Written by Chloe Nadal
Edited by Aarohi Salaria
Amidst the ever-growing digital age of information consumption, it seems that currency has been replaced by attention. As a matter of fact, we have been consuming such items from a young age—whether or not it was conscious.
Overstimulation is defined as stimulating physiologically or mentally to an excessive degree, and it has become a new normal in our modern-day society, for it is masked as productivity. This mirage may result in us intaking information at a rapid pace, thus leading to overstimulation. Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California Irvine, suggests that our mass-consumption replaces challenging tasks with equally time consuming engagements, such as endless scrolling on social media, or perhaps interacting with multiple notifications from various apps. As Mark notes, rote activity, or the constant engagement of one’s mind, occurs more frequently “when [people] are online” rather than in reality. With the consistency of engagement being the new norm rather than a healthy dose of both engagement and challenging tasks, we are forced to indulge in non-substantial activities, often leaving us in states of stress, anxiety, or confusion.
Of course, this isn’t the only concern amongst experts. Time elusiveness seems to be another symptom of a much larger issue, especially with that of the attention deficit within modern-day society being quite prevalent. The perception of time seems to evade many with the consistent use of technology, specifically in regards to the dopamine stimulation it provides. As with any drug, social media is amongst the biggest; mainly due to the seemingly non-problematic and generally harmless euphoria it provides. Presumably, there are 4.8 billion users that are currently logged into various social media platforms—Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat, and “X” among them. That would make 4.8 billion individuals, or 410,000 new users each day, 4.7 users every second, susceptible to a cognitive phenomenon that trades temporary rhapsody for reality.
We are no stranger to the effects of social media or the internet as a whole; that much has been established throughout the years—perhaps with school-mandated assemblies in the auditorium or a nonprofit speaker in the classroom. However, it seems that the thing broadly left out of these conversations is the excess of information being shoveled into our brains that prevents us from this level of focus. In fact, the amount of information we are fed corresponds as a type of multitasking, one that quickly overwhelms us and heightens ailments such as anxiety. A 2022 study in Shanghai, China, found that 43% percent of 644 participants experienced information strain and anxiousness about the Omicron variant based on a sensory overload that social media provided.
In other words? We’re eating more than we can fully digest.
Let’s set the scene: it’s a Friday night, you’ve stayed up until three in the morning scrolling on your phone, keenly aware yet unconscious about the passage of time. A variety of colors, soundbites, and amusing comments from whichever platform you’re on keep you occupied for the following hours. Next thing you know, the sun is out and it’s already morning.
The time elusiveness that we are quickly succumbing to cannot be understated, especially when we are filling the vacuum of time, which is already quite subjective and sparse, with engagement rather than promoting development. Mark recants esteemed psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s definition of flow as an “optimal state of attention” in which the amount of time spent on something doesn’t seem to matter, with the favorable except that we’re using “the optimal amount of challenge of our skills”. In other words, if your time isn’t being expended in a way that benefits you personally, then it is ultimately useless.
This isn’t to say that social media breaks shouldn’t be taken, though. Burnout from various tasks isn’t exactly beneficial, either.
Detriments aside, the very reasonable question of where our attention currency is going can be answered in a matter of ways. On one hand, the attention you expend can benefit the numerous content-creators that struggle against flawed algorithms (see: past Tik Tok controversies pertaining to such). On the other, the amount of time spent on a platform is indicative of how much revenue is made. A study from Harvard last year found a correlation between youth users and ad revenue, in which various social media platforms were found to be collectively generating around $11 billion from the engagement of users 18 and under alone.
With Youtube and Tiktok being the most notorious, this calls into question the validity of the transparency users are promised. More than this, though, the reliance of users as a source of income exemplifies the attention economy we, as a society, have become so entrenched in.
In the face of such a bittersweet conclusion, finding even a semblance of comfort becomes crucial. As science-fiction author Frank Herbert once said, 'time could be made to serve the mind', standing as a reminder that we have the power to shape our habits, no matter how chaotic they may appear. As such, we should strive for control and balance, acknowledging the disarray within our lives; before we're swept away by the haze and plethora of stimulation we’re surrounded by.
Citations
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Social Media Platforms Generate Billions in Annual Ad Revenue from U.S. Youth." Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, 2023, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/social-media-platforms-generate-billions-in-annual-ad-revenue-from-u-s-youth/.
American Psychological Association. "Speaking of Psychology: Why our attention spans are shrinking, with Gloria Mark, PHD." Speaking of Psychology, APA, 2023, https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans.
Wang, Yangyang, Xu, Jian & Xie, Tian. "Social Media Overload and Anxiety Among University Students During the COVID-19 Omicron Wave Lockdown: A Cross-Sectional Study in Shanghai, China, 2022." Int J Public Health, National Library of Medicine, 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9870878/.
University of Maine. "Social Media Statistics Details." University of Maine, 2022, https://umaine.edu/undiscoveredmaine/small-business/resources/marketing-for-small-business/social-media-tools/social-media-statistics-details/.
Kommentare