The Hacking of the American Mind
Page 22
The Social Network?
Clearly, developing and maintaining interpersonal connections is good, while severing them is bad. No surprise there. But in the twenty-first century, what constitutes an interpersonal connection? In each of these examples, at least two people are involved—in person. What if they are online instead? If you’re not interacting face-to-face and in real time, is it still interpersonal? Does it still qualify as a social connection? Do you still get the benefits? Social media now dominate the landscape of human interaction. They are enough to spark a revolution; witness the Arab Spring. But are they enough to spark the same sense of affiliation, incur the same level of social support, and generate the same level of contentment? Are social networks really social? How many times have you preferred texting to talking? Are you getting the same return on your investment?
Here’s where you’ve been sandbagged by the technology industry. The social media companies say they provide connectivity like never before, and at the speed of the internet. Facebook is now used by a total of 1.7 billion people—that’s 25 percent of the world’s population—and 1.1 billion log in at least once a day to engage in socializing, entertainment, self-status seeking, and information gathering.32 Mark Zuckerberg says, “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. We do this by giving people the power to share whatever they want and be connected to whoever they want, no matter where they are.” Connected, sure. But interpersonal? Can you have an interpersonal connection with Anonymous? Do emojis convey empathy? And if the connection is not interpersonal, can you generate mirror neurons, synchrony, PFC activation, empathy, contentment, or serotonin? Are we all just, as MIT’s media researcher Sherry Turkle surmises, “alone together”? Or are just some of us alone? How many Facebook friends do you have? You may well know the names, ages, and sports preferences of your middle school acquaintance’s children, but could you actually carry on a conversation with them? Would you meet them for coffee, and what would you say to them, to their face? Do these connections transfer over IRL (In Real Life)?
We finally have data to start to answer some of these questions. By following adolescent boys longitudinally over time, scientists have worked backward to see what kinds of baseline behaviors contributed to those who developed internet addiction in midlife (mean age forty-three).33 OK, so let’s envision our forty-something guy addicted to the internet. What’s he doing? (1) Looking at porn, (2) gambling, (3) playing online video games, (4) uploading snarky content to 4chan or Reddit. He’s not obsessively surfing the Web for cat videos. These investigators could chart a path from parent-child conflict to problem behaviors like alcohol and drug use, as well as dysphoria and, in some cases, depression. Indeed, the internet could just be the legal behavior of choice for those with undiagnosed depression, because it provides an extra dopamine boost. The fact that those who would succumb to internet addiction could be predicted by personality traits in earlier life would suggest that internet addiction is the end result of other problem behaviors or psychiatric disturbances, and possibly even another example of “addiction transfer,” rather than that the internet itself was the cause of these behaviors (see Chapter 5).
The question is, can social media fulfill your need for interpersonal connection? Studies of large social networks now suggest that reading postings of others’ emotions can affect your own (also implying the presence of mirror neurons). When Facebook’s news feed was manipulated by the company to post more positive emotional content, the response consisted of more positive comments, and vice versa.34 Similarly, when there was more rainfall in any given locale, the postings out of that locale were more negative and the comments in response tended to be more negative.35 Of course, these types of studies don’t account for the possibility that people who post on Facebook are already self-selecting and may have different emotional needs than other people, and they don’t tell us about the quality or depth of these emotions or for how long their emotions are impacted.
Facebook does appear to be an outlet for emotion, particularly in depression. For instance, the level of depressive symptoms obtained on a questionnaire in a group of “normal” subjects were directly correlated with the volume of negative postings on Facebook,36 presumably as a cry for help37 (of course, whose definition of “normal” are they using?). But does that help come? Yes and no. One study evaluated twenty-one patients (mostly women) with major depressive disorder (MDD) compared to twenty-one “normal” subjects.38 Those with MDD were more likely to post deprecating (toward themselves and others) information on Facebook, and received social media support for those posts. However, the perception of the MDD patients was that they received less social support than they actually did: there was no relation between MDD, positive postings, and social support. So did they get emotional support or not? Objectively yes, but subjectively no. Which is more important? Without the face-to-face interaction, a one- or two-sentence comment or sad-face emoji doesn’t help matters any. Are these MDD patients asking too much of Facebook? Is that Facebook’s fault?
