The world’s changed so much since I was a kid, it’s hard to even quantify it the same any two times I think about it. No single part more than the internet, to the best of my recollection.
When I was a kid in the 90s, the internet was a full blown thing, certainly, but not like today. In 1995 there were about 16 million users worldwide; by 2000 that had jumped to some 361 million [1]. Today? 5.64 billion, give or take. 68% (plus or minus 1 percent) of the world’s population.
And with all new frontiers, comes new monsters; Throughout the years, I’ve witnessed Social Media go from a harmless platform of creative self expression (thinking about learning html to customize my MySpace page) to the real deal pandemic we’re witnessing now.
In the early days, you could—and in some cases had to—send your tweet via SMS (introduced March 2006) [2]. Facebook likewise supported posting via SMS starting in 2008 [3]. Now, according to Internet Live Stats, approximately 347,000 tweets flood the platform formally known as Twitter every minute [4]. That is a lot of activity. To put that into perspective, if it takes you four (4) seconds to open your phone and then open X, there’s 23,000 extra tweets to view between the second you decided to open the app and the second you got it open.
Our problem now is it’s no longer a community. It’s a petri dish of spam and hate. Toxic discourse being internalized by our species, propagated by a “profit for outrage” model fueled by millions and millions and millions of dollars in ad revenue [5]. You open your social media and you’re inundated with vitriol and negativity. How broke you are, how unhealthy you are, how fat you are, if you’re not fat-how bad of a person you are if you don’t want to be fat, how doomed the country is, how doomed the planet is, how useless it is to aspire to anything because you’re trapped, and on and on. How can anybody…anybody realistically expect to maintain happiness in the face of every reason you’re not good enough, every time you open your phone?
I understand how it happened. I am both inside and outside this issue. I am perpetually online, like everybody else is. My cash flow depends on it, as many business owners do. Yet I have gone out of my way to insulate myself from social media, often at the cost of less revenue. I could have made a lot of money by joining the fray, by capitalizing on the discourse, the viral moments, etc. I just did not think it was worth it and I still believe it.
I read a long time ago (and when I remember who the original author that I read is, I’ll come back and cite them) that social media platforms deploy the same method that slot machines run on, where the addiction to it is driven not by the wins, but the losses. The unpredictability of the wins (likes, retweets, etc.) is what causes the dopamine surges in the brain like playing a one armed bandit. The thought that the next scroll, that next share might be the next big hit being equivalent to gambling non-stop just in case you hit the jackpot. You’re not hooked by the winning because you’re not really winning much, if at all. The rush is fleeting but, so what? You can just keep clicking. While I was thinking about this post and looking for the original source, I found out this is called a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule [6], or put another way, the brain’s rush from unpredictable rewards. Like a slot machine.
To make it worse, The Bandwagon Effect [7] has turned into social currency. “I was there when so and so got dragged”. People hiding behind an internet connection, getting a dopamine rush every time a notification alerts on their phone, because they piled on a complete stranger and the net effect to their life? No more than the rush a junkie gets from that $10 hit of crack, if not much less. Bills are still due. Still have a work shift to be on time for. Outside’s still as expensive as it was the day before. I just don’t understand it.
Insulated, but watching from a distance
Like I said, I’m both inside this issue and outside this issue. I’ve insulated myself from social media by opting out of a meaningful presence online for years, but I hear the conversations; They permeate my daily life via those around me. In fact, I used to date a woman that was incapable of avoiding the viral topics, literally insistent that we discuss, even though she knew I did not want to discuss them. I had an active warrant and six maxed out credit cards, I did not care if it offended her or anybody else (read: twitter) that Scarlett Johannsen was cast Ghost in the Shell (note: at the time, my position was the owner of the movie rights bought the right to make that decision. Such is life.); I had real problems, baby, them topics are simply not relevant to real life. Strangers criticizing other strangers for HYPOTHETICALLY not washing their legs (yes, hypothetically because how can you know how somebody bathes any more than they can know how you bathe. And just because you claimed it online, doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth). Thoughts on Romphims, whether US Polo Assn is socially deemed okay to wear or not, and the list goes on for a long time. I don’t pay attention to social media now, but I’m sure this pattern has not changed. I understand talking about something amongst your peers, but making real life changes over the uncorroborated statements of strangers online? That’s insane. I just didn’t care what social media thought about anything…but I didn’t understand why it mattered either.
All that to say it’s a strange and confusing addiction. Crack seems more straight forward and, I wonder, if that much more mentally or emotionally harmful (talk not of physical, Americans treat our bodies like amusement parks). In over three decades, I’ve never once heard of a crack addict committing suicide. I’ve heard of so many social media related suicides, I’ve lost count. I’m not saying the former hasn’t happened, but comparatively, not a lot. In fact, I would literally bet money that it’s probably something like 1 in 5,000. As a matter of due diligence for this blog, I will email some experts to confirm, but I’d be truly, truly shocked if I’m not in the ballpark.
