Some notes on the digital world

I recently listened to Prajnaketu, author of Cyberloka: A Buddhist Guide to Digital Life, talk about some of the ideas presented in his book. This inspired me to write a few words about my recent discussion with Prajnaketu and other members of the Cambridge Buddhist Centre.

During the talk, three main topics were discussed, these being (in my words)

• information abundance

• super-stimulation

• communication (notably the difference between digital and in-person communication)

Information abundance

We discussed the sheer quantity of information on the internet, which is not always of the best quality or credibility. It made me think a little deeper about this matter and I resonated with the topic of discussion as I have certainly felt almost paralysed by the amount of ‘stuff’ - accessible within a few clicks - on the internet. We touched on the influence that various sources of information have on shaping or perhaps misshaping our views. There appears to be a wealth of knowledge out there, however, I believe that this makes it easy to be caught in an act of unintentionality in our actions, resulting in far more passive behaviour. An example of this is going on Youtube, without any intention of watching anything in particular a priori. Even if the ‘suggested’ feed contains seemingly educational materials, there’s no intentionality there. Instead of you deciding what you wish to learn about, it is the algorithm working its games on us.

To be used as a tool, we must be more deliberate with our use of the internet, otherwise we become the tool. This requires discipline as it goes against the grain of the so-called algorithms designed by the companies responsible for hooking us in. Despite this, this abundance of knowledge that’s so easily accessible has its benefits, and I believe that if used wisely, and with more intentionality, we can still leverage the internet as a powerful tool.

Super-stimulation

The speaker touched on the issue of super-stimulation in the modern digital world. This links to the first point, however, it has perhaps greater consequences. We discussed how things viewed and consumed on the internet dampen other, more natural and realistic sources of stimulation that we can experience ‘in the real world’. I see this from the lens of someone who grew up during a time when smartphones and social media were just coming out. Over time, I noticed that because I was effectively experiencing things second-handedly on social media by seeing other people do that ‘thing’ - such as going hiking in a new place - when it came to actually doing that ‘thing’, I found that my reaction was perhaps underwhelming to that stimulus.

My take on this is that the internet (particularly social media) provides a sensory overload, leading to sensory paralysis over time. During the discussion of this topic, we talked about the downsides of social media, and the following are some of the main talking points from this discussion:

Constant comparison: how social media results in a subconscious, constant comparison between yourself and others. I believe that this is one of the key downsides of social media and can perhaps explain the general deterioration in the mental health and self-confidence of many young adults. Social media gives a false portrayal of the best parts of people’s lives, without showing the day-to-day struggles that people face. Hence, the constant consumption of this digital content can lead to unhappiness and to people going through their lives not doing what truly makes them happy.

Workaround: Compare yourself only to yourself yesterday and instead of focusing on what others are doing and how much ‘fun’ they are having, just spend time doing things that make you happy, without trying to impress anyone.

Never being satisfied: This relates somewhat to the above, however, I am referring more explicitly to the feeling of always wanting more: bigger, better, stronger, faster, lighter, sunnier… (you see where I’m going). Social media is great for seeing what others do, but is this truly a good thing? More often than not, people follow people they don’t even know, doing things that they would have never even thought of doing, but because this other person has that thing or is doing that thing, we now want the same. I’m not saying that this is always bad, but I believe that it can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction, as you’ll eventually never be happy with where you are now.

Workaround: Find what makes you tick - the goals that you want to achieve, the things that you want to do - and stick to it. Try not to get overwhelmed with the amount of things that you could do or have and instead appreciate the small things and where you are now. Living life always thinking about the next thing you could do or have is quite the opposite of being present in the moment.

Infinite scrolling: This needs no explanation. Think of all of the biggest social media apps and you see a common theme - you can infinitely scroll. This means that you could effectively ‘waste’ an infinite amount of time on these things. If not careful, people can end up spending hours per day mindlessly scrolling. But they might say - “but it’s funny”, or “I’m learning” to which I say, are you really interested in what is being shoved in front of you? Are you actually taking the information in? Is it actually informative? Think about it, if you sleep for at least 8 hours a day (which you should), then you have 16 hours left in the day. Now, let’s say that you work a 9-5 job for 8 hours per day, this leaves 8 hours left. Now, do you really want to be spending half of this ‘leisurely’ time scrolling through social media, just looking at what others are doing, instead of simply ‘living’?

Workaround: Either get rid of these apps or perhaps more practically, set boundaries for yourself when you are on social media. One thing that I have found that has helped me be less mindless on YouTube is to download a browser extension that blocks the suggested feed (it’s called Unhook, it’s great). That way, I am unable to ‘infinitely scroll’ my way out of boredom and instead, I am viewing something with intention.

The good in social media: We also talked about the positives of social media. At the end of the day, if used correctly, social media can be a powerful tool to spread important messages and keep in touch with friends. Ultimately, in the Buddhist view, it was concluded that perhaps Buddhists have an obligation to do good on social media. However, one must tread lightly as suffering will be necessary to try to prevent the algorithms from winning the game and to use social media for true good.

Although these are some of the key thoughts discussed surrounding this topic, an aspect that fascinates me is the clearly degrading attention span of young adults and children. A prime contributor, in my view, is social media - which provides an instant dopamine hit. With short-form content also growing rapidly, this supports my hypothesis. These companies realise that our attention spans have deteriorated, so they just offer 5-10s clips to hook us in. The constant change in topic allows the refiring of dopamine receptors. Sounds good right? It’s not. These stimuli are, in a way, artificial and fall precisely under the category of super-stimulation. Moreover, the constant dopamine release affects our attention span and leads to unhappiness, amongst other negative side effects.

I propose that people log their phone usage and more importantly take note of how much comparison they subconsciously make with others as a result of all of these external stimuli. For me, I noticed that I was in effect ‘wasting my life away’ trying to please people and that my decisions were being more influenced by others than mine. In a sense, I was slowly losing the ability to make my own decisions.

Communication

We discussed the ease of communication in the modern world - the fact that you can talk to your friends from across the world just like that. However, the speaker mentioned the importance of solidifying those friendships, which can only really be done by spending time together, in person, in my opinion. It made me think about something that played on my mind when I decided to quit social media:

We’re as connected as ever but simultaneously there’s a huge disconnect ‘in real life’.

I used to think that popularity brought me happiness - the number of likes on my recent post, the number of followers etc. - but it’s important to know that we cannot be liked by everyone and that these ‘friends’ on Facebook don’t constitute meaningful relationships. Think about it - how many of those people are true friends? More often than not, most people can count their very close friends on one or two hands. I believe that by spending less time on social media, I’ve been able to make a few great friends, where I would otherwise have been spending my time worrying about a meaningless number on a screen. Ultimately, it is better to have a few great friends than to spread yourself thin, trying to please everyone.

Even those who are your friends - perhaps not best friends, but friends - do you really need to know that John is having dinner with his girlfriend at Wagamamas this evening, or that Sharon has just been for a morning swim? Maybe it is just me, but I don’t think that we need to be constantly in the loop about what everyone is doing. For me, I’ve found that when I want to hear about what my friends have been up to, I call them. This allows us to have a nice, two-way, conversation and to interact in a slightly more ‘natural’ way.

These are just a few reflections from the discussion with Prajnaketu last week. I hope that you enjoyed reading and please do share your thoughts with me! Social media is still something that I personally find hard to untangle my thoughts on and to see good in so it would be great to hear some other opinions.