Social media "addiction" as compulsive status checking

On the internet, you can never leave middle-school

Much has been written about “social media” platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.) and their billions of members. There is a lively debate about whether engagement in these networks is “good” or “bad” for you depending on your age, gender, dosage of exposure etc. As with most social/behavioral issues, there is “research” to support whatever position you might prefer to take.

There is little disagreement that the absolute numbers of social media participants and their time spent on these platforms has exploded over the past ~15 years. Incidents of online harassment, shaming and threats of harm are causing significant damage to the social, emotional and financial well-being of their targets. Increased social media exposure (and its corollary reduction in real-world play) has been implicated as a proximal cause of child/adolescent anxiety/depression, self-harm, body-dysmorphic eating disorders, and even suicide. And still the participation rate in these virtual salons continues to grow and enrich their operators.

When thousands or millions and now billions of people are doing the same thing, you can bet that thing serves some important purpose or function in their lives. The bigger the numbers, the more you are probably tapping into something of a life-and-death (survival) level of importance.

“Keeping up with the Joneses”

Primates are an order of mammals that includes monkeys, apes, lemurs and humans. Primates tend to form and maintain tightly knit extended kin groups that provide them with a survival advantage for child-rearing and when threatened by external attack. Groups that lack sufficient structure and order tend to disintegrate when exposed to internal or external pressures. Robust self-regulating groups have strong operating systems and software that have evolved to resist the forces of social entropy.

As primates, our individual survival is a function of our “status” within our group/tribe. Status is a metric for our social capital/currency that can be cashed in for certain goods and services such as food, social connection, sex, protection from harm and other resource needs. It’s not hyperbole to say that our lives very much depend on our place in the social order. That means that every primate will be inclined to invest significant mental energy in assessing and improving their standing in their group (family, tribe, school, work).

With the advent of big data analytics, we can crunch huge numbers of data points in the search for meaningful patterns and dynamics. While the well-documented phenomenon of “garbage in/garbage out” should keep us humble and skeptical about the conclusions drawn from these data dumps, some pretty interesting themes can emerge from the chaos.

As people memorialize ever more of their thoughts in retrievable formats (read: e-mails, texts, tweets, blogs, comments etc.), we can subject billions of human thoughts to pattern analytics in search of meaningful trends. When the content of each bit is tagged with a range of subject #’s, one topic rises reliably to the top spot: GOSSIP.

At work, school and home, people chat endlessly about other people in terms of their social standing/status in their reference group. The two critical status algorithms that are continuously analyzed by our gossip software are

• Who’s Up/Who’s Down?

• Who’s In/Who’s Out?

Up/Down is the vertical index of standing/status in a hierarchy. In/Out is the horizontal mapping of location in relation to a group’s external boundary/membrane. A primate’s position on the vertical and horizontal axis of group space has profound implications for both their well-being and survival. Gossip is the means by which we gather critical intelligence about (and try to improve our location on) the social map, which is why we do so much of it. Such a vital social maintenance function deserves a more elegant terminology than gossip, and status checking is what we’ll use for now.

Social Comparisons: UP/DOWN

The Who’s Up/Who’s Down dimension is the core measure of the social hierarchy and status (power/value). When people do status checks, this is the main topic of discussion. We constantly assess our and others’ place in the pecking order (remember: the chickens at the bottom get pecked to death, so this has a survival element!) so we can act accordingly.

People with high status have a high degree of privilege that entitles them to act in ways that lower status individuals would be punished for. Lower status individuals tend to defer/submit to higher status individuals or risk getting shamed and pecked back down to their “place”.

So knowing Who’s Up/Down and where you fit in that hierarchy is critical knowledge for thriving and surviving. We all compare ourselves to those above and below us, and there are strong emotions connected to those assessments. When we make “upward” comparisons, we tend to feel envy of our “betters” and disappointment in our lower status. This provides the motivation to strive to climb up a rung on the social ladder which has the benefit (if we’re successful) of claiming more and better resources which gives us a survival advantage. Analyzing how people gain upper-class status gives lower status residents both hope and actionable intelligence about improving their lot, which explains the fascination people have with the rich and famous.

