Let’s admit it: Facebook is bad for us

Even the social media giant admits its platform isn’t really safe for human consumption. So why are we still using it?

by: E.B. Johnson

Last week, I revealed some of my struggles with Facebook and the (seemingly) miraculous ways my life improved after I deleted the app from my phone.

A few weeks on from that momentous decision, I’m still riding high. I feel happier, less-anxious and more connected with the world around me. I know I’ve made the right decision for me, and it’s completely changed my perspective on social media; but that got me thinking — if Facebook is that toxic, why are we still using it?

Facebook Keeps You Addicted

It seems like we rely on Facebook for more and more aspects of both our social and professional lives.

Though I would love nothing more than to rip my profile off the site (middle finger soaring), I can’t do that. My career depends on Facebook and I rely on it for marketing, advertising and reaching new customers. More than that, I’m an expat, so I have no choice but to use Facebook to keep up with the friends and family that I left behind.

Facebook keeps us addicted, but it goes way beyond advertising or keeping up with your 4th grade bestie.

Operant conditioning is the key reason we get so hooked on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and even Twitter. Almost every major social media platform uses it, and it’s based on the scientific principle of variable rewards, which rewards the actions of users but a bit randomly.

This type of conditioning is designed by creating habits that are based around a series of triggers and desired behaviors. Facebook keeps you logging in because you need to keep seeing how many “likes” you have or how many new friend requests are waiting for you. After coming back a number of times, Facebook becomes a habit and — like second nature — you find yourself checking your phone every morning, just like clockwork.

There’s a number of other ways Facebook keeps you on the hook too, some more malicious than others.

It provides that validation you so desperately crave.

Humans crave validation. That’s just the way we were made. When we put something out into the universe, we want to know that it’s seen and more than anything we want to know that it’s loved or even “liked” by the masses.

Getting that numeric quantification that Facebook likes provide feels nice, and the visual feedback it provides feels even nicer to our simple little chimp brains.

FOMO

We all know that feeling of missing out on the exciting things that are going on in the lives of our friends. Facebook relies on this FOMO to keep you addicted to the platform.

It’s human to want to be a part of things and it’s even more human to be curious. This condition keeps us looking and scrolling, searching and creeping as we desperately try to make sure we aren’t missing out on any of the “good stuff”.

It gives you audible feedback.

While I usually keep my phone on silent, it was impossible not to pick it up on the rare occasion I heard that Messenger bubble ping.

You may not notice it, but the sounds that we hear whenever we get a Facebook notification are designed intentionally to get you to engage with the platform.

It’s kind of like a dog whistle. When you hear that high-pitched ding, you know there’s going to be a reward waiting for you on the other end. Your heart races. You pick up the phone. *Gasp*. It’s true. Someone loves your picture. Your place in the universe is affirmed.

Facebook notification sounds (including those of Messenger) are designed to increase anticipation and anxiety, which makes the whole process intoxicating and addictive. That’s no mistake. Developers have spent hours putting together the most addictive sounds, and use only the ones which are most likely to leave you reaching for the phone or the keyboard.

It forces you to become an investor.

The most addictive quality of Facebook, perhaps, is the way it forces you to become an investor in their platform. The more you create on the platform, the more emotional investment you have in it.

I can’t tell you how many times I hovered over “Permanently delete my account.” Time and time again I’ve dug to the bottom of my settings, prepared to make the final cut when I’ve been stopped dead in my tracks.

What about all those pictures from summer vacation of days gone by? What about all those pictures of old me? Happy me? Me with friends and family that are no longer here?

Facebook can quickly become your life mapping app and that’s intentional. The more you put onto the platform, the less likely you are to walk away.

The Dangers of Facebook Consumption

We’re led to believe that platforms like Facebook are the future and, in many ways, they are.

Facebook and other social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and even Snapchat let us stay connected with the world in a way that was never possible before. We can organize marches, rallies, family reunions; anything with just a few clicks of a button. We can find long-lost loves, learn about what’s happening in Istanbul or even finds new friends — all without ever leaving the comfort of our own homes.

Social media seems like a dream come true, but we’re quickly coming to realize that there are some serious downsides with the platform and the ways we currently consume it.

It destroys your self-esteem.

Too much Facebook use has an uncanny way of bottoming out your self-esteem. When we spend our time scrolling through the pictures of people who we perceive to have better lives than us, we soon start to make unfavorable comparisons against out own lives which lead to feelings of unfulfillment or even insecurity.

