A Gen Z Perspective on Digital Dependency

You have grown accustomed to feeling foggy and unfocused. Movies take too much time and attention to watch, and reading takes way too much willpower for something that is supposed to be a relaxing activity. A walk outside needs to be accompanied by music blasting in your airpods, and meals are spent staring at a screen until the plate is empty and you can get on with your day. Hours, days, months slip away as you pour yourself into the internet in hopes of escaping the mundane world, where time moves too slowly and everyone has bags under their eyes. You are fully plugged in, not so much a living breathing organism rather a node in a network; a location in the web where information comes to visit before vanishing into the digital abyss. Your brain is not an ultra-powerful supercomputer capable of transforming the world around you but rather a toy which men and women earning six digit salaries can play with, pressing buttons and turning on lights and switches that make you want one thing. More.

That was fun to read and might have made you nice and depressed. A bit bleak? Yes. But if you think that description completely misses the mark then be my guest and stop reading now. It’s ok, really. There are plenty of activities better worth your while: your muscle memory will probably take the wheel and autopilot you to some content on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, or Twitter. Trust me, you’ll remember everything you see today and ten to twenty years from now your brain will swell to twice the size thanks to decades of gathering extremely useful content about completely random things that you learned from some guy sitting in his basement. You know what? You don’t even have to pick what you want to consume today. Sit still with your phone on your lap for more than 30 seconds and let that little mind portal decide for you.

If you made it this far, congratulations. You are a master of your own universe and like Yoda wielding a lightsaber or Harry Potter holding his wand, you are gripping your phone like the tool it is: the omniscient friend that you will harness to fight evil and save the day or whatever it is Yoda and Harry are trying to do. But… sorry, not quite. You’re not getting away that easily. Your phone can do some pretty incredible things and wishing your grandma a happy birthday from halfway across the world brought tears to your eyes yesterday. That being said, you’re not the top in this relationship. That thing has you in a headlock and you just let it happen because you can’t imagine life alone. So you keep it perpetually in arms reach, sitting in a pocket inches away from your junk, and allow it to swallow a quarter of your waking life. Yup, this is what we’re talking about today, hope you enjoy my TED talk.

It’s annoying when people claim the moral high ground and preach about how they are “too mature for TikTok”, since it’s a silly app for silly babies. So, I’ll save you some grief and instead articulate why I think TikTok culture (I say culture since nowadays every other app has the same addictive short-form content functionalities) is so ingeniously parasitic. In the real world, self-identity is a capricious thing and in a constant state of flux. For a lot of us, especially young people, we are constantly seeking approval from society and in the most paradoxical way we convince ourselves that we can simultaneously fit in and still proudly be our individualistic selves. In a perfect world, through meaningful connections and a wealth of tangible experiences, we become secure with who we are thanks to a supportive cast of friends, family, and coworkers who keep our egos in check but also appreciate us for our quirks, talents, and compassion. Now, imagine creating a free product in which everyone and their mother can bypass the treacherous journey to self actualization and arrive directly at the doorstep of celebritydom. On TikTok, all those character checks go directly to shit. A research article by Kumar and Prabha does a beautiful job of explaining this phenomenon.

All too soon, the self-identity of a particular individual in the artificial virtual environment becomes the collection of celebrated virtual moments. It can be argued that someone’s 15 seconds of fame on TikTok is more likely due to the algorithm that arbitrarily chose them than whatever content was produced in the first place. Essentially, really clever people figured out that they could make a lot of money by getting the entire world literally addicted to pretending they are the center of attention. Gone are the days where media executives sit in skyscrapers and try to sell you Marilyn Monroe. These days, they sell you yourself.

Every single design aspect of the most used apps on your phone have been geared to profit from making your brain light up like a Christmas tree. I certainly won’t be the first to compare social media platforms to a casino, but I’m feeling extra cynical today so let’s do it anyway. Here are a couple analogies to sit on. The “pull-down” feature which loads new content is a slot machine promising you exactly what you want every time, distracting you from the price you repeatedly pay (your time, data, ad revenue, and subliminal messaging). The endless scrolling mechanic in which there is miraculously always more content in your feed without any natural end points is like being in a casino with no windows and lots of flashy lights so you can lose yourself for hours in an endless cycle of pleasure stimulus. Just as the “one armed bandits” known as slot machines are constantly being updated and fitted with ever flashier technology and all the bells and whistles to distract the gambler from the reality of their odds of winning, the dynamic and enticing nature of social media design keeps users from realizing that the longer they spend on the app, the more user data is being collected and the more advertisements they have been exposed to. None of these apps are truly free, and even if you are someone who hates ads with a burning passion, your subconscious brain still eats them up, whether you like it or not. Now, consider the fact that you are living in this casino, and you can’t even go to the bathroom without walking past incredibly flamboyant displays that know every possible trigger to get you to say, “ok, but only for a few minutes!”. Any time you are bored, all you have to do is walk over and plop yourself down at some game and turn your mind off. Before you know it, an oversized chunk of your life is spent running through the addictive habit, and you are less and less motivated to pursue living outside the comfort of the casino walls. After all, the world outside is far too bleak and slow, and real interactions are too awkward. Ask yourself, do we really want to consume whatever content is on social media right now? On some level we must understand that it can’t be too worthwhile or great for us, but, like clockwork, any downtime we have our phones are open in our palms before we can even think.