Well, maybe. Many people use Facebook for posting lovely smiling photos of their families, friends, and vacations. But could the use of Facebook actively undermine your feelings of subjective well-being? And in the extreme, could it even make you addicted or depressed or both? A two-week time-lag analysis39 suggests that the more people use Facebook, the less subjective well-being they experience. This study was also able to show that direct interpersonal interaction during that same two-week period was able to improve their affective (subjective) well-being—yet the Facebook effect on negative well-being still persisted. In other words, being “social” on Facebook meant being less social everywhere else. So what is it about Facebook that makes people unhappy? A one-week study in which people’s Facebook usage was monitored demonstrated that only passive Facebook usage (reading others’ posts, and not adding your own) predicted declines in subjective well-being. However, the converse was not true: posting didn’t make depressed people feel better.40 Many in the psychiatric field have posited that Facebook actually makes us less content. Think about it—in Japan, a photo service called Family Romance sends fake friends to your house to take pictures for posting to unnerve your ex after you’ve broken up. Who’s supposed to feel better after that? Drilling down, investigators have shown that feelings of envy from reading about other people’s positive experiences worsened the moods of the readers. We usually see the very best of our peers, and so we constantly compare ourselves to an unrealistic and untrue ideal. Aside from negatively impacting mood,41 what social media really does is shut down our PFC (our Jiminy) so we can’t ratchet our emotional level down (see Chapter 4). How many negative comments are there when someone posts about their opinion, especially during the 2016 election cycle? The reaction is akin to ramming someone’s car in the parking lot (Towanda!).
Finally, can Facebook be addictive? One theory argues that some individuals prefer to communicate online and demonstrate deficient self-regulation of internet use. They tend to engage in online social communication as a means of escaping loneliness or anxiety, a process that generates reward, which reinforces online use.42 A meta-analysis of Facebook usage identified that excessive use of social media is the underlying process for gratification of need, which can devolve into Facebook addiction.43 Is it any wonder that individuals who have withdrawn themselves from social media experience the same sort of withdrawal as from alcohol, nicotine, or sugar?44 And that we now have social media rehab services? (See Chapter 14.)
It’s Not What You Look at, It’s What You See
Technology watchers, like MIT’s Sherry Turkle, have argued that we have put ourselves on a digital diet: smitten with our technology, just like our processed food diet—and just as addictive. She argues that our digital diet has created a dissonance between empathy and compassion: there is a 40 percent loss of empathy in college students as a result of possessing a smartphone. In order to reclaim our contentment, we need to recl
aim our capacity for solitude, which is undermined by our technology and our devices. Solitude isn’t just being alone; it is a sense of self that is not derived from internet connectivity. The sentinel achievement of childhood is harnessing solitude and turning it into personal and spiritual growth. “If we don’t teach our children how to be alone, then we doom them to always be lonely.” No wonder comedian Louis C.K. won’t let his kids have cell phones:45 because the key social interaction, and subsequent social empathy, requires actual social participation. “You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away . . . the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person.” Those are the children I see in my clinic today. They are the ones who prefer to text than talk, who can only communicate through Snapchat and won’t make eye contact. They are the ones whose iPads have assured that they have never had, and never will have, a dull moment. And that’s a whole lot of unhappiness.
17.
Contribute (Self-Worth, Altruism, Volunteerism, Philanthropy)
How many times have you heard the axiom “Money can’t buy happiness”? Do you believe it? Do you think it can? Money certainly buys stuff, and stuff can certainly bring pleasure. But could money actually make you unhappy? Or do unhappy people just wish they had more money? Or both? If constant reward that begets even more reward-seeking behavior is the killer of contentment, then just maybe the more money you make, the more unhappy you get? Could money instead be buying us unhappiness, in the form of loss of contentment? And, if so, can it be reversed? Many philosophers have commented on the negative impact of our materialistic society on contentment in terms of home life, relationships, family, spirituality, and community. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow notes that 89 percent of Americans agree that “our society is too materialistic.” But when quizzed further, it appears that those 89 percent must be talking about the other 11 percent. In their own lives, they wish they had more money, a better home, and a faster car. Perhaps this is why we have seen so much political upheaval among those who identify with the middle class, who believe that our current economic system has left them behind. But this hasn’t stopped them from spending, because they’re convinced that without the latest gadget, they can’t survive. The question is, does the misery of credit card debt outweigh the thrill of the newest iPhone? Madonna may have been the first Material Girl, but we are all living in her material world. Rather, I will argue that it isn’t the money that ups your serotonin. It’s what you do with the money and your time. Coco Chanel got it right: “There are people who have money, and there are people who are rich.” Money can facilitate the contribution you provide to others.