This might sound a bit wishy-washy but low self-esteem can actually have some negative side effects on our physical health.

In a small study focused around women who used social media platforms like Facebook, it was found that users who compared themselves to others were far more likely to be aware of and suffer from ailments such as muscle tension, sleep disturbance and even weight fluctuations.

When the participants started to feel all these negative feelings and ailments, their self-esteem further plummeted, leaving them with lower satisfaction rates when it came to their overall lives.

It degrades your mental health.

In 2017, a study from the University of Pittsburgh found that frequent social media users were 3x more likely to suffer from feelings of isolation and poor mental and vascular health.

While we tend to think that platforms like Facebook actually help us feel more connected with the world around us, they can actually make us feel more isolated. Some studies have even shown that heavy Facebook use actually decreases our subjective well-being over time.

When you’re feeling vulnerable or out-of-sorts, logging into Facebook preys on your feelings of FOMO or insecurity to reinforce your addiction and make you emotionally invested. It convinces you that your life is not as cool as everyone else’s and makes you envious of the triumphs and successes of your friends.

All of these negative thoughts and behaviors go to reinforce that negative self-talk that so many of us engage in. This can increase feelings of hopelessness, loneliness and even depression.

It undermines your relationships.

A Facebook addiction can go a long way to undermine the relationships that mean the most in our lives.

Facebook stalking is “a thing” and it eats into our relationships like a cancer. When you’re constantly checking up on your partners page, you’re undermining your relationship in a way that’s almost incomparable on any other social media platform.

Unwarranted suspicion undermines the trust that is crucial to any successful love match, and the constantly jealousy will eat you alive. Instead of talking to partners we resort to stalking partners, and before you know it we’re devoid of any trust and feeling absolutely miserable.

It chains you to a false-narrative.

Living your life through the lens of social media can leave you shackled to an image that is unauthentic and unoriginal.

Now that our employers can check in our Facebook profile to make sure we’re behaving in our off-times, our avatars are permeating into our real lives and chaining us to a false-narrative that can be toxic to our mental and emotional wellbeing.

We spend a lot of time projecting the person we wish we were onto our social media profiles. Soon, this comes to be what the people around us expect and we find ourselves stuck in a box and feeling suffocated. We feel like we can’t grow, we feel like we can’t change.

Worst of all, we come to feel like we’re imposters that can’t even be at home in our own skin.

How Do We Stop It

Short answer? We can’t. Not right now, anyway. But there are some ways you can limit the negative effects that Facebook has on your life.

You can train yourself to use Facebook more productively and wean yourself off of your social media addiction. A good place to start is by deleting the app from your phone so that you can regroup, but there are some other good ways to limit the giant’s access to you as well.

Track your Facebook time by using the platform’s built in time-tracker, or the time-tracker that comes standard on most newer smartphones. Keep a journal and track your feelings before, during and after using the app so you can come to identify the triggers that make the worst out of your Facebook experience.

You can also clean up your Friends list to limit the negative interactions you engage in on the platform. This is the tip that goes the longest way in helping you to control those pesky negative thoughts, but it’s not easy and takes some really honest soul searching (do you really need to keep that cousin you never see that keeps fighting with you about Trump?).

If all else fails engage in a good old digital detox.

This simple method requires only that you turn off all alerts, all notifications and log out of the app completely. Doing this, you gain control of your own attention once more and can start to reconnect with the people and things around you that matter most — organically!

Putting it all together…

So if Facebook is so bad for us, why do we keep using it? Simple, we’re addicted and so is the rest of society.

Facebook has become an integral part of our day to day because they’ve made a concentrated effort to hook us with their sights, sounds and empty validations. We love Facebook because it lets us feel like we’re connected, but it causes us to lose touch with many of the best and biggest things in life. It can increase our feelings of isolation, drive wedges into our closest relationships and even leave us sleepless, feeling anxious and depressed.

We can’t currently stop the massive toll that Facebook is having on our society, but we can limit the impact it has on us.

By digital detoxing and taking a step back when we’re feeling vulnerable, we can protect our sanity and our physical well-being from the negative side-effects that Facebook has on us. This space allows us to develop a deeper understanding of our intentions and the patterns in our life and allows us to reconnect with deeper vein that connects us all.

Mindfulness is the key to a happy life, so maybe it’s time for us to mindfully step away from Facebook and admit that it’s doing more harm than good. In the end it’s up to us.

Change won’t start at the top. It starts from the ground up.