The Brainwashing of the world

There is still some time to re-think our relationship with technology

Part 1: All’s not well with Social Media

Only a few weeks back I was introduced to

Freya India

, and only recently, I read On the degrading effects of life online, written in part by Freya and Jonathan Haidt (After Babel). I remember distinctly, it felt as if my inner thoughts had found an outlet in Freya’s writings. This argument about the use of social media isn’t a new thing for me. I first felt this way about social media when I was a mature student in a university in England. Going from a background where I lived with my parents and my grandparents on a farm in the Indian countryside, I found myself completely lost in the English university. Students all around me were deeply addicted to their phones and laptops and had no real-life, meaningful discussions with each other. In fact they were even scared of holding a discussion for long enough. If I would go out on a walk and speak with an elderly man or a woman, (which was a normal thing in my village) I was instantly judged. “Was he a pedo?”, my 19 year-old roommate would ask me. I knew something was off, but I kept telling myself to be open - maybe you just haven’t assimilated in the society yet. It will take time, I’d repeatedly tell myself.

The connections and friendships I would have with my peers were superficial. If I did not use sites like Tiktok and Snapchat, I was virtually invisible, to the point that I was ostracized from the circle. Life was extremely fast-paced and I was struggling to find time to sit on a rock and do nothing. I tried meeting a few girls, but most of them were too caught up in their online personalities, often bitching about others who had a better online following. There was no time for slow talking. Meeting someone in a cafe was a horrible exercise, because they would be always on their phone, scared about being alongside ‘elders’. Dating was more about sex than actually meeting someone. I saw guys and girls sharing their ‘body-count’ as though it was some sort of an achievement. It was necessary to send nudes on Snapchat to know what body the other guy or girl might have, and that too was extremely casual. Maybe I wasn’t in the right place or maybe I was just thinking too much, but I always resisted this.

Boston Globe (2015)

I found it hard to have heart-filled discussions with students from my generation. Guys were sharing pictures of the last girl they ‘smashed’ (such a cruel word to describe intimacy) and girls were doing the same. It all felt good on the outside, but on the inside, things weren’t all jolly. In the background, when the makeup was off and the act was over, I saw them struggling. Social anxiety, depression, mental health issues were extremely common. It took me a long while to realise what these social media apps were doing to this generation— that too in real-time. During this time, I got to live alone in a small village in Scotland, which helped me to view things in a different way. I find myself lucky to have then stumbled across people like Jaron Lanier, the Silicon Valley insider who is often termed as “The Founder of Virtual Reality.”

Through Jaron Lanier’s ten arguments he explains the many ways in which social media can cause difficulty for us, both individually and collectively. His arguments were not against all forms of social media, but the currently popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and others which use targeted advertising to sustain themselves. His first argument itself was enough to make me re-think the way I use my social media.

Argument 1:

In the first argument, You are losing your free will, Lanier argues that the popular social media platforms are all based around a core process of behavior modification. The platforms need to get us hooked so that we use them regularly – this is one form of behavior modification – the platforms themselves can be addictive. Once we are hooked, then they show us advertisements which tend to be highly targeted based on various data collected about us through regular usage. These advertisements are also a form of behaviour modification which can have an impact on us as individuals and at a collective level, where corporations, our government or foreign governments can manipulate our political views just as easily as they influence our buying behaviour.

It was quite obvious then that what I was witnessing in the English university was an extreme form of social media addiction.

Gurwinder

in his last essay, ‘Why everything is becoming a game’, wrote, “We humans are harder to manipulate than pigeons, but we can be manipulated in many more ways, because we have a wider spectrum of needs.” So then, all these freshers, who were recently coming out of high school, had been totally addicted to social media - mainly TikTok and Snapchat. They had been using it for long enough that their life, their needs and desires now surrounded around these platforms. I remember once speaking to a girl, who came from a small village in the English countryside, she wanted to open an OnlyFans account to earn some quick-money. She got this idea from an influencer she followed on TikTok. To me it was quite strange that the idea to sell your body at 19, when you could alternately pursue your career or go out and live your dreams, was a plausible option - worst even, that it was encouraged by her immediate friend circle, who too, like her, consumed similar information on similar social media sites.

• Read

  Annika
  who writs a newsletter called The internet is my friend.

We already have class distinction in our society but social media sites amplify this. It makes us want to aspire like the fake personalities that we see on social media. Because we have role-models who are leaking sex-tapes in order to get famous, it then becomes necessary that we do the same. Because they are clicking photographs of them sitting in or standing next to a Maserati, it becomes necessary then to exist in this tribal game to do something similar. I remember a friend of mine who lived in Abu Dhabi, he once rented a sportscar to show off on his instagram. Although the very next day, we were on a call, discussing how broke he was. My roommate was addicted to rugby and porn. Other than a few times when he came along to a pub, he would always be grunting and watching rugby matches on his tele. Fapping, the Gen Z word for masturbating is quite common amongst teenage boys. How did we get here though?