Dopamine (which doesn’t itself make you feel good, but rather compels you to pursue what feels good based on prior experience) is your phone’s favorite neurochemical. We’ve all heard this story a thousand times, but think about all of the gimmicks and features that subtly trump your free will — likes, notifications, “unread messages”, “seen” receipts, the three dots in your text messages that keep you from putting your phone down because you just need to see what they have to say. Very quickly, if you own any sort of smartphone, your brain begins to create subconscious shortcuts in which you fill gaps of boredom or anxiety with impulsive phone checking behavior. Not only does this undermine our ability to exist in the present and cope with discomfort in a healthy way, but compulsive phone use (which is the norm for just about everyone in my generation, including me) deteriorates our attention spans and poses a legitimate threat to our long-term neurocircuitry and ability to sustain focus over longer periods of time. You don’t have to have a PhD in neuroscience to see a vicious cycle of dependence forming here. This isn’t something we were taught in health class after the drug unit, but you wouldn’t be incorrect to group these behaviors in the same bucket. Still think you’re in control?

Most of us already know pretty much all of this stuff I’m telling you. Maybe I gave you a small perspective shift if I did a really good job, but for the most part we all understand on some level that we spend a chunk of our lives more or less zombified. But addictions can be overcome, right? And you’ve gone a day or two without your phone before and past some minor withdrawals you were pretty ok. In fact, it might have felt refreshing and kind of good. Maybe you went camping, or just dropped it in a river by accident. But why do we all find ourselves back here, every time? The answer is simple and obvious. If you choose to drop out of the world of digital dependency, you lose. Good luck getting a job without applying online. Want to date, or meet new people who share your hobbies? Feel out of touch with the new fashion trends or memes? Starting a business, and need to promote it? Anyone walking through SoHo can tell immediately which restaurants have been featured on TikTok because there are lines wrapping around the block. There’s a place 2 minutes away with a near identical menu, but nobody is checking it out because they need to get their hands on the newest food fad they saw on their phone. Doing everything in your power to go viral is a business decision.

I am not saying that everything about the digital revolution is dangerous or bad. I simply want to call attention to the big-picture changes that we would often rather choose to be oblivious to, because the truth is inconvenient and uncomfortable. It’s easy to feel that there is no overall good or bad agenda that dictates the direction of the future, just what makes money and gains attention. Most news and entertainment media capitalizes on the general public’s myopic view of reality. Every day is something new, packaged and fed to us in bite-sized pieces with just enough information for us to relay one-sentence summaries to each other as topics useful for small talk. Why do we have so many conspiracy theorists right now? It’s because most people only receive small tidbits of information, likely in headlines, and there is so much lacking context that needs to be filled in. With so much skepticism relating to what’s real and what isn’t, the existence of something as real as a worldwide pandemic that has taken millions of lives becomes grounds for dispute. Americans rarely watch full interviews, we prefer clips of the most controversial parts where the interviewee is caught out of context. Most of the content that the 24 hour news cycle pushes out is negative and relies on shock value, and most of the content that our brains tell us is “useful information” on sites like YouTube and Facebook is about as real as a burger in a McDonald’s commercial. These days, even the sharpest minds and the most critical thinkers are disarmed by the onslaught of conflicting information.

In a time where a moment is not real unless it is posted for others to see, and love for another person is not cemented unless the relationship is “Instagram official”, we must reconsider what brings meaning to our lives. The digital age doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. As residents of the future, it is our responsibility to understand that the circumstances we find ourselves in at the moment are not ultimate or ideal. As we move forward we have to be literate in the multiple ways in which we are susceptible to manipulation and misinformation as well as protect ourselves by leading lifestyles that keep us grounded in the real world and appreciative of genuine moments that can exist completely outside of cyberspace. I challenge myself and others to consciously stop ourselves from being under the control of the technology we bring into our lives, because the only other option strips us of all of our power as human beings.

Cited Article:

Kumar V D, Prabha M S. Getting glued to TikTok® — Undermining the psychology behind widespread inclination toward dub-mashed videos. Arch Ment Health 2019;20:76–7

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