Slashdot Mirror
Social Media Are Driving Americans Insane (bloomberg.com)
Deena Shanker, writing for Bloomberg: If you pull out your phone to check Twitter while waiting for the light to change, or read e-mails while brushing your teeth, you might be what the American Psychological Association calls a "constant checker." And chances are, it's hurting your mental health. Last week, the APA released a study finding that Americans were experiencing the first statistically significant stress increase in the survey's 10-year history. In January, 57 percent of respondents of all political stripes said the U.S. political climate was a very or somewhat significant source of stress, up from 52 percent who said the same thing in August. On Thursday, the APA released the second part of its 1 findings, "Stress In America: Coping With Change," examining the role technology and social media play in American stress levels. [...] The highest stress levels, it should be noted, are reserved for those who constantly check their work e-mail on days off. Their average stress level is 6.0. So those of you who think it's somehow pleasant to work from home on a Saturday afternoon, you're actually fooling yourself.
...than the current Psychotic-in-Chief?
I think the big problem is that everyone seems to want to use social media to shout their political and social beliefs constantly and non-stop. Before the rise of social media I had a pretty good idea of where my friends were in the political/social spectrum, but we never really discussed it. Now it seems that everyone must not only tell you where they stand on issues, but they have to tell you why you're wrong for not taking the same stance. Day after day with the smug condescending memes, fake news pieces from whacked out websites, pointless hoaxes that Snopes debunked years ago ad nausem. After a while it just gets on your nerves and you either join them, drop out, or go insane. I've pretty much filtered or unfollowed just about everyone on Facebook because I'm tired of it (whether I agreed with them or not). If it wasn't for some of the computer groups I follow I'd probably never log into FB anymore.
Humans spot risk, oddities in recognisable patterns and are far more likely to remember negative events because they are hard wired to do so.
As hunter-gatherers (you know, in the time before writing and the invention of religion) we'd either learn to spot danger and do what we can to avoid it or have decreased chances of survival...fast forward 100(?) thousands years or so and the information revolution gave us access to numerous sources of negativity and percieved risk. Once upon a time to find a heretic you had to travel! -now you can speak with a blasphemer in under 10 seconds just go to a forum or heck, skype them!
Some people are unable to detach, disassociate or become desensitised. Often the stress is not even about real threats just amplified mass fear of awful weather, cheating in their favourite sport, injustice of what they consider their basic rights etc.
Basically like all humans, people suffer from the human condition. Humans are irrational. They are more concerned with controlling borders than traffic accidents despite traffic being the proven killer. They are more worried about terrorists than the flu and yet one kils hundreds of times more. Humans are scared their children might develop diametrically opposed beliefs if they associate with certain other kids but turn a blind eye to the negative imapcts of their own beliefs because they seldom scrutinize it...the list goes on.
Americans are not crazy but they are being driven crazy by a political system that preys on fear. News network that compete to report the latest disaster. Corporations that research their insecurities about their body and sell them shit they do not need.
Actually this happens everywhere...somehow this more pronounced in the US for reasons I'll let others suggest.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
For whatever extent you want to talk about the news itself being the cause of stress (which is fair to do), I think we have to look also look at the setup of the platforms, human nature, and the culture around social media, as likely contributing factors.
Because really, however bad the news was, 20 years ago you'd be waiting for the nightly news to find out about it. Several decades before that, you'd be waiting for the following day's newspaper. Now, we're getting constant updates, and those updates may be causing a device in your pocket to vibrate and make noise every time something new comes out. We know that checking all of those notifications is addictive, and not checking causes stress. However, constantly feeling the need to check also causes stress. (human nature)
Also, we have grown to expect that everyone is constantly online, always checking all of their platforms. Speaking for myself, I get messages via various social networks, and if I don't respond immediately, people freak out and take personal offense. Even when I try to remove those apps from my phone or turn off notifications, I get angry messages from people because I'm ignoring them. (culture)
I think it's also worth pointing out that most of these platforms are not really designed for occasional use. I've thought it would be nice if you could set a time-based digest of a social networking site. For example, instead of looking at Twitter, give me a weekly digest of the tweets that (based on some criteria) I'm going to be most likely to want to read and respond to. Only update Twitter at 9am on Sunday mornings with the 25 most important tweets of the week. But Twitter doesn't work that way. It's basically built on the idea that you're always looking, always paying attention, because if you stop paying attention for a day or two, you're just going to miss things and they'll get buried under a flood of other tweets. (the platforms)
Basically, I don't think we can do much about the human-nature aspect. Realistically, I don't foresee the platforms changing because they're providing the instant-feedback that people want. In my thinking, they key would be to change the culture and expectations around social media, which would change what we want from the platform, which would change the platform.
But then, intentionally changing culture is not so easy either.
Before Nintendo and Sega, there was Atari, Mattel and, later, Coleco. Yet, it never stopped us from playing outside. What your mother doesn't tell you is that kids stopping going outside was mostly because women became the head of the household during the 80s (instead of men), and so making sure kids were safe became the utmost priority. On the one hand, mothers said they wanted their kids to play outside, but, on the other hand it had to be in a controlled way and kids had to be watched all the time. So kids ended up preferring to stay in their rooms. Don't blame consoles or the Internet, blame mothers.