I understand why it’s considered an addiction, but it is the most accessible and convenient addiction I’ve ever heard of. I hate the talking point of politicians saying THEY should be the ones who should limit access for the general populations well-being but I can’t help but wonder if it’s true. Is this a thing that is too accessible? You need no money, no logistical arrangements of any kind, no assistance from anybody else to develop this problem and yet, it is the easiest (practically speaking) to stop. No shakes and cold sweats, no debts owed because you took loans, no pressure because you’re late on your bills, none of the horror side-effects of any of the “traditional” (read: old school) addictions. And the upside? The output? The literal real life return from your ever decreasing life minutes and hours you’ve put in? Gambling addictions might actually pay a little money out now and then. Drug addictions give a specific feeling and effect. Sex addictions don’t need explaining. Social media addiction??? It’s words on a screen. That’s it.
I remember my then-girlfriend mentioning a video about a particular body wash, where the person in the video (a stranger) said the body wash’s ingredients were actually damaging your skin. She immediately decided to stop using it. She was not the only one that reacted like this. Many many many people in the comments said the same thing.
I responded baby, that’s a stranger taking a video in their bathroom? You’ve been using that body wash for years. We’ve been using it together, I washed you with it myself yesterday! You’re just gonna change because some random person made a video, no questions asked? In her defense, it did occur to her how illogical that response to a twitter video was, but the point is not her specifically, the point is that multiple people, an amount reasonably considered a lot in this context, reacted to the maker of that video as if they were a credentialed expert. Proof it really mattered right in my face, live and direct. DONE! That person said it and viewers absorbed it. LIFE CHANGED over what was maybe a 45 second video?
How does that make sense? How can a group of strangers online, and more specifically a stream of curated content from a group of strangers online, rise to the point in a person’s life where they are making life decision to accommodate faceless nobodies? Bots, burner accounts, straight up pretenders?
I understand how algorithms work. The platforms have designed the user experience to funnel users into insulated echo chambers (read: echo rabbit holes) that go deeper and deeper, feeding users more and more extreme versions of the exact content that had already caused that dopamine surge [8]. Get deep enough and naturally, it becomes psychologically uncomfortable to be one of the few dissenters. It’s not because you’re alone in your dissent, but it’s because you’re alone in that specific echo chamber. In fact, it could be risky. Speak against the algorithm-matched and provided peers and end up doxxed, receiving death threats, fired from your job, even stalked and a victim of violence. For what? Some kind of net positive? Not in the slightest.
Of course it has a chilling effect. It becomes a binary option, agree with the masses in THIS echo chamber or stay quiet [9]. Otherwise, face the consequences of a witchhunt (that’s how that term’s used by the way) because dissent online often equates to being the enemy. And the enemy has to go by whatever means possible. So what happens in the middle of that binary? This self-censorship out of caution, avoidance of the hassle of having 100 000 strangers blowing your phone up for simply disagreeing… what’s the end result? The middle ground disappears and you’re only left with tribalism, one extreme against the other. Us vs them. Deeply polarized, no matter what the topic, based on how people think strangers view them, and how they want strangers to view them and to the best of my understanding: For vanity, maybe? Or ego? Want of feeling authority? Want of feeling superior? I’ll email some psychology professors this article to see if they can explain this to me in layman terms, but for the time being, we’re talking about people who have self-selected into their “ideal” communities and I assume it’s “Fear or revere me, but please think I’m special” [10a][10b].
On platforms designed specifically to reward viral moments, hostility and misinformation are a pandemic online, and public trust has been destroyed in the process [11]. We need only look at the general sentiment of elections to know that social media has forever damaged the US population at the very least, if not the entire human species. I don’t see how it can be fixed.
It’s systemic if not permanent. Platforms have given half-assed promises, and done nowhere near enough. Current estimates say up to 50 % of X (formerly known as Twitter) is bots [12], [13]. Certainly you can feel and see the proof when you’re scrolling. Influencers go viral and stay viral on purpose, because the ad revenue is the only thing that truly matters to the back office. Why wouldn’t it be? It keeps the lights on. Meanwhile, young girls are inundated with impossibly pretty influencers reminding them (subtle and silently) that they’re not as pretty as they should feel [14], and anxious young men, too intimidated to socialize offline, stew and vent imagined grievances, reinforced by constant validation by, you guessed it, other anxious isolated strangers [15]. I’d look up a teen depression statistic but there’s no possible way in the United States of America you could accurately quantify how many social media addicted young people are currently wearing full blown mental health issues. Not in a country where Urgent Care is $200 a visit if you don’t have insurance. According to stats on the NIH.gov site, in ’05 8.7% of teenagers experienced depression. 2019 (pre-pandemic)? Basically doubled. 2021? 20% of teenagers.
