The Blessing and Curse of Social Media.

Abstract

One thing the pandemic made clear is the role that social media and the Internet play in daily life in twenty-first century America. Deprived of personal contact, we were suddenly reliant on technology for all manner of interactions. I found myself shopping for groceries online, thankful for delivery services, which I also found online. I relied on Amazon for goods I could no longer access from closed stores, from garden supplies to puzzles to help us occupy our time. I discovered an app that would allow me to make customized cards from photos, which kept me both in touch with distant friends and out of the post office. I used face time and Zoom to meet with colleagues and keep in touch with the distant friends and family. I heard Mass via livestream and traveled the world from my living room. Although my physical world was contracting, my electronic one expanded. As a result of my efforts to educate myself and stay abreast of what was happening, I developed connections on social media with folks I had not met before on. Some of these have become valued friends, and sometimes, expert resources I might never have otherwise had access to absent Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. In this regard, I found modern technology a blessing, introducing me to people, thoughts, ideas, experiences, and perspectives that I might not have otherwise encountered, and broadening my view of faith, medicine, and the world in general. I wasn’t alone; most folks with a computer and an Internet connection did the same. Electronic communication held us together when everything else seemed determined to keep us apart. It was a poor substitute for chats over coffee and hugs, but it was something and it mattered, and we were, by and large, glad for it. Had we any doubts, the pandemic proved that we will be fed, formed, and frustrated by electronic media for the foreseeable future. There was a dark side that became all too evident, and I wonder whether our awareness of it has something to do with the coincidence of the pandemic and the upswing in social media usage by bored and anxious people stuck more at home than in years past. That dark side stems from the very nature of social media itself. We tend to think of social media and the Internet as tools, which they certainly can be. But it is increasingly evident that the tool is not serving us so much as it is manipulating us and that has profound implications for medicine and for society at large. The Social Dilemma, a 2020 documentary/drama (Netflix) about how the Internet and social media are reshaping humans and human society, is an eyeopening must-see. Through interviews with former employees and executives of social media powerhouses and by weaving in a story that illustrates the very dangers they are discussing, The Social Dilemma brings to light a downright frightening reality: a world increasingly framed and controlled by the selling of attention of the user to corporations who manipulate it for profit through artificial intelligence (AI) and social media. In effect, the user of the medium is the product (his intimate information is analyzed, and he is manipulated to increase screen time his attention is the produc and the result is a shift in behavior) and addict (the systems are designed to work on deeply ingrained neural, emotional, and psychological pathways). This is a critical issue for Catholic physicians for many reasons. The most immediate may be the astronomic increase in depression, anxiety, and suicide, especially among the young consumers of social media. Teens today are far more risk averse (thanks to the “like” button), more discontented with themselves, and, though more attached to and by technology, more isolated and less connected to the community than ever before. New categories of mental illness have even been coined (Internet addiction, social media dysmorphia), all as a result of the manipulative and reinforcing aspects of media that work by means of an algorithm designed to analyze and shift human behavior, not for the benefit of the person engaged but for the financial gain of a third party. It is, in a manner of speaking, a sort of The Linacre Quarterly