Why Your Phone Is Useless

One thing about social media is that provides instant rewards with little to no effort. This rewires the brain, telling you basically that you can get maximum pleasure from doing mostly nothing.

To some degree, I’d consider myself a digital addict.

As someone who spends most of his day either in his mini library or behind a desk with a laptop his front of him almost every day due to my nature as a writer and computer engineer, it’s safe to say I am stuck with digitals, phones and laptop to a point.

But even though I’ve always wanted to write this, my subconscious mind won't allow me to because, at some point, I felt guilty.

What does it feel like to be constantly online, never truly off? Why did I feel a tangible and soothing relief the day I deleted the Instagram app from my phone and decided to use my other social media apps for more profitable things, a while ago? What does this all mean?

Not to talk of the worries because things haven’t always been this way…

We shouldn't be any longer surprised that the internet has affected our brains, especially in ways that are becoming unimaginable. And with the unavoidable relationship between smartphones and social media, it seems it can’t be escaped. It’s everywhere we turn.

There’s a real reason our phones are programmed with bell notifications accompanied by red colours (especially for Samsung users). For context, red colours are known to be the best for Stop and Danger signs but the said colour is now the best for notifications also known as a novelty, shouldn't that be a clear sign?

There’s a reason you can’t get off your phone. It’s intentional not by you but It’s designed that way. Dopamine is released and the reward/pleasure pathway is activated in the brain, social media is high that keeps on giving. Who doesn’t want to stay current with the latest gist in town? Who wants to miss the unending fun of social media and most especially in areas such as the ventral tegmental area and striatum have been implicated, thanks to the positive validation from online (and offline) likes?

One thing about social media is that provides instant rewards with little to no effort. This rewires the brain, telling you basically that you can get maximum pleasure from doing mostly nothing.

I once read a piece on the Power of the Like in Adolescence: Effects of Peer Influence on Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Media. This study showed that “viewing photos with many (compared with few) likes was associated with greater activity in neural regions implicated in reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and attention.”

According to Aeon, “The simple act of pushing a button to reveal information has been shown to trigger arousal and compulsive behaviour, and newly developed features on smartphones add further layers of anticipation.”

There was a time I was so bothered about likes and views to the point of thinking maybe I was getting it all wrong but I  had to check myself and all was cool. I can’t remember the last time I bothered myself because of “views” on WhatsApp. I’m not even concerned about who sees my posts or doesn’t. This isn’t because I’m pompous or feel more important than others but because I assume you might as well if I saved your number. Why do I then need to know you did? I have even had people coming into my DM with appeals of saving their numbers just to have more views on their statuses but I’ve often had to ask myself this…What does it matter anyway?

To be honest, I think social media as a whole was just abused. Isn’t it supposed to be an avenue for increased global connectivity, quick access to information and digital nomad jobs, especially for freelancers?

Life is on a spectrum. Similar to how the classification of mental disorders is not solely based on the symptoms, because they occur to a small degree to the average person — anxiety, depression etc. But the emphasis is often on how severely they impact the quality of daily living; work, socials, and the basics. It becomes an issue when it’s no longer “just for breaks”.

Whether it’s becoming accustomed to our filtered version (& the validation that comes with it) or experiencing the phantom vibration syndrome (when your phone isn’t actually ringing), the situation is clearly problematic. A real one. 

It has now become almost a norm that the first thing most people do on waking up in the morning is to check their phone, and once they are unable to be without their phone for 30 minutes, it becomes an issue not to talk of losing that phone which makes them go nuts temporarily. 

Withdrawal symptoms from addictive substances, such as smoking, taking alcohol, and quitting porn are a real phenomenon. This has behavioural symptoms such as intrusive thoughts about the said thing, agitation and boredom. Not to forget the physiological ones.

Also, Social media has impacted our relationships by decreasing the amount and quality of time spent together with people who matter.

Imagine you are engrossed in social media and someone interrupts, you are likely to get irritated with such a person.

Whether we intend to or not, social media does decrease the quality of time spent with people, which can decrease our satisfaction and sense of connection not to talk of its impact on our thinking and cognitive reasoning because we now have people who reason based on what a popular figure has said online.

Even with the fact that the internet hasn’t even been around for that long, It’s difficult to say what the long-term effects might be.

Late last year when I took a decision to spend less time online[social media], I noticed a few things:

• I became more patient, especially with tasks such as reading. 

• I’ve also become more thoughtful, mulling over my own internal world. Creating my own opinions rather than the ones I’m served by people who might in the real sense not be exposed than I am or by a faceless algorithm.

• I feel more settled. I’m not even sure if that makes sense. But because I’m prone to anxiety (from the past), I realised I’ve felt less in a hurry.

• I have become more productive, spending more time making research, fixing myself into the tech world and building tangible projects. 

To be honest, I don’t mean to sound this way. Like I said earlier, guilt wouldn't let me write because I didn’t want it to read like a social-media-is-a-life wrecker conspiracy theory piece. But I can’t help but acknowledge both sides of the coin that social media offers us.

If I may ask; What’s your relationship with social media like?