Social media addiction is about pleasures of the hunt
Vivek Murthy, surgeon general of the United States, recently proposed that all social media platforms should carry a warning that it could harm the mental health of teenagers. A similar proposal by the surgeon general that all cigarette packages carry a warning that smoking “may be hazardous to your health" is what kickstarted efforts to tackle this addiction. Will the surgeon general’s warning about social media addiction bear fruit? The biggest problem with social media is that it is anything but social.
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar was the first to do a comprehensive study of the social connections of humans. His study concluded that a human could have five intimate friends, 15 very good friends, 50 friends, 150 meaningful relationships and about 500 acquittances. This study was done before the advent of social media and there was curiosity about how these numbers would pan out now that online platforms have changed our interactions.
Dunbar found that social media has increased the number of weak ties, the count of acquittances and of those you recognize, but the number of deep personal connections has not increased. The worrisome statistic, though, is that close to 33% of today’s younger generation do not even have a single intimate friend. So this is possibly the loneliest generation ever in the history of mankind.
Murthy, in a report, has described loneliness as an epidemic on par with tobacco use. Loneliness is as bad for people as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. A lonely generation with their heads craned over smartphone screens, oblivious of the world around them, all alone in the big large world, is what social media has ended up creating as an online society.
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