by Bruce Hood
Technology may provide us with a way out. One place where we may be able to play out these fantasies and urges without exposure is on the internet. The next chapter considers how the Internet is changing the way we interact and share stories and ultimately how the web is going to play a major role in the self illusion we construct. This is because storytelling on the Internet flows in two directions with everyone having the capability to contribute to receiving, generating and sending information to others. If our looking glass self is a reflection of those with whom we surround our selves, then there are inevitably going to be implications for our self illusion in the way new media change, open up or restrict the others with whom we come into contact.
8
Caught in the Web
It started with a man shouting in the crowd. Why was he shouting? Did someone say, ‘Bomb?’ No one was certain but no one stuck around to check. Within seconds there was a mass stampede. It was the Second World War remembrance ceremony in Amsterdam in May 2010. One witness reported,
Just after the moment of silence, a very loud shriek could be heard not that far away from where I was standing. Immediately, a huge amount of people started to move away from where the sound had come from. It was scary when this mass of people attempted to run away from the shout.1
This is an example of stampeding – a common phenomenon found among animals that live in groups. It occurs whenever something triggers a sudden movement of a small number that causes the whole to respond en masse. This is the herd mentality, the hive mind. When someone in a crowd starts to run, we instinctively follow. In the same way, we tend automatically to copy and mimic others. This makes a lot of sense. Like meerkats, we can benefit from the collective wisdom and awareness of others when some threat arises. Because we instinctively respond to other humans, a simple action in one individual can rapidly spread and escalate to complex group activity. The problems occur when large numbers gather in limited spaces and the threat is disproportionate to the danger of the moving crowd. Over sixty people were injured in the Amsterdam stampede but they were lucky. Every year, hundreds of people are killed when large crowds gather in confined spaces and panic breaks out.
It is in our nature to assemble in groups. Many of us seek out crowds and groups to satisfy a deep need to belong. In doing so we cluster with like-minded individuals who share common interests (this is why most stampedes occur at religious festivals and sporting events). This is because we substantiate our self in the crowd. Sometimes others feel their individual self is lost in the crowd as they become one with the others around. Whether we feel lost or found, our self is ultimately influenced by the collective properties of the groups we join. As soon as we join others, our self is reflected in the crowd.
This relationship between the individual and the crowd is a key interest in the field of social networking where scientists try to understand the nature of groups in terms of how they form, how they operate, how they change and how they influence the individual. Some of the most dramatic examples are the riots that periodically erupt in otherwise civilized societies. In 2011, the police shooting of a black man set a London mob burning and smashing their way through the capital. Although the killing was in London, copycat rioting broke out in other English cities. Commentators were quick to look for culprit causes – social class, education, ethnic group, poor parenting, unemployment, boredom and so on. When they started to look at the profiles of those arrested in the London disturbances, however, it soon became apparent that there was not just one type of rioter but a variety from different backgrounds, ages and opportunities. Many were disaffected youths from deprived backgrounds but there was an Oxford law graduate, a primary school teacher, an organic chef, children of a pastor and other unlikely ‘criminals’. In attempting to categorize the typical looter, the authorities had failed to understand that coherent groups emerge out of very different individuals.
It doesn’t even have to be a perceived miscarriage of justice that triggers riots. In 2011 another riot exploded in Vancouver in response to the outcome of the Stanley Cup ice hockey final when the Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins, sparking a flurry of rioting and looting. Canadians take their ice hockey very seriously!
Harvard’s Nicholas Christakis says that when you take a bird’s eye view of humans through the prism of social networks, the picture of both the individual and the group changes.2 He draws the analogy with graphite and diamonds. Both materials are made of carbon atoms but it is the way these individual atoms are connected that determines why one material is soft and dark and the other is hard and clear. The layered lattice arrangement of graphite carbon atoms means that it shears easily whereas the highly interconnected arrangement of diamond carbon atoms means that it is as hard as – well, diamonds of course. Therefore, when it comes to carbon atoms, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, understanding the individual self only really makes sense in terms of the groups to which they are connected. To extend the carbon metaphor, when we are well connected we are more resilient because there is safety and strength in numbers. Alone, we are more vulnerable and weaker.
The mechanisms for joining groups are not completely random. We all possess individual differences that mean we join some groups and not others. There are strong historical, geographic and physical factors at play. We tend to form friendships and associate with others who represent our culture, live close by, resemble us and with whom we can easily connect.3 We also form friendships with those who share the same interests and worldviews. We tend to like those who resemble us physically. For example, obese people are more likely to hang out with other obese people and the friends of obese people.4 If one friend is overweight, there is a 45 per cent increased likelihood above chance that the other friend will also be overweight. If you are the friend of a friend who has another overweight buddy, then your likelihood is going to be 25 per cent above chance. This is known as ‘homophily’ – the tendency for bird’s of a feather to flock together, for like to be attracted to like. Only by the time the relationship is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend has the link to obesity disappeared.
