Why large groups of people often come to the same conclusions
Study confirms the existence of a special kind of groupthink in large groups.
14 January, 2021
Credit: Kaleb Nimz/Unsplash
- Large groups of people everywhere tend to come to the same conclusions.
- In small groups, there's a much wider diversity of ideas.
- The mechanics of a large group make some ideas practically inevitable.
<p>People make sense of the world by organizing things into categories and naming them. "These are circles." "That's a tree." "Those are rocks." It's one way we tame our world. There's a weird correspondence between different cultures, though — even though we come from different places and very different circumstances, cultures everywhere develop largely the same categorizations.</p><p>"But this raises a big scientific puzzle," <a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/why-independent-cultures-think-alike-its-not-in-the-brain" target="_blank">says Damon Centola</a> of the University of Pennsylvania. "If people are so different, why do anthropologists find the same categories, for instance for shapes, colors, and emotions, arising independently in many different cultures? Where do these categories come from and why is there so much similarity across independent populations?"</p><p>Centola is the senior investigator of a new study in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20037-y?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncomms%2Frss%2Fcurrent+%28Nature+Communications+-+current%29" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nature Communications</a> from the Network Dynamics Group (NDG) at the Annenberg School for Communication that explores how such categorization happens.</p><p>Some have theorized that these categories are innate—pre-wired in our brains—but the study says "nope." Its authors hypothesize that it has more to do with the dynamics of large groups, or networks.</p>
The grouping game
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDE2Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjI2MzA4OX0.RLrswIWbuEzHNqsw0F7EUrp9jPn7OulLPqCxcZT11ik/img.jpg?width=980" id="159b8" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0feb15d2d7dde144c710c2f4f1e5350c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2767" data-height="382" />Some of the shapes used in the experiment
Credit: Guilbeault, et al./University of Pennsylvania
<p>The researchers tested their theory with 1,480 people playing an online "Grouping Game" via Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. The individuals were paired with another participant or made a member of a group of 6, 8, 24, or 50 people. Each pair and group were tasked with categorizing the symbols shown above, and they could see each other's answers.</p><p>The small groups came up with wildly divergent categories—the entire experiment produced nearly 5,000 category suggestions—while the larger groups came up with categorization systems that were virtually identical to each other.</p><p><a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/why-independent-cultures-think-alike-its-not-in-the-brain" target="_blank">Says Centola</a>, "Even though we predicted it, I was nevertheless stunned to see it really happen. This result challenges many long-held ideas about culture and how it forms."</p><p>Nor was this unanimity a matter of having teamed-up like-minded individuals. "If I assign an individual to a small group," says lead author Douglas Guilbeault, "they are much more likely to arrive at a category system that is very idiosyncratic and specific to them. But if I assign that same individual to a large group, I can predict the category system that they will end up creating, regardless of whatever unique viewpoint that person happens to bring to the table."</p>Why this happens
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDE4NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMjkzMDg0Nn0.u2hdEIgNw4drFZ2frzx0AJ_MAxIizuM98rdovQrIblk/img.jpg?width=980" id="d3444" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5da57d66e388fad0f1c17afb09af90a7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="822" />The many categories suggested by small groups on the left, the few from large groups on the right
Credit: Guilbeault, et al./Nature Communications
<p>The striking results of the experiment correspond to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0607-5" target="_blank">previous study</a> done by NDG that investigated tipping points for people's behavior in networks.</p><p>That study concluded that after an idea enters a discussion among a large network of people, it can gain irresistible traction by popping up again and again in enough individuals' conversations. In networks of 50 people or more, such ideas eventually reach critical mass and become a prevailing opinion.</p><p>The same phenomenon does not happen often enough within a smaller network, where fewer interactions offer an idea less of an opportunity to take hold.</p>Beyond categories
<p>The study's finding raises an interesting practical possibility: Would categorization-related decisions made by large groups be less likely to fall prey to members' individual biases?</p><p>With this question in mind, the researchers are currently looking into content moderation on Facebook and Twitter. They're investigating whether the platforms would be wiser when categorizing content as free speech or hate speech if large groups were making these decisions instead of lone individuals working at these companies.</p><p>Similarly, they're also exploring the possibility that larger networks of doctors and healthcare professionals might be better at making diagnoses that would avoid biases such as racism or sexism that could cloud the judgment of individual practitioners.</p><p>"Many of the worst social problems reappear in every culture," notes Centola, "which leads some to believe these problems are intrinsic to the human condition. Our research shows that these problems are intrinsic to the social experiences humans have, not necessarily to humans themselves. If we can alter that social experience, we can change the way people organize things, and address some of the world's greatest problems."</p>
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3 reasons for information exhaustion – and what to do about it
How to deal with "epistemic exhaustion."
26 November, 2020
Photo by Filip Mishevski on Unsplash
An endless flow of information is coming at us constantly: It might be an article a friend shared on Facebook with a sensational headline or wrong information about the spread of the coronavirus.