“Journey to the East”- my first book about my 1800 km walk across India is currently available as a paperback through my website and on Amazon Kindle globally. Please consider buying it.

www.ashutoshjoshi.in

Part 2: The Fall of Cross Generational Wisdom

Now when I am back in India, I see the same thing happening in my village. Sanju dada’s son comes around the house late in the night to watch something on his phone. How come this virus that I saw in the UK, spread so rapidly? It now engulfs teenage boys and girls in India.

The root cause of this issue lies in the lack of genuine human connection and the erosion of generational wisdom. When I lived with my family on the farm, I learned invaluable lessons from my grandparents. Their stories, experiences, and advice were not only enriching but also provided a sense of identity and belonging. This generational wisdom is crucial for personal development and understanding our roots. However, in the fast-paced digital world, these connections are fading. Especially in the West, we hardly see this cross generational connections. Every generation is now put in a separate bubble that exists only within itself - everyone outside of it is quite scary. We are replacing meaningful conversations with likes and comments, and the wisdom of the elders with the fleeting trends of influencers. By doing this, it’s not just the Gen Z or Gen Alpha who is feeling the wrath of this lost connection, it’s also the millennials and all the rest. Grandparents don’t spend as much time as they used to with their grandkids. I hate to watch them having to rot into the care facilities. It is a lack of empathy for the other. I remember growing up in a village where I was always playing with and in discussion with people from all age groups. Our neighbour whom we affectionately called ‘khoki’ (the one who coughs) was 102 years old and still she was as important as my dad - even though we were not even related! She taught me essential life lessons in my childhood. I am sure that we all had such a childhood where we played in other peoples houses and barged into our friends home without taking any permission. We have forgotten the old days where grandparents took care of their grandkids. This unfortunately was lost in the past two decades.

Georgios Jakobides (1890)

The thing is, once we have lost any compassion for ourselves by constantly watching others perform better than us, we lose the ability to love others as well. That brings us to the sixth argument by Jaron Lanier.

Argument 6: losing your capacity for empathy

Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy. When the things we share on social media don’t have context, we only see small fragments about our friend’s views, usually selected by algorithms or where our friend was influenced by an algorithm to share something. As in real life, everyone has a different perspective, but on social media this can be more extreme as everything is personalised to us by algorithms. Without having experienced the same inputs as others, it becomes harder to understand their perspective, and we end up in echo chambers where we see the people in other echo chambers as crazy.

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Part 3: Studies suggest thus..

Studies have shown the negative impact of excessive social media use on mental health. A study by the American Psychological Association found that teenagers who spend more than five hours a day on social media are more likely to experience mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness. Another study demonstrated a causal link between limiting social media use and improvements in well-being. Participants who reduced their social media use to 30 minutes per day reported significant reductions in loneliness and depression over three weeks compared to those who used social media as usual.

Moreover, research by Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, highlights the importance of face-to-face conversation in building empathy and deepening relationships. Turkle argues that technology is undermining our ability to connect with others on a deeper level, and she emphasizes the need to reclaim conversation in our digital age.

Additionally, a longitudinal study conducted by Harvard University, known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has shown that close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. The study found that strong relationships with family, friends, and community contribute to longer, healthier, and happier lives. This study underscores the importance of nurturing real-life connections over virtual ones.

It's essential then to limit our use of phones and social media to rebuild these connections. Real-life interactions foster empathy, understanding, and emotional resilience. They teach us to value people for who they are, not for their online personas. By spending more time with family and engaging in face-to-face conversations, we can revive the lost art of communication and strengthen our social fabric. It’s important to prioritize human connections over virtual ones, and cherish the wisdom passed down through generations. This is not only vital for our personal well-being but also for the health of our society.

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Part 4: So what’s stopping us?

So, here’s the question. What’s stopping us? It’s the bloody phone, isn’t it? We know how bad it is. We know that we are getting manipulated. We can see a rise in anger when we have used social media sites for too long and yet, we cannot stop it. There’s this argument that comes up, but my life revolves around the phone. Yes, that is true. I was baffled to see English universities promoting social media and phone usage even when these studies are so prevalent. Try being a student without using Microsoft Outlook - which is now connected with the university schedule - which keeps on sending reminders every few hours and even before you wake up. No, I don’t want you to tell me how my day is going to look like. I can think for myself!

It’s horrible and I have always felt hopeless about it. One reason this keeps on happening is because we are forever dissatisfied. It’s a plague of chronic dissatisfaction, that as humans beings we have always had, ever since we came into being. We are addicted to a drug called desire —and the social media companies know this very well. People are missing out on the pleasure of being human by being constantly on their phones, desiring and wanting. When does this desire end though? When do we finally feel good? When do we finally feel complete - within ourselves? Wasn’t that the purpose of spiritual pursuit all along? To become one. To become whole. To be free from desires.

The ball has always been in our court. What do we wish to do with it, that to me is the real question.

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