Opinion | If all your friends quit social media, would you?

Popular social media and online dating platforms are designed for addiction. Social media features such as TikTok’s self-shuffling “For You” page, or the rare thrill of going viral or finding a cute match on a dating app, mimic the unpredictable reward cycles that keep slot machine players going back for more. The results of one study likened humans on social media to rats in a Skinner box — by maintaining a Snapchat streak or posting your vacation photos on Instagram, you’re rewarded with a flood of hearts on your screen or a little flame emoji (cue TikTok sound: “It’s like a reward”), and you’re conditioned to do it again and again.

But beyond app design, the reasons we can’t seem to detach ourselves from unhealthy cycles with social media are more complex, and probably linked to a lack of access to in-person social interaction outside of planned hangouts with familiar people or friends of friends. Even in a bustling university student center, I’ve noticed there aren’t many unscheduled collisions — with earbuds in, people signal that they don’t wish to be disturbed, no matter how much the brains between the earbuds might be craving conversations with new people.

For many members of Gen Z, most of our human interactions — everything from dating to brainstorming client strategy — now happen at least partially online. It’s certainly not the case for everyone: Many young people have thriving social lives IRL and use their phones only to send quick texts or to figure out their next move for the night. But many others feel powerless to resist the pull of the phone — if everyone else is online, being offline often means being alone.

In an unscientific yet interesting experiment, I recently polled my personal Instagram followers about the possibility of logging off completely. To one question, “Would you ever consider quitting social media for good?” 34 percent chose the response “I have, but can’t bring myself to do it.” The follow-up question: “If all your friends quit social media at once tomorrow, would you?” A surprising 42 percent responded, “Yes, definitely,” with 30 percent “Not sure” and the rest choosing “No, I still get value from these apps!”

It sometimes seems social media has turned everyone into an armchair psychologist, bringing awareness and language to some of the same mental health issues it exacerbates. For example, take the buzz around dopamine, that pleasure-inducing neurotransmitter that governs our mood, motivation and focus. “Dopamine detoxing” is a recent trend that aims to reset your brain’s reward center by giving it a break from things that usually give you a dopamine rush — social media included. Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman’s podcast episodes on dopamine have garnered millions of YouTube views, striking a chord with people seeking to improve their mood, reduce procrastination and increase focus in a distracting, overstimulating world.

The internet’s obsession with dopamine and how to harness its powers might be masking collective unease about our ability to pay adequate attention in the highly online environment exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic — I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how U.S.-based Google searches for “ADHD” have tripled since the first lockdowns in March 2020. Maintaining motivation and focus in the wake of a constantly pinging phone and email has certainly been on my mind — though I enjoy having many hobbies, projects and interests, I often find myself wishing for silence and slowness, a space to have more control over where I put my attention.

Gen Zers have already taken some impressive steps to solve our own problems with social media and tech overuse. Take Royce Branning, for example, a 2018 college graduate and founder of clearspace, an app that helps people control their “doomscrolling” sessions and reduce their screen time. His company recently hosted a “no phone social” (or, for those of you born before the mid-to-late ’90s, a social) in San Francisco, where participants exchanged their phones for notepads and disposable cameras at the door. The company’s blog post about the experience is fascinating and worth a read. Or check out the projects found at LookUp.live, an incubator that supports Gen Z’s efforts to create a technologically healthier future. They include online movements to encourage teens and college students to delete or take breaks from their social media accounts, and youth-created apps that support teen emotional wellness.

Tech-based solutions to tech-based problems are only half the story. Like with smoking and secondhand smoke, there are externalities to using the internet as the primary way we spend our time with others — namely, fewer in-person opportunities for connection, fewer unexpected conversations with strangers in elevators, fewer “no phone” events where we can give our brains a break from the powerfully addictive devices in our pockets.

There is a story in my family about my grandfather seeing his young son pick up a pack of cigarettes to play with. Though he’d been smoking for 15 years, the sight prompted my grandfather to quit instantly, cold turkey. Today, college-age kids and recent grads vow that they won’t have “iPad kids” (see such declarations here, here and here). Promising to keep the next generation from taking up bad habits is admirable. But if we can muster up the courage and support to quit for ourselves before then? Even better.

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