IT is a new year and there have been lots of stories making the rounds, some palatable and pleasant to the heart, and others very unusual, spirit crippling and bizarre, with the unusual and negative stories fast becoming the trend in the society featuring some twisted persons with warped and distorted views of reality. However, the news of a young girl who ended her life after many failed attempts to get enough “likes” on her uploaded photos on social media has been the most profoundly affective and disturbing for me since the beginning of the new year. According to the report, Chloe Davison, 19, was an aspiring model who relied on social media to feel good about herself, hence the feeling of not being good enough unless she was getting loads of likes and comments. But, pray, how could someone take her own life for not getting enough Instagram likes? To be sure, Chloe is just but one of the many astounding statistics of how perilous the use of social media has become in recent times and a compelling reminder that social media addiction continues to be a disease that requires more attention than it’s getting in our society.
Clearly, what social media platforms do to the society, especially those of us who are heavy users, is not natural, or normal. Let’s face it: it’s abnormal to submit opinions for approval every day to an online crowd, much as it is also to want to consume the opinions of strangers as a necessity. It’s hardly ever even normal to live under the surveillance of tech firms, which tailor their advertising with the level of accuracy that it seems impossible that they are not listening in on our daily conversations. Besides, how is it even normal to wake up in the night to use social media, or to spend roughly every waking hours on it, returning again and again to it even with the possibility of its making us feel depressed and alone? None of these behaviours were normal a few decades ago, nor are they especially useful to us today, but they’re the new normal practice by billions of people across the world. FOMO, for instance, is an acronym designed by Author Patrick J. McGinnis, to explain this phenomenon better.
FOMO (fear of missing out) relates to a feeling that friends and connections are leading more interesting and rewarding lives, creating a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing online. McGinnis posits that many people day by day develop anxiety when social media is not accessible to them, leading to some level of mental illnesses ranging from depression to anxiety and so on. Although the origin of FOMO may vary from one person to another, it is often a result of a deficit in psychological need, such as social connection. Studies are also in tandem with the conclusion that the fear of missing out drives social media addiction,— a situation that could be worsened by the constant pop ups and notifications that continually remind us we are being left behind in the unceasing digital but apparently unhealthy connections that have come to define life now. .
Nonetheless, we must note that the addiction to social media by many members of our society is real, and that it leaves victims feeling depressed, disconnected and alone with a shallow and distorted view of reality. From Facebook to Instagram, Snapchat and so on, many, and millennials especially, have come to depend on these platforms for validation and reassurance. And when the ridiculously high and unrealistic standards set on them are not met, self-loathing and bullying crawl in. Then again, it’s becoming more and more obvious how the pressures of social media disproportionately affect women and girls. We see it all around us. The pressure to be perfect. To look perfect, act perfect, have the perfect body, have the perfect group of friends, and the perfect amount of likes on Instagram and the rest of the social media platforms. The status conferral function of the social media has users like Chloe relying on it for relevance. In this case, the number of likes, views and comments they’re able to garner on each posts is the holy grail.
By and large, social media, despite being responsible for numerous deaths already, has become part of our daily life, and to think that we would take that major decision to tick it off like we would normally dispose our trash is no better than a joke. Our lives are so abnormally tied around it that any resulting regulation must focus on living healthily with social media, rather than abandoning it altogether – even for children and young adults. We’re all cyborgs now: we outsource our emotions, our relationships and our working lives to the internet as succinctly stated by Roisin Kiberd. Which is why we must come to the realization that we need to work out how to use the social media without suffering all of its negative attributes particularly the addiction that it generates. This is the sense in which there have been many calls to regulate social media and its use, but the government still hasn’t decided on the most effective way to do this especially in relation to the Big Techs. However, we are at an opportune moment with many now realizing and talking about the deleterious effect of social media – we have the chance to rethink the basic rules of how the Internet or social media in particular is used in the light of its compounding implications.
Even with social media, a better future for all is still possible especially as it has its own merits when used properly. Hence, governments and ultimately citizens could all work to improve the world and save more lives especially in relation to our social media consumption going forward. In this regard, as individuals, it would seem we have a simple task here, —to start managing the screen time and social media usage for ourselves and our families and teaching everybody about the value and limitations of online activities and engagements coupled with introducing occasional social media detox into our lives. On the other hand, government and other appropriate authorities have to step up to encourage social media companies to define and periodically update content standards and enforcement guidelines.
- Yakubu is of the Department of Mass Communication, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria.
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