How big tech is keeping us online – and why you should care

Tech companies are playing a negative part on how we consume social media, but there are some figures advocating for a change

There is no denying, tech companies are competing for our attention. Social media, which was once a tool to connect with friends and family, has become a toxic environment where fake news reigns and addictive design features are dictating our lives. Companies like Meta, Google and ByteDance are gluing us to the screen while profiting from it.

YouTube’s auto-play mode has long been criticised for keeping us hooked on our phones, suggesting content that we could potentially like. And so have their ads, which continue to be played automatically.

That can be a delicate issue for tech companies because, for some, it is one of their main revenue streams. If we are not watching them, they are not cashing in. But, worse than that, what has really become a hotly debated issue, is how their carefully considered design is affecting our mental health, and especially young people’s mental health.

In addition to YouTube’s, and Facebook’s, video auto-play feature, Apple has removed the physical home button on its devices in the past, so that we spend more time swiping and touching them.

Armies of designers and engineers are hired to intentionally make us stay online longer than we intended to or look at content that we were not planning on looking at. Notifications and algorithmically-suggested posts have also been proven to release dopamine by our brains.

In an interview on PBS’s NewsHour, Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google – hired to ethically steer people’s thoughts when thinking of design features – who helped design Gmail’s Inbox app, said: “There was no one on the Gmail team who said how can we addict people to email. There was no one who said that. That was never a goal. But you did hear conversations like, should we make it buzz your phone every single time you get an email?”.

Tech companies do not go out saying their intention is to debilitate our mental health and turn us into social media addicts. What they seem to be doing is making it easier for us to become so. According to the Guardian, we are interacting with our phones 2,617 times a day on average – a worrying number.

“Big Tech did not care if I counted my likes or followers and quantified my worth consistently for years. They did not care, as long as my eyes were on the screen, and as long as I was making them profit”

The time we spend on our phones has become more than considered normal. It has become an obsession, facilitated by Big Tech. In young people, it seems like it has taken a worrying turn. Social media apps like Snapchat grow their engagement by awarding badges to users who spend time on the app exchanging messages the most.

It is hard not to connect the dots and realise the algorithm seems to be working like a slot machine. The introduction of infinite feeds on social media has made spending what seemed like five minutes on our phones, a good half an hour thanks to the bombardment of algorithmically driven posts of cute pets and cooking demos.

Phones themselves are so bad that a study has shown that their sheer presence damages cognitive capacity. Reducing our time on it would not only improve our mental health, it would also make us a tiny bit smarter.

But there are young people trying to make tech companies liable for it, one of them is Emma Lembke. Ms Lembke is a university student at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and she is lobbying for the regulation of social media in the US.

“There’s room for tech companies to be held accountable, but what needs to happen for that reform to take place is a diversity of voices and at the heart of those conversations, there has to be the people that you are trying to protect: young people. They need to be leading those conversations by leveraging their stories and their experiences”. Her fierce introduction in a recent interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes made me realise she is not joking.

Ms Lembke signed up for Instagram at the age of twelve and found herself looking at harmful content, which caused her to have disordered eating habits. Most of all, what seemed to have enraged her was the fact that Big Tech did not care. With Aliza Kopans, she co-founded Technically Politics, a youth lobbying movement that aims to regulate social media platforms.

“Big Tech did not care if I counted my likes or followers and quantified my worth consistently for years. They did not care, as long as my eyes were on the screen, and as long as I was making them profit”, she said.

Last year, Ms Lembke and Ms Kopans wrote an open letter to tech CEOs in the Los Angeles Times asking them to redesign their platforms by thinking about teens’ experiences on them, remove targeted ads and disable auto-play by default. Much of Ms Lembke’s depression and anxiety symptoms stemmed from the perpetual cycle of content that she did not want to see, so it is a very personal issue to her.

In June 2020, Ms Lembke decided to found the Log Off movement – a movement for and by young people who want to switch off from social media. It was created as a space of conversation, support and to raise awareness about the dangers of social media addiction.

On the reasons why she started it, Ms Lembke said in an interview with the New York Times: “It was the fact that personal stories were not being told and there was not an epicenter where people could come together and say: here’s my personal experience. Here’s how I was harmed.”

