Karl Marx, who was no fan of organized religion, saw it as functioning similarly to opium for the injured or sick person. While it reduced painful suffering and provided a sense of peace and comfort, it also numbed them metaphorically to the oppressive class structures around them and, thus, inhibited their engagement in social change efforts to improve their circumstances.
Marx’s generalization, while an overstatement, still has kernels of truth.
The current forms of opium of the people, just as addictive and dangerous in moderate to large quantities, are cellular phones and other types of social technologies. They numb the senses with or without headphones or earbuds by transporting the mind to virtual realities in galaxies far far away.
In our so-called “information technological age,” these same technologies fail to provide the information people required to develop skills in effectively sustaining human relationships.
In what I refer to as “the Los Angelisification of America,” people are driving solo down long and complex internet and social media superhighways in and through impersonal mega cyber cities at speeds so fast and virtual as to make real communication impossible.
Metaphorically, few people walk down sidewalks waving and chatting with passersby or dropping in for a comforting get-together.
Like actual opium and other narcotics, social media users continually need greater and greater amounts to get their addictive “high.”
The organization, Addiction Center, classifies social media addiction as a form of non-substance “behavior addiction,” like gambling. While not all users develop to the same addictive degrees:
[It] is characterized as being overly concerned about social media, driven by an uncontrollable urge to log on to or use social media, and devoting so much time and effort to social media that it impairs other important life areas.
When simply attempting to put it down for relatively extended periods of time, withdrawal symptoms often follow:
(i.e., experiencing unpleasant physical and emotional symptoms when social media use is restricted or stopped), conflict (i.e., interpersonal problems ensue because of social media usage), and relapse (i.e., addicted individuals quickly revert back to their excessive social media usage after an abstinence period).
Studies show that gambling and other behavioral addictions stimulate similar dopamine-producing structures in the brain like drugs and alcohol, which are responsible for our “reward” functions.
If you’ve ever misplaced your phone, you may have experienced a mild state of panic until it’s been found. About 73% of people claim to experience this unique flavor of anxiety, which makes sense when you consider that adults in the US spend an average of 2-4 hours per day tapping, typing, and swiping on their devices—that adds up to over 2,600 daily touches. Most of us have become so intimately entwined with our digital lives that we sometimes feel our phones vibrating in our pockets when they aren’t even there.
I ask students in my university courses to shut off their technology during our class sessions except when taking notes, but many simply are not willing (able?) to do so. Telltale signs of cellphone lights illuminate students’ faces from their supposed invisible hiding places behind the seat backs in from of them.
When I ask them again to shut off their devices, some complain that I am “being unfair.” Some argue that they literally cannot do so because whey they do, they become very anxious and completely unable to concentrate.
Some state that they need to stay connected and claim that they can multitask and remain focused on class information and discussions while in cyberspace.
But multiple studies have settled the question that multitasking—engaging in more than one task at the same time—is a myth, a fiction, a lie.
Those people who think they can split their attention between multiple tasks at once aren’t actually getting more done. In fact, they’re doing less, getting more stressed out, and performing worse than those who single-task.
This year I gave up! I understand the workings of addition, whether ingested substances or behavior additions. Though they often still numb out, I told students that if they need to use their devises, they must sit in the very back row of the class as not to disturb other students. Fortunately, the majority of students not in the back row are more fully engaged and want to be in the class to learn and to discuss the material.
As Marx found religion limiting to people’s challenging oppressive class structures, social media also has the effect of inhibiting engagement in important issues and activism for progressive social change from the dominant hegemonic status quo. These forms of media:
…are manifestations of the adult world with carefully designed incentives and mechanism to influence consumers…They have little agency over their lives…[But] young people have always been a force for democracy…[They] can change society for the better by abandoning outdated ideas and introducing new ones. But if we raise generations of children that never experience independence and are oppressed, there will never be any improvement.
So, yes, paradoxically, individuals connecting into social media disconnect from other individuals and from society. I am deeply concerned about the future of this trend and where it is leading our increasingly plugged in but humanly detached society.
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