Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life

I seriously don’t know how I punctuated my day before Instagram. Did I wake up in the morning, lie there for a bit and then just, you know, get up? Did I order a coffee and just stand there doing nothing whilst it was being made? What did I used to do in a bar on my own? On the bus? In the ad break? I literally have no idea.

You know things are getting really bad when you keep being reminded, ‘You’re All Caught Up’. On both your Instagram accounts.

So, in the spirit of being less crap (the kinder version of your ‘best life’), I have been doing some research on how we might be able to loosen the grip of the social media squeeze. The results have been smooshed and moulded into the following five reminders:

Remember it is not (all) your fault: First the good news. Yes, you may be a slave to your socials, but much psychological skullduggery has gone in to training you to be this way. Using the principles originally categorised by Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, which were created to foster better habits (smoking less, eating better), apps like Instagram and Facebook use the same trigger/action/reward/investment model to keep you hooked. From receiving a notification (trigger), double tapping on an image (action), getting likes and comments (reward), to returning to do it all again 15 minutes later (investment), they have us leaping to attention like a well-trained puppy. Talking of Dogs…..Back in 1890, Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavalov, discovered that if he rang a bell every time he fed his dogs, they would associate this sound with dinner and salivate accordingly. All the alerts, bings and notifications on our devices have us acting the exact same way. We have been conditioned to respond immediately. Because it has become imperative that we know in that very second that someone we barely know, who hasn’t posted for a while, has….drum roll….. now posted something. And, despite the almost total CARE-FACTOR-ZERO, we will, in all likelihood, still check what the f*ck they posted. A Deloitte study in 2016 revealed people look at their phones 47 times a day on average, with a number closer to 82 (!) for people under 30. And although I might be being told I am ‘all caught up’, most social apps are built with no end in sight, so we can legit scroll ourselves to death and literally be none the wiser.

How to Be Less Crap: Turn off your notifications (yes, all of them.) You will get SO much more done, I promise you. For the last two hours I have concentrated solely on this post and as Cal Newport stresses in his excellent book, ‘Deep Work: Rules for Focussed Success in a Distracted World’, ‘activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.’ Save the mindless scroll for a mid-day break, or to wind down after a productive, UNdistracted day doing stuff that will get you closer to where you really want to be.

Remember it doesn’t (always) make you happy: Social comparison is one of the fundamental barriers to our well-being and yet, nothing allows us to feast so closely on our inadequacies than social media. Look at them! Look at how much thinner, richer and happier they are than me! Rah, Rah, Rah, for their post-baby bodies, their unexpected promotions and their ski trips to Japan. Despite knowing that we may only be witnessing the filtered, highlighted version of these lives, all those toned abs, accolades and snow capped mountains still have an impact. As clinical psychologist, Rachel Andrew, explained in a recent article, ‘we might know that these images and narratives that are presented aren’t real, we can talk about it and rationalise it – but on an emotional level, it’s still pushing buttons.‘ Sadly, as well as creating a void, (I am not as good as they are), for many it also creates a need (maybe if I buy that bikini, cream or stupid gadget, I might be). Most of you know that I can’t bear you wasting money on sh*t you don’t need, especially as it’s been scientifically proven to not to make you any happier. The same can’t be said for all the sponsored ads, celebrity endorsements and #ad-tastic influencers – just sayin’!

How to Be Less Crap: It’s the mindless scrolling that seems to be the major problem. Whilst actively engaging in social media (posting, messaging, commenting, reconnecting with old friends) can be beneficial for our well being, the zombie like digestion of words, images and videos is the true happiness zapper. Ethan Kross, who conducted a study on social and its effects confirms, ‘The links between passive usage and feeling worse are very robust – we have huge data sets involving tens of thousands of people’. he says. Going forward, maybe we should make a concerted effort to only follow stories and people that contribute to our time in a positive way. People and pages that teach us something (@estherperel), make us laugh (@jamescordon) or distract us..but in a good way (@chrishemsworth).

Remember that you don’t have to tell everyone: Look, I get it. I really do. If you were a friend of mine on Facebook last November, when I spent a month in the Caribbean (I know!), you would have been bombarded with endless turquoise, rum-flavoured, tanned images that would have had you jealously sobbing your way to work on a cold, winters morning. I am not immune to the allure of sharing, but after reading an excellent Wait, but Why post, ‘7 ways to be Insufferable on Facebook’, I am starting to question my social media motives. The posts it suggests we avoid are those that are image crafting, narcissistic, attention craving, jealousy inducing or any that stem from loneliness (so, pretty much all of them ;). From the seriously dull ‘literal status update’ (‘off to the gym, then class reading’ – narcissism/loneliness) to the ‘out of nowhere acceptance speech’ (‘I just want to say how thankful I am for all of you who have touched my life’ – attention craving), it seems there are endless ways we can be insufferable. Interestingly, recent studies have discovered the things we post can also can reveal the type of person we really are (click here to see what your gym selfie says about you).

How to Be Less Crap: I am not suggesting you stop posting your party snaps and holiday antics altogether (because where would the fun be in that?). However, there might be merit in us considering our motivations when doing so. If we look at shifting the focus towards genuinely making people’s day a little better (the failed selfie vs the filtered, the great article you read, praise for something/someone else other than ourselves), then we will be well on our way to being slightly less pompous and painful.

Remember what it is taking from you: Most of us complain of never having enough time. We don’t have enough time to exercise, finish that project, start that hobby, prep those meals. And yet we have time to spend an average of 1 day a week on our phones, much of it absorbing useless information or looking at stuff that makes us sad. Acclaimed behavioural science writer Winifred Gallagher’s book, ‘Rapt’, makes the radical argument that the quality of your life depends not on fame or fortune, beauty or brains, fate or coincidence, but on what you choose to pay attention to. And, if we are really honest, we are probably all guilty of paying too much attention (‘You are all caught up’) to social media. Gallagher urges us never to forget that, “Few things are as important to your quality of life as your choices about how to spend the precious resource of your free time.”

How to Be Less Crap: Try and be conscious of how you are spending your free time, and ask yourself honestly if it that time might be better used learning, creating, starting or finishing something else. Social media should be less of a meal and more of a snack.

Remember what you had before: A long, long time ago people stood up straight on public transport, looked people in the eye and sometimes even smiled. They used things called pens to write letters to people they actually knew and loved. They called people on the telephone to tell them about their day, and weirdly those people nearly always picked up and spoke to them, like talking to a person on the telephone was the most natural thing in the world. They read real books and sometimes just sat still, not doing or looking at anything expect perhaps the world around them. Can you seriously imagine?

How to Be Less Crap: We will all be swallowed up by the technology monster eventually and new social media apps are vying for our attention all the time. Some, like Tik Tok bypasses the need for friends at all and just starts blitzing you with videos they think you will like and then, based on what you watch, builds up an understanding of what you will like. No real-life interaction required. This may be OK for an app, but we must NEVER forget that the number one indicator of longevity and overall life satisfaction and happiness comes from REAL relationships. To stay healthy, humans need at least three to five significant relationships in their lives. Proper, deep relationships with people they can touch and feel. Who they can call up at 3am in tears or who are genuinely thrilled to celebrate in their successes. Because there are going to be plenty of times in life when a virtual thumbs up or love heart just won’t cut it.

This GET HAPPIER post is brought to you by someone who thanks Instagram for taking the day off yesterday & reassuring us we could all survive without it. #timing