Homophily can arise for various reasons such as shared external environments or interests. National identity, religious beliefs, team allegiances or music fans are examples of homophilic groups resulting from external factors. There is nothing genetic about being a British, Christian, Manchester Utd supporter who likes Dolly Parton. More surprising, however, is the recent discovery of genetic factors in homophily in social groupings. It has long been known that good-looking people tend to hang out with each other and that looks are partly genetic, but a recent study by Christakis and colleagues has shown that genes associated with behavioural traits are also related to friendship formation.5 For example, one gene, DRD2, associated with the disposition to alcoholism, was found to predict homophily in clusters of friends whereas another, CYP2A6, linked with openness, surprisingly produced the opposite effect of heterophily – the tendency to associate with others where there are no shared interests (‘opposites attract’). The causal mechanisms by which genes might exert this influence on behaviour is unclear and investigation of the genetic factors implicated in social networking is in its early days, but the discovery that genes operate in social environments means that we have to rethink the extent to which our biology influences our behaviour.
The Technology Savannah
Technology is changing the way we communicate and this is going to have an impact on the way we behave socially. Specifically, social networking may have very significant consequences for the way we develop. Our human mind, which was forged and selected for group interaction on the Serengeti, is now expected to operate in an alien environment of instant communication with distant, often anonymous individuals. Our face-to-face interaction that was so finely tuned by natural selection is largely disappearing as we spend more time staring at terminal screens that were only invented a generation ago. The subtle nuance of an intonation of voice or a
facial micro-expression6 is lost in this new form of communication. The physicality of interaction is disappearing, which may be something to which we will need to adapt. But ultimately, it will change the way we assemble our sense of self because of the influence of groups. Even if this turns out not to be correct, we would be wise to give these new technologies some careful consideration as they have the potential to have profound effects on the way we live.
For some time now, man has had the capability to shape his own future. With our capacity to communicate and our ability to form societies, we hand down knowledge from one generation to the next. We have used this communication to develop technologies such as writing. With the advent of science, most of us in modern societies have been freed from the shackles of hostile environments and hard times. Civilization has enabled humans to take control of processes that used to whittle out the weak. In the distant past, natural selection ensured that the old, the sick and the infertile lost out in the mating game. This has been changed by technological innovation. Modern medicine, with its fertility treatments and healthcare, has shifted the goal posts. Of course, natural selection will always be with us, but we can use our science to outwit its relentless cull of the least suited. Human development is increasingly shifting away from natural selection to Lamarckian inheritance – the idea, named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, that we can change our selves while we are still alive and pass on the benefits of that change to our children by tailoring their environments. It’s not clear how we will continue to evolve, but science and technology seems unlimited in their ingenuity to bend the rules. Similarly, our technologies and advances in communication through the Web will forever shape the future of humankind in ways that are not yet clear. One thing that is certain is that the Web will influence our sense of self as we increasingly live our lives online, as members of virtual groups.
I remember when the Web first emerged. I had just arrived at MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Science in the autumn of 1994 as a visiting scientist. I was checking email in the computer room where Zoubin Ghahramani and Daniel Wolpert, two brilliant young scientists, were getting excited about Netscape, one of the first Web browsers that had just sent through some image files to Zoubin’s terminal. The internet had already been in existence for years to allow academics and the military to exchange emails but the invention of HTML (the Web programming language) provided the first opportunity to share more than just text. This was my first encounter with the Web. In the past, people could email you files directly but now anyone with the right address could visit and view material on a remote website. It was like creating something permanent in the electronic landscape that others could come and visit well after you were gone – almost like the virtual immortality of scratching a mark on an electronic wall for others to find. As nerdy scientists, that afternoon we all recognized the importance of this capacity to share remote information, but I doubt any of us fully understood its potential power.
The subsequent rise and spread of the Web into everyone’s lives has been astonishing for those of us who remember the pre-Web days but my daughters seem oblivious because they have grown up with the rapid change of pace today and assume it has always existed. I tell my own children that they are living during one of the major transitions in human civilization, that humankind is currently in the midst of the next great evolutionary leap. This sort of statement may sound sensationalist. It may sound nostalgic as some of us hanker for simpler times. It may even sound like the curmudgeonly grumblings of a middle-aged dad who laments that, ‘Things were different in my day.’ Indeed, every generation probably says this, but I cannot overstate this transition too much. I think that most of us are sleepwalking into uncharted territory. We need not fear it. It is one of most exciting times to be alive in the history of humankind.
