Social media has certainly altered our lives, the way we communicate and consume news. Some argue that social media has harnessed our latent narcissistic tendencies and made it OK to flaunt whatever it is we think is flaunt-worthy. There is also the strongly held view that social media is spurring us on to do stupid things; that it is in fact making us stupid.
Social influencers are people who many aspire to be and who are followed and copied by even more. What they do, others do; or at least try to do. There are yoga experts who are also social influencers. When they put up pictures of themselves in difficult yoga poses, this ‘inspires’ others to do the same. Imitation may be the best form of flattery but it could get you injured it would seem. Many followers trying to do the poses themselves find themselves injured.
A recent Queensland based study found that as many as 66 people had sustained injuries from trying to imitate social influencers performing difficult yoga poses. Several of those injuries were serious enough to land people in hospital! A previous study also showed yoga can cause pain and could also complicate existing problems. Clearly performing unsupervised yoga from looking at pictures on social media is extremely dumb; possibly dangerous. For instance, me trying to do any of those poses in the pictures posted by yoga_girl Rachel Brathen may not be the wisest thing. She is an expert. I would be wise to know that I am not; but at least some of her 2.1 million followers may not be as wise.
Consider how all the various challenges reel people in. The motherhood challenge for instance was all about the cozy club of mothers looking to share pictures of their happiness. It was also a bit about smug self-congratulation that made a lot of other people feel bad about themselves; but at least it wasn’t dangerous. There are challenges that are actually dangerous as well, the blue whale challenge, the tide pod challenge, the condom snorting challenge and more. Is this all evidence of human stupidity? Has peer pressure always made us do stupid things or has social media increased this predilection for doing things that will deem us worthy of belonging to some or other club or group? Turns out, the latter is true!
A study published in the Journal of Royal Society Interface seems to suggest as much. It isn’t just the fact of clicking on pictures of people we know, and then looking at videos of random strangers that makes it a significant waste of time. It is hardly what you may call a ‘mind-improving’ activity. Even engaging in discussions online – which could be seen mind-improving, were found not to be really so. The study found that much of what we say online is regurgitation of things we hear or read elsewhere and isn’t the product of our own analytical reasoning or critical faculties.
There is also the fact that social media is distracting. One survey found that one in six Americans admitted to bumping into someone because they were walking and using their phone at the same time. Studies have also shown how our attention span has decreased. In 2000 the average attention of 12 seconds is now reduced to just 8 seconds. Experts believe that this is largely because of ubiquitous and constant Smartphone use. The success of fake news and the way that our own confirmation biases are used for various purposes is evidence of our willingness to believe things without engaging our critical faculties.
Even Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is of the view that social media makes us stupid. He cites the fact that social media was a large part of why Donald Trump got elected, as evidence of this fact. Furthermore he believes that the quality of information available on social media is of a low quality. It isolates people, reinforces dangerous believes, lowers people’s ability to be open minded and to respect the truth.
Twitter being a big part of the problem, Williams clearly knows what he is talking about. So are we doomed to a future populated with more stupid people? The answer is rather scary!
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
