So, you have posted your latest achievement on social media. Within minutes, your phone buzzes with notifications. You click immediately to excitedly see how many likes and retweets you have received... and now you’re hooked. Social media addiction has become a ‘second nature affliction’ to most of us — so much so, that there are rehabilitation programmes for it. But what propels this addiction?
As part of BBC’s long-running Panorama specials, Smartphones — The Dark Side is soon to be aired on Sony BBC Earth. It is hosted by journalist Hilary Andersson who gets to the bottom of this ongoing social dilemma.
In a phone interview, the show’s executive producer Diana Martin provides an insight into how habit-forming technologies have got us hooked onto our phones and what the implications are.
Excerpts:
How did the idea for the show come about?
We were interested in doing something more general on social media and smartphones because they have completely changed our behaviour in the last 20 years and a couple of us on the programme have also got children. Hilary and I are acutely aware how glued our children are to their phones and other devices.
Social media always seems to be addictive, but we couldn’t get an answer as to whether it was really addictive and what we should do about it as parents. So we set out researching the nature of our phones and apps that have changed our behaviour, and we wanted to ask whether the social media companies were aware of what they were doing.
Are these habit-forming technologies deliberate?
The techniques we looked at were the endless scrolling and the ‘like’ button. Scrolling wasn’t always the case when social media first existed. When search engines first existed, you would get a page of results and then you would have to click to get to the second page. But now when you are scrolling, you don’t have to click. And what we looked into was whether that made you keep reading more. These days, scrolling seems obvious, but is central to all social media.
Smartphones — The Dark Side shows how it is like having an endless bowl of soup.
If you drink a bowl of soup, you get to the bottom of the bowl and you are finished. But if it is endless, then people would eat more and they would probably eat more than they need. And then, the ‘like’ button was invented. The ‘like’ button is now ubiquitous and is cluing into our human behaviour. If you get a ‘like’, you are more hooked onto it.
We talked to Justin Rosenstein, who is the co-founder of Asana, who invented the ‘like’ button for Facebook.
We spoke to psychologists who showed us how similar social media addiction was to what we see in casinos to encourage people to gamble.
Picture Shows: Professor Catharine Winstanley, with students, Department of Behavioural Neuroscience, University of British Columbia. - (C) University of British Columbia - Photographer: Unknown
Is there anything we have lost permanently in terms of human interaction? Has it changed the way we make choices?
We were careful not to criticise smartphones or social media. We all have smartphones. They massively help us with our work and to communicate with our family and friends. However, the point here is there are advantages, but there are also disadvantages.
Social media is potentially habit forming or addictive in nature. So we did a lot of work into asking whether they are addictive. Scientists were divided on this. Some said they are addictive, but some said they are not really addictive, but they are clearly habit forming. We are reporting the story as we saw it. What we hope to do is help viewers understand a bit more about the possible impact of social media and smartphones on their behaviour. They need to consider their approach and to be a bit more mindful next time they endlessly scroll or the next time they hit the ‘like’ button.
What about the impact of social media on politicians and has it changed how we make political choices?
There is a lot more to explore in that area. Clearly, politicians and political parties have had to respond to the rise of social media and different parties have responded in different ways and some have made a certain use of it than others. There is an interesting story on how authoritarian governments are using social media not just for election campaigns but also to control populations, and though the show isn’t about that, I think it is a really interesting issue.
What were the challenges in putting together ‘Smartphones — The Dark Side’?
It was very important for us to be impartial. We are the BBC and we have a duty towards impartiality. So the first thing is to make sure that we cover all sides of the argument. We spoke to various people who criticised the manipulation of social media companies. But we also made sure we spoke to people from Facebook who defended the position. And we spoke to a man who develops social media apps who maintained that social media is good for mental health and well-being. The second challenge is that we are not scientists, and it is an area where science hasn’t really come to a comprehensive answer yet, and so we spoke to two psychologists, but there are other scientists who have other views. And it is early days. We had to reflect that as well so that we were not oversimplifying things.
‘Smartphones — The Dark Side’ will premiere on Sony BBC Earth on August 31, at 9 pm.