Windfall Profits May Not Be as Profitable as You Think
Let’s look at some people who have the opportunity to evaluate this axiom firsthand. Who goes from poor to rich quickly? Lottery winners. Do they become happy when they win the lottery? The lottery sure wants you to think so; otherwise, what’s the point of buying all those tickets? The first evaluation of lottery winners was in 1978, where twenty-two lottery winners ($50,000 to $1 million) were compared with twenty-two controls (people whose financial situation had not changed), and also with twenty-nine accident victims who had become paralyzed (metaphorically losing life’s lottery).1 The lottery winners’ happiness spiked when they won, while those of the accident victims’ plummeted in the very short term. But over the next several months each group’s level of subjective happiness returned to baseline levels. In fact, occasional studies describe financial ruin and even depression following a big monetary windfall.2
However, there are three problems with such studies. First, each examines different aspects of post-lottery life. Which definition of happiness are they using—and what if the examiners themselves don’t understand the difference? As Kahneman and Deaton posited (see Chapter 12), are they measuring pleasure (that is, “life satisfaction”) or are they measuring happiness (emotional well-being)? Second, how do you evaluate the winner’s baseline state before they’ve won? Any study that requires looking backward must be taken with a grain of salt. Third and most important, who are these lottery winners, anyway? Are they onetime players who just got lucky, or are they chronic gamblers who were in it for the variable reward (see Chapter 14) and may keep jonesing for the next fix even after their metaphorical itch was scratched? Another way you could look at this is by observing who quits their job after winning the lottery. Turns out the majority of winners stay within their career paths, because that is where they derive their contentment through feelings of self-worth. They see their work contribution as meaningful.3
Check, Please
Maybe more money could buy you better food. Better food—high-quality protein with souped-up tryptophan and omega-3s and lots of fiber and even a sous-chef to prepare it for you. Maybe that would make people happier? In fact it could, but it doesn’t. Analysis of eating patterns from the USDA Economic Research Service shows that as income increased from 1960 to 2013, the percent of money spent on food per capita decreased from 17 to 9.6 percent. Going further into the weeds, food consumed outside the home has increased from 26 percent in 1970 to 50.1 percent in 20144 . . . so we do have a sous-chef! But eating out doesn’t necessarily mean eating well, even if you think you are. (Does the soda come with free refills?) Check out the dressing ingredients on your next Chinese chicken salad for proof. Furthermore, the lowest-income quintile spends $4,000 per year on food (36 percent), while the highest-income quintile spends $11,000 per year (8 percent). Altogether, the U.S. spends 6.7 percent of its GDP on food. Compare this to the French and the Japanese, who spend 14 percent of their GDP on food. But when you look closely at what we buy, it’s not eggs, meat, or fish; rather, it’s corn, wheat, soy, and sugar—everything that’s subsidized.5 In other words, America buys a whole lot of more pleasurable food for less money than the rest of the world, but in general, with the exceptions of some people on the two coasts, we’re not buying better-quality food.6
Consumer Reports It’s a Lemon
Psychologist Tim Kasser7 of Knox College has spent his career trying to tease out the answer to whether a materialistic mind-set results in its own negative consequences. In developing a psychological tool called the Aspiration Index, Kasser identified four aspects of well-being in young people: self-actualization (being comfortable in your own skin), vitality (energy, alertness, feeling alive), depression, and anxiety. It didn’t matter whether he assessed adolescents,8 U.S. college students,9 or Gen Xers from other countries;10, 11 the same pattern kept appearing. Those who valued financial success appeared to derive less contentment from life. This negative association between “material goods” and discontentment even held up under a rigorous meta-analysis12 (the more you have, the more you want), while “aspirational life goals” correlated positively with personal contentment, even after controlling for financial status.13 In other words, working for your own personal benefit is the reward for your labor. But it is the impact of your work or your actions beyond yourself—how you contribute to the greater good—that translates into contentment.
Could people grow out of this materialistic mind-set? Would it make a difference? Kasser has studied young people in the U.S. and Iceland over time, for six months to twelve years.14 Guess what? If their affinity for materialism increased, their subjective well-being worsened, and vice versa. So the association holds up over time. Important, but that still doesn’t prove cause and effect. Does materialism erode contentment, or, rather, could the change in contentment come first, driving materialism as a sort of haute couture booby prize?15
To determine causation, you need to design an intervention that either increases or reduces levels of materialistic thinking in order to see whether emotional well-being changes in the process. One set of investigators did a simple experiment: they divided some college students into two groups; the first group was told they were “consumers” and the second that they were “individuals.” Su
rprisingly, the consumers responded to various presented consumer cues with materialism, selfishness, lack of cooperation, and lack of social contact, while the individuals exhibited none of these traits.16 Apparently just being a consumer generates negative vibes.
The takeaway from all of these examples is that wealth can exaggerate your current situation, but it can’t fix it. Depression itself is not dependent on income, although the ability to seek and pay for treatment may well be. If you’re unhappy, with money and surrounded by people you don’t trust, money will only make those problems worse. If you’re fulfilled, have enough to pay for necessities, and enjoy a life of strong relationships, money won’t actually make you more content, because the serotonin effect is not driven by wealth or income. Not in individuals, and not in countries. Ben Franklin said, “Money never made a man happy, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has, the more one wants.”