The damage is carved deep into our collective psyche. Self esteem, confidence, social skills, community, it’s all been diminished within the dimensions of a phone screen. Millions of people whose entire social lives hinge on internet connections—disconnect the wifi and they’d lose their world.
Imagine This
The next breach: Twitter’s entire user database goes public. Every troll and burner account exposed, forced to own the slurs they hurled under the cloak of anonymity. How many lives would shatter when usernames map to real identities? How many “influential” critics are actually frauds—or worse, using their platforms to orchestrate illicit schemes? What if people found out their idols, their favorite social media profiles, were actually, ohhh let’s say for example, a China based click farm? The people they read and reread every social post from? What if that trading guru turned out to be a fast food worker? What if 95 % were AI bots? How many lies would immediately be evident? Would it make a difference? Would more people all of a sudden go outside? It’s hard to imagine from either direction.
Closing Note
This is my first post on my blog. You can refer to me as simply, S. While I generally believe and as a matter of policy, do stand behind everything I say and do, in this case I’ve decided to stay anonymous. Not out of fear of any consequences from the mob that may or may not one day take issue with something I write, but because we’re in a world where people find it easier to attack the speaker than acknowledge the message. I’d rather you be forced to acknowledge the message for lack of myself as a target. (Post about this coming in the future)
This is my blog, Scriptum Contra (latin: writing against), and I chose specifically to write because reading as a life skill is getting less and less common, and those that read I believe are the middle that are getting drowned out by those that only absorb info in short format social media clips.
As a matter of transparency, my writing process is simple. I’ll form an idea, often over a very long stretch of time, and research/deep read on the parts of the idea that I don’t already understand. Often times I’ll spend time talking to people who have expert knowledge on the topic. Other times I’ll read published papers, or similar in an effort to understand where my baseline is at. Step one is “Do I even understand my own view? Am I missing something that would change my opinion?” I will then, typically, email several notable experts on the topic and, if they choose to reply on the record, I will edit this post and include their thoughts whether they are for or against my views, whether they want to add anything specific, if I asked a specific question and got an answer, etcetera and so on. AI does not write for me, ever. If I use AI at all, it’s to confirm cited statistics.
For the record, a cool rock over cool stick and it’s not even a close debate. A cool stick will make your week. A cool rock is FOREVER.
References
[1] Internet World Stats, “Usage and Population Statistics,” https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).[2] R. Williams, “Twitter SMS Support Launch,” Twitter Blog, Mar. 13 2006. [Online]. Available: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/product/2006/twitter-sms (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
[3] M. Zuckerberg, “Introducing Facebook Messages,” Facebook Newsroom, Apr. 2008. [Online]. Available: https://about.fb.com/news/2008/04/introducing-facebook-messages/ (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
[4] Internet Live Stats, “Twitter Statistics,” https://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/ (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
[5] Z. Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Yale Univ. Press, 2018.
[6] A. Masur, “How Reward Schedules Influence Social Media Use,” J. Behav. Addictions, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 240–252, 2020.
[7] Wikipedia, “Bandwagon Effect,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
[8] E. Bakshy, S. Messing, and L. A. Adamic, “Exposure to Ideologically Diverse News and Opinion on Facebook,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, vol. 112, no. 14, pp. 13372–13377, Apr. 2015.
[9] Wikipedia, “Chilling Effect (law),” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect_(law) (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
[10a] C. R. Sunstein, Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide. Oxford Univ. Press, 2009.
[10b] Revolver [Film], directed by G. Ritchie; written by G. Ritchie and L. Besson; EuropaCorp and Isle of Man Film; 2005.
[11] Edelman, “2025 Edelman Trust Barometer,” https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025-trust-barometer (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
[12] N. Varol et al., “Online Human–Bot Interactions: Detection, Estimation, and Characterization,” in Proc. Int. AAAI Conf. Web Soc. Media, 2017, pp. 280–289.
[13] “Twitter Bot Estimates Vary Widely,” Wired, May 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-bot-estimates/ (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
[14] L. A. Fardouly et al., “Social Media and Body Image Disturbance,” JAMA Pediatr., vol. 174, no. 12, pp. 1180–1186, Dec. 2020.
[15] Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media & Technology,” Apr. 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/teens-social-media-technology-2021/ (accessed Jun. 21, 2025).