When we make “downward” comparisons, we tend to feel smug and superior and happy about being higher/better than those below us. This is the true meaning of the phenomenon of schadenfreude (enjoyment of others’ suffering). It’s not so much a sadistic emotion as much as the happiness/relief that comes from knowing someone is worse off (lower status) than us. This is why societies create under-classes/castes (“untouchables”) so the rest of the population can feel superior.

This status checking/comparing is such a core element of human social functioning that we tend to pathologize people who don’t do it, and they lose status as a result. Whether they are labeled as a “nerd”, “introvert” or “on the spectrum”, these people who don’t play the status checking game are viewed as alien/other and less than, often to their detriment.

Existential Threats: IN/OUT

Who’s In/Who’s Out? is the other status check we perform, and this one has even more life-and-death implications than our Up/Down social comparisons. If a person violates the social norms and customs and expectations of their group, other people (especially those with higher status) have a number of tactics for enforcing those rules.

Shaming and humiliation are the milder forms of social control. If this fails to have the desired effect, there will often be an escalation to some form of physical threat short of a life-threatening attack, since the purpose is not to harm but to enforce social rules compliance and stratification.

If these measures fail to enforce submission and compliance, out will come the big guns of social control:

• ostracism/shunning (rejection by group members while still maintaining group membership)

• banishment (exclusion from/abandonment by the group)

Status checking of Who’s In/Out mostly tracks which people have been ostracized/ejected from a particular clique for some rules violation in an effort to enforce compliance. If a person continues to violate critical group norms and expectations despite shaming, small aggressions and shunning/ostracism, they are at risk for the ultimate social sanction: banishment, which in most circumstances is a literal death sentence. The vast majority of group members will do anything to avoid either shunning or abandonment, and the continuous status checking and adjusting we do is designed to keep us safe and as far from those exclusion boundaries as possible.

Social Media “Addiction”: Status Checking on Steroids

Am I rich enough? Am I tough enough?  —  The Rolling Stones

Back in the olden days (c. 2000!), people engaged with their school, work and peer groups for part of the day, and then went home (which may or may not be a positive place for them). This provided a buffer and break from the social spheres where the most intense status performing and checking took place.

With the arrival of digital social networks on computers and mobile devices, the tribe is omnipresent, like in the really olden days before the industrial era’s nuclear (isolated) family set-up. This means that for children, adolescents and many adults, the status machine is now running 24/7, both online and in their head.

Social status is determined by different variables depending on the local culture, but here are a few common status enhancers:

• Wealth

• Physical strength

• Sociability

• Self-confidence

• Special (rare) talent

• Physical beauty/sexual desirability (fertility indicators)

• “Cool” (emotional control, lack of perceived vulnerability)

On social media with its hurricane of messages and selfies and videos, what you often see is a performative exhibitionism (“Look at me!!”) designed to draw attention to one or more of the status enhancers above. Once a person pings that message out into cyberspace, they will scan for feedback that their message was received and effective in the form of Clicks, Likes, Claps, comments, shares and other indicators of social validation and approval.

For most people, a positive response along these lines triggers an endorphin (serotonin, dopamine) high that reinforces the status signaling and tees off the next wave. A negative or no response from the virtual world can create a dysphoric crash with symptoms of withdrawal and a desperate attempt to regain status confirming validations.

Show me the money!

If the status signaling system is monetized so that our “grade” on the relevant metric (clicks, likes, claps, attention time, number of followers/fans) triggers the payout of currency, the intensity of emotional engagement in the game increases exponentially. One of B.F. Skinner’s most disturbing discoveries about motivation is that sentient beings will work incredibly hard for even tiny and inconsistent rewards.

Pigeons and rats will peck and pull a lever thousands of times to get one pellet of food. Casinos create algorithms for their slot machines that provide just enough reward size and frequency (accompanied by loud sounds and flashing lights and “free” drinks and snacks) to capture and keep their customers pulling that lever for hours and days at a time.

