The original purpose of social media was a good one: to reconnect old friends. But it got weaponized and over-optimized to increase engagement and thus ad views.
Hi Emily Morgan, Wow I feel honored to be here from the other side of the world, where I live. Here's my theory:
So many people feel disempowered, like nothing really works for them in the grander sense. You referenced it as a motivation deficit. I think the grander sense is the main problem, because our benchmarks are the rich and famous, and our little piece of the pie can never measure up. (Why do we compare anyway? Let's just judge ourselves by our own yesterdays.)
When our goals don't match with our perceived and interpreted circumstances, our protective mechanism signals us with a bad feeling. Well, in a neutral sense it is just a bodily contraction, but it is us that further interprets that as "bad" or unwanted. (Remember this all starts out by our judging ourselves with an erroneous standard.)
So one solution is, DON'T GO THERE. Use feelings as a flag-pole, and navigate a zigzag path through life, coasting on a high. It is a life full of avoidance and diversion. You called it sticking with the dopamine, or the brain's pleasure and reward system. Diversion and Entertainment amounts to $ 100's of billions.
Dopamine is a chemical, but I am saying that the body makes it, and mostly when our world view is validated by our perceived environment. You could also call it our sense of justice, well, justice for me, I deserve these things. It is only our believed in explanation that is out of sync with reality. I am saying that your use of the word dopamine puts a simple process at an arms length, a needless complication.
Recapping: (some) people navigate only by their internal feelings, and they don't want to consider the content of any message. The content may be loaded with "feeling-booby-traps". So they dumb themselves down.
Agency, motivation, and clarity are acquired step by step, and you have to start with a small string of successes. This is where coaching could get the ball rolling. The seed that must be planted is that small is beautiful; and meaningful. The so-called flow, comes out of this process. I call it "your own process", which means you can't always be looking out to the experts. Trying to get to that short-cut.
The most difficult thing about listening to others is becoming deaf to yourself.
When you say, "push forward with fresh conviction to develop the pillars of a new culture, undeterred by all the challenges and negativity”, who is going to rally around this cry? It is an unimaginable work of the collective.
I council to stick with the you and the me. For now let's just try to develop our self-expression and engage with it. (We're writing here and commenting.) The engagement will bring some fruit, which we don't know what it will be. Then also building our self-confidence, so that when opportunities do arise, we can at least notice them, and then maybe take courage and act on a few of them.
Courage is not all that difficult, if you classify it as an experiment. A little experiment set in one corner of my laboratory of life.
I shall be honest - I don't know that I agree with absolutely all of your points. (Or rather, I don't absolutely agree with all of your points.) I do agree that social media is a dopamine prison - however, I feel compelled to point out that it's far from being the *only* dopamine prison. I can say from personal experience that any activity (that isn't what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment) can be easily turned into a dopamine prison, all because of another of your points that I agreed with - that our dopamine prisons are simply attempts to avoid unpleasant feelings. (#enneagram7, anyone??)
I suppose my main quibble is what you seemed to be implying: "Get off social media and you won't be trapped in shallowness anymore." When, however, shallowness is there to be found in everything we do - just as depth is there to be found, even in social media. (It is very difficult to do, to keep a tight enough reign on the Scroll Factor; and the nauseatingly constant ads make it even harder - but I do believe that it's possible.)
But I must say: "motivation deficit" smacked me between the eyes. That's exactly what it is for me.
All that to say: Lots of food for thought here, and I needed some of the reminders in this post. Thanks for writing this!
The original purpose of social media was a good one: to reconnect old friends. But it got weaponized and over-optimized to increase engagement and thus ad views.
Very thought provoking and brilliant. Well done.
Thank you!
Hi Emily Morgan, Wow I feel honored to be here from the other side of the world, where I live. Here's my theory:
So many people feel disempowered, like nothing really works for them in the grander sense. You referenced it as a motivation deficit. I think the grander sense is the main problem, because our benchmarks are the rich and famous, and our little piece of the pie can never measure up. (Why do we compare anyway? Let's just judge ourselves by our own yesterdays.)
When our goals don't match with our perceived and interpreted circumstances, our protective mechanism signals us with a bad feeling. Well, in a neutral sense it is just a bodily contraction, but it is us that further interprets that as "bad" or unwanted. (Remember this all starts out by our judging ourselves with an erroneous standard.)
So one solution is, DON'T GO THERE. Use feelings as a flag-pole, and navigate a zigzag path through life, coasting on a high. It is a life full of avoidance and diversion. You called it sticking with the dopamine, or the brain's pleasure and reward system. Diversion and Entertainment amounts to $ 100's of billions.
Dopamine is a chemical, but I am saying that the body makes it, and mostly when our world view is validated by our perceived environment. You could also call it our sense of justice, well, justice for me, I deserve these things. It is only our believed in explanation that is out of sync with reality. I am saying that your use of the word dopamine puts a simple process at an arms length, a needless complication.
Recapping: (some) people navigate only by their internal feelings, and they don't want to consider the content of any message. The content may be loaded with "feeling-booby-traps". So they dumb themselves down.
Agency, motivation, and clarity are acquired step by step, and you have to start with a small string of successes. This is where coaching could get the ball rolling. The seed that must be planted is that small is beautiful; and meaningful. The so-called flow, comes out of this process. I call it "your own process", which means you can't always be looking out to the experts. Trying to get to that short-cut.
The most difficult thing about listening to others is becoming deaf to yourself.
When you say, "push forward with fresh conviction to develop the pillars of a new culture, undeterred by all the challenges and negativity”, who is going to rally around this cry? It is an unimaginable work of the collective.
I council to stick with the you and the me. For now let's just try to develop our self-expression and engage with it. (We're writing here and commenting.) The engagement will bring some fruit, which we don't know what it will be. Then also building our self-confidence, so that when opportunities do arise, we can at least notice them, and then maybe take courage and act on a few of them.
Courage is not all that difficult, if you classify it as an experiment. A little experiment set in one corner of my laboratory of life.
Thanks for your writing. I look forward to it.
.
I shall be honest - I don't know that I agree with absolutely all of your points. (Or rather, I don't absolutely agree with all of your points.) I do agree that social media is a dopamine prison - however, I feel compelled to point out that it's far from being the *only* dopamine prison. I can say from personal experience that any activity (that isn't what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment) can be easily turned into a dopamine prison, all because of another of your points that I agreed with - that our dopamine prisons are simply attempts to avoid unpleasant feelings. (#enneagram7, anyone??)
I suppose my main quibble is what you seemed to be implying: "Get off social media and you won't be trapped in shallowness anymore." When, however, shallowness is there to be found in everything we do - just as depth is there to be found, even in social media. (It is very difficult to do, to keep a tight enough reign on the Scroll Factor; and the nauseatingly constant ads make it even harder - but I do believe that it's possible.)
But I must say: "motivation deficit" smacked me between the eyes. That's exactly what it is for me.
All that to say: Lots of food for thought here, and I needed some of the reminders in this post. Thanks for writing this!