I was personally invited to the online group on a messaging app and saw the power of exchanging ideas on the importance and relevance of social media as well as sharing frustrations about time spent online. Ms Lemke regularly updates the group with news about court cases involving social media companies and ways of coping with negative content.

“We are discussing ways we can move forward with technology and allow it to become a tool again rather than a controller”, Ms Lembke emphasised. Her goal is to gather testimonials and share them with legislators, so that the younger generation becomes part of the conversation.

The importance of mental health

Mental health is one of the strongest arguments when advocating for the regulation of social media. Specialists stress that, politically, regulating it would bring benefits to our psychological welfare. They also say the symptoms of addiction can be a warning sign to seek help.

“Those of us who have some sort of vulnerability or who are at risk of developing mental disorders, can usually encounter a variety of psychological triggers with the excessive use of social media”, says Diego Rabelo, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.

Vulnerable groups are also at risk of developing eating disorders because of the easy accessibility to the topic online.

“Excessive social media exposure to those who are highly vulnerable – women and ethnosexual minority groups – can be a trigger to binge eating or not eating at all, for example”, he said.

Topics such as suicidal behaviour and mutilation can be accessed instantly in web forums like Reddit at a tap of a finger, something that concerns healthcare professionals.

Mr Rabelo says social media, per se, might not directly make someone commit suicide in most cases, but it definitely has the power to influence suicidal thoughts.

“Virtual emotional contagion happens when someone consumes an online content that can lead to or influence them to change their behaviour”, he said.

“Thinking in political terms”, Mr Rabelo said, “a solution to this would be some form of more efficacious social media regulation”. Dangerous web forums and social media feeds, according to him, should not be so easily accessible to anyone, let alone young people.

Mr Rabelo’s views on the dangers of an unmoderated web are resounding. An unregulated social media environment, where young people can quickly create profiles and even dodge age verification is far from enough.

The argument that perhaps parents should be looking after their children more carefully is helpful, but not effective as this is an issue which could affect anyone.

When it comes to practical psychological solutions to symptoms related to excessive social media use or harmful content, Mr Rabelo says: “Minimise your social media exposure for a period of time”. He recommends reducing time on social media “bit by bit”, rather than abruptly. Socialising in person with friends and family is also one of his suggestions.

Indeed, face-to-face contact makes us feel more connected with others, it works brilliantly for our mental health. As a central point, mental health can not only be used as a catalyst against unhealthy social media consumption, it can also be the premise in the fight for a better social media landscape for us and especially the young.

The future of social media

TikTok has been in the news recently. Its future in the US seemed uncertain thanks to its links to China-based parent company, ByteDance. There was a growing concern its US users could have had their data collected by the Chinese government.

Sou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee for five hours last March. Amounted to that are the recent lawsuits made against TikTok by Indiana’s attorney general, one of them claiming the social media app is unfit for under-18-year-old users, and a recent study alleging that harmful content had been surfacing to teenage users within minutes of them creating a TikTok profile.

Meta, another giant, has known in the past Instagram was pushing dangerous content to girls. Other companies like Snap Inc., Snapchat’s developer, and Google have been sued for causing a “youth mental health crisis” in the US.

There are also rumours that social media is becoming less social. It seems it is not so much a place to keep in touch with friends and family anymore. Instead, it has become a “corporatised” environment and a window for self-promotion.

There have been studies, however, one of them by Pew Research, which said 71% of teenagers between 13 and 17 years old say social media can actually be quite a good space for connection and creativity.

It is a fair argument. Social media can definitely make people feel more connected, even if that connection is happening behind a screen. But it is important to take into account the fact that when badly used, it has tremendously negative psychological effects. For some, its dangers outweigh its positives.

An unregulated social media environment, where content runs free, is putting the mental health of both young people and adults in detriment. For it to work for everyone, some crucial and punctual moderation needs to take place with tech companies following through government policy.

Social media has undoubtedly brought a sense of belonging to our everyday lives, but its risks, specifically related to content that is harmful, have caused much trauma to a wealth of users.

Tech companies should be making more than building age-verification walls, they should be creating a space where users are free from content that can lead to self-harm and, at worst, suicide. Moderation and regulation, it must be said, are essential for a healthy social media environment.

Without the willingness of both Big Tech and government authorities, our mental health could be more under threat than we think.

Feature image by Fellipe Pigatto