When a sentient being is fully engaged in the response-reward-response cycle, and if the rewards (status, money, mood-enhancing substances etc.) are salient enough, they will eventually display the familiar hallmarks of addiction:

• Decreasing levels of pleasure with each reward session; need to increase the level of reward to experience the same degree of pleasure

• Increasing levels of anticipatory anxiety and “obsessing” about attaining the reward payout

• Increased feeling that their reward-chasing behavior is “compulsive” and involuntary; efforts to stop (“cold turkey”) increasingly fail over time

• Energy for self-care activities (eating, sleeping, relationships, work, play) is largely diverted into the game, resulting in self- neglect, loss of well-being and in some cases death

And then they raise the bar on you again …

Mirror mirror on the wall. … who’s the fairest of them all?

As the constant status signaling and checking and judging intensifies into a permanent state of being for more and more people, the minimum standards for being Up and In escalate. The degree of wealth, strength, beauty/sexual desirability and “cool” required to maintain a high-caste status level can approach levels unattainable by most mortals, triggering shame and self-loathing in ever larger segments of the population.

Ever more people are using image filters to create a more perfect face and body for their selfies and on dating apps. This pursuit of perfect appearance has even escalated to adolescents and young adults taking those enhanced images to plastic surgeons for their realization in the flesh. Every element and dimension of face and body is scrutinized endlessly for any signs of imperfection.

Standards of physical fitness (the new standard of beauty and sex appeal) push middle and high school students to carry out thousands of crunches in pursuit of perfect six-pack abs. Most can’t achieve this physical perfection and suffer the shame of falling short. Even those perfect specimens who are idolized by their peers often suffer the secret tortures of body dysmorphia, compulsive exercising and eating disorders.

And that is just the pressure of pursuing the beauty/sexual desirability component of status. Selfies endlessly curated on Instagram must show beautiful and expensive clothes, accessories and locations/activities, all requiring money that many don’t have and can’t spare. But the endless online status signaling, checking and judging keep people on the knife’s edge as they try to buy status and fill the accounts of Amazon and Big Pharma and Corporate Medicine and the Advertising/Media Complex.

Marketing professionals have long understood that if you create a sense of shame/inferiority (status deficit) in a consumer, they will buy whatever you can convince them will fill the status gap (“A diamond is forever”). To create more demand, you simply ratchet up the status standards and prescribe the next fix (product or service). And round and round it goes.

[See the “Nosedive” episode of Black Mirror on Netflix for a dramatization of this pervasive social media-engineered status system]

Big Brother is Watching /Rating You

Human groups have always maintained their cohesion by maintaining vertical (Up/Down) status hierarchies and horizontal (In/Out) inclusion boundaries. And they always will. As the status checking/maintenance processes have metastasized into every moment of people’s lives, the risks to the population’s health and sanity increase (especially for the young and vulnerable and poor). What if this online status checking program becomes integrated into a government surveillance and control system? Sound like a dystopian movie a la The Matrix, Terminator etc.? It may be coming soon to a country/city near you (see this review of China’s financial/social credit system).

Imagine the pressure to maintain a perfect social media presence and all that entails. People will be exhausted from their continuous status checking with its fears of falling DOWN/OUT and desperate efforts to improve their algorithm (a life-and-death video game). Authoritarian governments will have little reason to fear a populist uprising as their population struggles under this jacked up status system and citizens BLAME THEMSELVES for their “failings.”

It will be difficult for most people to “resist” this programming because it merely amplifies evolved biological operating systems and software that are always running in the background. By hacking into the naturally selected status system of human groups and the brain, and manipulating them for the purpose of social control/domination, governments and global corporations may well achieve ultimate victory. It is a form of psycho-cyber warfare that would make any psychopathic dictator smile.

By the time enough of the population “wakes up” to the threat (if they ever do), it may be too little too late. Stay tuned.

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