Who Hath Not Googled Thyself?
Have you ever searched for your self on the Web, entering your name into the Google search engine to see if you come up? Go on. Be honest. Only the very few cannot be curious to know what’s been said about them, if anything at all. And where better to find your self than on the Web? It’s the electronic version of looking first for your self in the group photograph or hearing your name mentioned in a crowded cocktail party and then straining to listen to what is being said about you. The advent of the Web has made our preoccupation with what others think about us a part of human nature. For better or worse, most of us in industrialized countries are now on the Web whether we like it or not.
Many of us enjoy being on the Web and actively use it socially to interact with others. Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily lives. The mightiest at the moment is Facebook, which currently has over 750 million active users. There are several core features of the different social networking sites. First, they enable users to construct public and semi-public profiles on a website. Second, the website enables users to view other users who subscribe to the service and, most importantly, enables them to communicate with each other by messaging and facilities for sharing files. It’s like a 24/7 virtual cocktail party where you mix with friends but sometimes meet new acquaintances, swap stories and opinions, share a joke, maybe look at each other’s family photographs and flirt (or sometimes even more). Or perhaps you sign a petition or start a cause to change things. As the new media expert Jenny Sundén succinctly put it, social networking sites enable users to, ‘type oneself into being’.7
Not surprisingly, an analysis of personal profiles posted on social networks reflects a great deal of narcissism8 – the tendency to be interested in one’s self and what others think about us. After all, why wouldn’t we want others to know about how successful our lives were? However, this obsession with our self on the Web will depend mostly on who you are. Being online is not for everyone. For example, my wife refuses to join social networks but then she also does not want to appear in the public light. Like my wife, many of the pre-Web generation cannot understand what is going on and frankly do not feel the need to surrender precious time, effort and especially privacy to join online communities. They don’t get YouTube, they don’t get Facebook and they certainly don’t get Twitter, which seems to be the ultimate in broadcasting trivial information about one’s self. However, even stalwarts against the onslaught of social networks are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into a new era. The social networking sites that have sprung up in this last decade are changing communication between people and will play an important role in self-identity. If the self illusion is correct, social networking sites will continue to expand in popularity and will increasingly shape the sense of who we are for the next generation and those that follow. As long as we remain a social animal, social networks in one form or another are here to stay.
This is because most of us want to be noticed. Surveys consistently show that the West has embraced the celebrity culture. When 3,000 British parents were asked what their pre-teen children wanted to be when they grew up, one in three said they wanted to be a sports figure, actor or pop star. Compare that to the professions that topped the aspiration list twenty-five years ago: teachers, bankers and doctors.9 Children now want to be famous for the sake of being famous because they equate fame with success. A recent survey of the UK Association of Teachers and Lecturers revealed that the majority of students would prefer to be famous than academically gifted.10 The Web facilitates this obsession with fame and popularity by providing a readily accessible and updatable medium where individuals can indulge their interest in the famous but also begin to make an impact of their own. Anyone can gather a following on the Web. It has levelled the popularity playing field so we can all be noticed.
Also, for most people, the Web is first and foremost a social medium. According to the Neilson Company, which specializes in analyzing consumer behaviour, the majority of time spent online is engaged in social networking sites and that is increasing eac
h year.11 By August 2011, we were spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook alone. One in five US adults publishes a blog and over half of the American population have one or more social networking profiles. Even when we are at work, we are social networking: on average a US worker spends 5.5 hours each month engaged in this activity on company time.12
It is even more pervasive in adolescents and young adults. At the moment, if you grow up in the West and are between sixteen and twenty-four years of age, being online is essential. This age group spends over half of their online time engaged in social networks in comparison to older age groups. Many Western teenagers feel they do not exist unless they have an online presence. Life online has taken over from the school playground and the shopping mall where the kids used to hang out.13 It has extended the window of opportunity to socialize at anytime and anywhere. We used to tell our kids to get off the phone. Now they use their own phones and can be chatting online whenever they want. According to the most recent report by Ofcom, the industry regulator of communications, half of all UK teenagers compared to a fifth of adults possess a smartphone.14 The most common use of the phone is not for making calls but visiting social networking sites. Two-thirds of teenagers use their smartphones while socialising with others; a third of teenagers use them during mealtimes; and nearly half of teenagers use their phones to social network in the bathroom or on the toilet. No wonder that six out of ten teenage users consider themselves addicted to their smartphones. They get to continue socializing well after the school is shut, the mall is closed or their families have moved them to another town.