Producer Diana Martin’s Smartphones: The Dark Side explores the reasons behind what makes social media and technology so addictive. By Team Viva
From posting our personal achievements to flaunting our latest vacation pictures, it has all been out there on social media. And due to the instant notifications technology, we’re on the constant lookout for likes and comments on our posts. It has become as though a part of our body, which is very crucial for our existence. Just for an hour, if the servers go down, it becomes headline news and could even act as a ‘career lost’ scenario to numerous “influencers” and “bloggers” out there.
However, ever wondered why this madness? This addiction is one such aspect that BBC special and producer Diana Martin’s film Smartphones: The Dark Side explores.
How did the idea come into being?
There had already been a lot of focus in the media about data and how the big tech companies were monetising our data and using it in ways that we were completely unaware of. But we felt there was another big question around social media — how addictive was it? And could social media companies and phone companies be exploiting the habit forming nature of social media to get us hooked? All of us on the production team use smartphones and other devices and are well aware of the benefits — but we were also acutely aware of how much time we were spending on these devices. Two of us had children, teenage or younger, and were frustrated by the amount of time they were spending on their devices. How much screen time should we allow them was a constant worry. So we wanted to know — are these applications addictive — and are the tech companies that develop and promote them aware of this? We wanted to speak to insiders who had worked for the social media companies to understand to what degree the companies had been aware of the potentially addictive nature of these technologies.
What are the reasons people are increasingly getting addicted to their gadgets and can’t do without them for more than a few minutes?
We spoke to several scientists and read many scientific reports. The jury is still doubtful on whether social media or smartphones are actually addictive. Some scientists say that they are not addictive in the way like heroin or tobacco, but are merely habit-forming. Others say it is an addiction. One clinician we spoke to, Mandy Saligari of Charter Harley Street, said, ‘Giving your child a smartphone was tantamount to giving them cocaine.’ Whether you think it’s habit-forming or addictive, we are all aware how we are drawn to our smartphones and social media apps. We have spoken to many tech insiders in the film who had worked for some of the biggest tech and social media companies who now had some regrets about the habit-forming power of their technologies. Two people we spoke to who had both worked for Facebook, told us they no longer used it because they were worried about its impact on them.
They believed that the reasons we feel we can’t do without our gadgets is because the technology within them has been deliberately designed to hook us. The like button, the endless scroll, even the colours and sounds you see and hear, are deliberately designed to keep us coming back.
Ramsay Brown, an app developer with a background in neurosciences, explained to us that our behaviour is driven by dopamine, a brain chemical central to the cycle of reward, motivation and addiction. A social media click gives us a little hit of dopamine and we keep going back for more.
What are the various impacts of social media on our psychological health? How do ‘likes’ impact self-confidence levels?
Some doctors and psychologists believe that the prevalence of social media is like having a detrimental impact on mental health — particularly young people’s. First, because it can be habit-forming and therefore take them away from other activities like exercise, school work, spending time with friends and families. Second, because it can negatively affect our self-esteem. And finally, because it is an additional opportunity for bullying and hate.
Leah Perlman, who worked as a product manager at Facebook until 2011 and was one of the team members at Facebook, helped developed the like button. She no longer works at Facebook. She has described her concern about how the like button fed her own insecurities and affected her self-esteem. She has given up Facebook now.
This doesn’t mean it has a negative effect on all of us. For many of us, social media is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family and to share ideas, and many of us are able to keep our use of social media under control.
What measures would you suggest to reduce phone use and addiction to different gadgets and websites?
I’m not really here to tell people to reduce their phone use. However, I hope our film gives people a bit more understanding about how certain aspects of social media and smartphone technology have been developed apparently deliberately to keep us on our screens as much as possible. And armed with that knowledge, people will make the right decision for themselves about whether they want to reduce their or their children’s screen time.
Do you think social media giants and app-owners are deliberately inventing habit-forming technologies to get people hooked?
Certainly, social media companies and tech giants are creating technologies designed to keep people on their apps or devices. In a way, it’s understandable — all companies try to promote their goods and services as much as possible to make them attractive to their market. But this film showed that in a sophisticated and deliberate way they did develop technologies — the like button, the endless scroll, all the colours, and bells, and notifications — that will hook us. The founding president of Facebook, Sean Parker, effectively admitted this at a conference in 2017, he said, ‘Building these applications was all about — how do we consume as much of your time as possible? You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.’
Do you think people form an opinion of themselves or their self-worth through their social media profiles?
Certainly, some people do. And teenagers can be particularly vulnerable to this. We spoke to one parent, Lucy Alexander, whose teenage son, Felix had tragically killed himself — after being bullied on social media. Of course, as with any suicide it’s impossible to state this was the cause of his suicide — but his mother describes how even after she took him out of the school where he was being tormented by bullies, the bullying continued online. She now regularly visits schools and gives talks about the dangers of bullying on social media.
What do you think is the future of smartphone and social media use? You can answer in both positive and negative terms.
I think smartphones have changed our worlds in an enormously positive way — they have made it much easier for most of us to do our jobs; much easier to access information about anything. They’ve been brilliant for education and the sharing of ideas. It’s much easier to do business and pay for things. And it’s much much easier to keep in touch with friends and families. There are thousands of other benefits I can’t go into. And I imagine in the future these benefits will multiply. But as with any new technology there’s a danger that unforeseen problems will emerge. Our role as journalist is to consider the pros and cons — and make people aware of the possible dangers, and to make government aware of the need to ensure new technologies are sufficiently regulated to protect consumers from the potential dark sides.
(Smartphones: The Dark Side premieres on August 31 at 9 pm on Sony BBC Earth.)