rewards to view dominant groupmates and college students are willing to give up money to view attractive members of the opposite sex,” Tamir and Mitchell write, “our participants were willing to forgo money to think and talk about themselves.”108 Not everyone feels the need to share their lives on social media, however.

“I don't go anywhere near the stuff [social media] and just don't understand why anyone wants to,” said John Higginson, an older resident of Manchester, England.109 “I'm afraid I'm from a different generation. To be honest, I'm not really very interested in what other people are doing. And I certainly can't understand why they would be remotely interested in what I'm doing.”

Andrea, a young Louisiana teacher, doesn't use social media, in part because she finds it all a bit too self-serving for her tastes.

I think it gives people the incorrect notion that they have something important to say every moment of the day and that other people want to hear it. The fact that there is a forum for all our status updates, and a place to post photos of what we had for lunch and comments on the last episode of, whatever, makes us feel self-important. My brother is a man of few words. He once said that chit-chat for the sake of it was like throwing up on a white couch just to add some color. Social media is like that scene from Stand By Me where everyone is projectile vomiting everywhere. Aren't the folks on Twitter referred to as “followers”? Weird. Like we can all be gurus of something. Most of us don't do much worth “following.”110

Robert DeAngelo, a Florida editor/journalist, thinks younger users get hooked on social media because it gives them a break from reality. “It does seem like lots of young people are living more of a virtual life than a real life,” he said. “They have Facebook ‘friends’ that they've never met and yet feel really close to. I think they are losing the ability to communicate with someone in person. E-mail and texting can be a good way to communicate, but nuance is lost. Facial expressions, tone, whether something is said with sarcasm—all of that is lost in translation with electronic communication.”111

“There is also the online aspect of creating who you'd like to be, rather than [just being] who you actually are,” DeAngelo continued.

Because you're not actually meeting the folks you're interacting with, you can create a persona and backstory to suit any purpose. That leads to being able to “say” things online that you'd never say in real life—see the comments section following any news story—and “talk” to people you'd never actually approach. And if it all goes horribly wrong, you just click out of that screen and move onto something else.

In some ways, you can't blame young people for getting hooked on the virtual world. The trials and tribulations, pain and loneliness, fear and anxiety of the real world don't exist there. But when they log off their devices, the real world that awaits them can seem like a letdown. Or at least not as dreamlike. So what's the solution? More time online. That's where the addiction forms. And that's why some people spend more time in their virtual life than in their actual one.

I'm not prepared to offer a blanket condemnation of social media simply because millions may use it to blow on the embers of vanity for a quick and shallow high. One shouldn't be too harsh in faulting people for being human or reaching for a bit of relief and distraction in an often tough, unfair world. However, a conscious awareness of this particular reason why social media might be so attractive can nudge us into more rational and productive use of it. Maybe don't stop expressing yourself about yourself, but be reasonable about the time and energy devoted to it. Don't thoughtlessly give up deeper intellectual pursuits or fun times with real-world friends just for a fleeting hit of dopamine that comes from a Facebook post or Instagram pic. Don't fall into the trap of working too hard for the insatiable beast that is social media. Maybe some can manage it, but it's just not possible for all of us to be always interesting and beautiful while leading lives of nonstop excitement.

Simple photos of your sleeping cat or another bland selfie don't measure up like they used to on social media these days. Many Instagram users today seem compelled or obligated to post a never-ending series of colorful and impactful photos that show how fun and exciting their lives are—even if their lives are not exciting. To feed this need, “Instagram playgrounds” may be the next big thing.112 The Museum of Ice Cream,113 for example, was a big hit in New York and is now taking California by storm.114 Social media users loved it instantly because of its vibrant pink, photo-friendly atmosphere and unique theme, perfect for an Instagram fix. What's weird, however, is that the Museum of Ice Cream is not a museum of ice cream. It's a constructed false-reality that exists primarily for taking social media photos; and people pay $29 for the privilege. Booking it for a private event costs $180,000.115 As a Hollywood set for civilians, it is a perfect fit for an age when stardom is supposedly within everyone's reach. For many social media users now, it seems that an image of a cool experience is less about experiencing something cool and more about the image itself. Don't be surprised if more similar themed backdrops pop up across the landscape. Maryellis Bunn, the twenty-five-year-old creator of the Ice Cream Museum, says she has had inquiries from Abu Dhabi and Japan, and she currently plans to open more in the United States.116

There is nothing new or bad about having fun with a few pretend or misleading photos, of course. But we might be cautious about going too far with this behavior on social media. Who is fooled most by an overly contrived and staged photo anyway? The audience or the person who posted it? When we pay money and put in work to produce a fake scene in our lives, what does it say about our actual lives and real experiences? And what's next along this avenue? Will millions of social media users soon be posting computer-generated fake videos of themselves climbing mountains, surfing, and playing fetch with a beautiful dog? An app already exists that can place a smile on your face if that selfie is too somber.117 Yes, if you can't be bothered to actually go out and find something exciting to do, no worries, a filter will make you look as if you did in the all-important photo.

Minutes and hours spent photographically documenting yourself doing fake things for the sole purpose of posting it on social media is time that could have been spent doing something real and sharing that experience instead. All social media users should be conscious of how much time they devote to less-than-authentic persona building and answering the demands of a real or imagined online audience. At its best, social media reflects our actual lives and is a way to share the best of who we are and what we do. At its worst, social media is the sad simulation of what should have been our lives.

Never forget that participating, to any degree, in social media is work—work that contributes to someone else's bottom line. In his book Terms of Service, Jacob Silverman writes about this, calling it “digital serfdom”: “The digital lords appear to be little more than caretakers fattening themselves on our data production.”118 He explains further, “We publicize our lives through social media to create an aspirational ideal for others and an idealized, possibly unfulfillable, version of ourselves. No one's life is as good and eventful as seen through Facebook, no one's life as shimmering and beautiful as viewed through the filters of Instagram.”119 Attempting to achieve the appearance of Pinterest-worthy lifestyles is a privilege, says Silverman: “We don't all have the luxury of time, knowledge, or resources to preserve our visibility, to try to achieve micro-fame. It's a constant process of cultivation, like bailing water from a leaky boat. It's a luxury of people who can spend the time needed to stay present and available on their networks. If you don't maintain this performance, if you don't keep bailing water, you'll sink out of view.”120

This point is underscored by Harris, of Time Well Spent: “The ultimate freedom is a free mind, and we need technology to be on our team to help us live, feel, think and act freely. We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People's time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights.”121

The spectrum of social media use outcomes is long and wide for the individual. It runs from invaluable and wonderful all the way to frivolous and wicked. Take note of where you land most of the time. Regardless of whether or not Internet/social media addiction becomes a full-blown health issue sanctified in the pages of the DSM, we can work today from the knowledge that there is potential for harm here. For some people, social media is a negative or even a destructive factor in their lives. Perhaps one of the easiest ways for all of us to defend ourselves against letting social media degrade the quality of our lives to any degree is to ask one specific question, sincerely and often. At least once a month, I suggest, ask yourself: Why? Why am I doing this? Am I getting enough back for the time and mental energy I put into it? Is it worth it for me to engage with these apps and sites many times throughout the day? Be reflective, honest and, if necessary, be willing to modify your behavior. Answering or at least contemplating our reasons for engaging with social media can give us a fighting chance at using it more than it uses us.