<p> It could even be a call from a relative wanting to talk about a political issue. </p><p>All this information may leave many of us feeling as though we have no energy to engage. </p><p>As a <a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/hf1190" target="_blank">philosopher</a> who studies <a href="https://philpeople.org/profiles/mark-satta" target="_blank">knowledge-sharing practices</a>, I call this experience “epistemic exhaustion." The term “epistemic" comes from the Greek word <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/" target="_blank">episteme</a>, often translated as “knowledge." So epistemic exhaustion is more of a knowledge-related exhaustion.</p><p>It is not knowledge itself that tires out many of us. Rather, it is the process of trying to gain or share knowledge under challenging circumstances. </p><p>Currently, there are at least three common sources that, from my perspective, are leading to such exhaustion. But there are also ways to deal with them. </p>
<h2>1. Uncertainty</h2><p>For many, this year has been full of uncertainty. In particular, the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076820930665" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coronavirus pandemic</a> has generated uncertainty about health, about best practices and about the future.</p><p>At the same time, Americans have faced <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/07/voters-anxiously-approach-an-unusual-election-and-its-potentially-uncertain-aftermath/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">uncertainty about the U.S. presidential election</a>: first due to delayed results and now over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/trump-power-transfer-2020-election.html?searchResultPosition=3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">questions about a peaceful transition of power</a>.</p><p>Experiencing <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-uncertainty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">uncertainty can stress most of us out</a>. People tend to prefer the planned and the predictable. Figures from 17th-century French philosopher <a href="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/15537/1/Certainty%20and%20Explanation%20in%20Descartes%20HOPOS%20AcceptedFinal.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">René Descartes</a> to 20th-century Austrian philosopher <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/762159.On_Certainty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ludwig Wittgenstein</a> have recognized the significance of having certainty in our lives.</p><p>With information so readily available, people may be checking news sites or social media in hopes of finding answers. But often, people are instead greeted with more reminders of uncertainty.</p>
<h2>2. Polarization</h2><p>Political polarization <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/robert-barrett-phd/the-stress-from-political-polarization-is-killing-us-slowly_a_23350469/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">is stressing many Americans out</a>.</p><p>As political scientist <a href="https://gvpt.umd.edu/facultyprofile/mason/lilliana" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lilliana Mason</a> notes in her book, "<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo27527354.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uncivil Disagreement: How Politics Became Our Identity</a>," Americans have been increasingly dividing politically "into two partisan teams."</p><p>Many writers have discussed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/extreme-political-polarization-weakens-democracy-can-the-us-avoid-that-fate-105540" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">negative effects of polarization</a>, such as how it can damage democracy. But discussions about the harms of polarization often overlook the toll polarization takes on our ability to gain and share knowledge.</p><p>That can happen in at least two ways.</p><p>First, as philosopher <a href="https://www.kevinvallier.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kevin Vallier</a> has argued, there is a "<a href="https://www.kevinvallier.com/reconciled/low-trust-exacerbates-polarization/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">causal feedback loop</a>" between polarization and distrust. In other words, polarization and distrust fuel one another. Such a cycle can leave people feeling <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/284357/polarization-may-undermine-community-bonds-trust-others.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">unsure whom to trust or what to believe</a>.</p><p>Second, polarization can lead to <a href="https://time.com/5907318/polarization-2020-election/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">competing narratives</a> because in a deeply polarized society, as studies show, we can <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/for/16/1/article-p47.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lose common ground</a> and tend to have less agreement.</p><p>For those inclined to take the views of others seriously, this can create additional cognitive work. And when the issues are heated or sensitive, this can create additional <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190926073348.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stress and emotional burdens</a>, such as sadness over damaged friendships or anger over partisan rhetoric.</p>
<h2>3. Misinformation</h2><p>Viral misinformation is everywhere. This includes <a href="https://iop.harvard.edu/get-involved/study-groups/propaganda-today%E2%80%99s-american-politics" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">political propaganda in the United States</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/review/peter-pomerantsev-this-is-not-propaganda.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">around the world</a>.</p><p>People are also inundated with advertising and misleading messaging from private corporations, what philosophers <a href="http://cailinoconnor.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cailin O'Connor</a> and <a href="http://jamesowenweatherall.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">James Owen Weatherall</a> have called "<a href="https://heterodoxacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/062_Cailin_oConnor_How_False_Beliefs_Spread.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">industrial propaganda</a>." And in 2020, the public is also dealing with <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01452-z" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">misinformation about COVID-19</a>.</p><p>As chess grandmaster <a href="https://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/808750564284702720?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Garry Kasparov put it</a>: "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth."</p><p>Misinformation is often exhausting by design. For example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-plandemic-and-the-seven-traits-of-conspiratorial-thinking-138483" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a video that went viral,</a> "<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2020/05/08/why-its-important-to-push-back-on-plandemic-and-how-to-do-it/?sh=3e430c9e5fa3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Plandemic</a>," featured a large number of false claims about COVID-19 in rapid succession. This flooding of misinformation in rapid succession, a tactic known as a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/9/26/13036258/donald-trump-debate-win-lies-preparation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gish gallop</a>, makes it challenging and time-consuming for fact checkers to refute the many falsehoods following one after another.</p>
<h2>What to do?</h2><p>With all this uncertainty, polarization and misinformation, feeling tired is understandable. But there are things one can do.</p><p>The American Psychological Association suggests <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-uncertainty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coping with uncertainty</a> through activities like limiting news consumption and focusing on things in one's control. Another option is to work on becoming more <a href="https://pemachodronfoundation.org/product/comfortable-with-uncertainty-book/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">comfortable with uncertainty</a> through practices such as meditation and the cultivation of mindfulness.</p><p>To deal with polarization, consider communicating with the goal of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phpr.12624" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">creating empathetic understanding</a> rather than "winning." Philosopher <a href="http://mjhannon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Michael Hannon</a> describes empathetic understanding as "the ability to take up another person's perspective."</p><p>As for limiting the spread of misinformation: Share only those news stories that you've read and verified. And you can prioritize outlets that meet high ethical <a href="https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">journalistic</a> or <a href="https://www.poynter.org/ifcn-fact-checkers-code-of-principles/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fact-checking standards</a>.</p><p>These solutions are limited and imperfect, but that's all right. Part of resisting epistemic exhaustion is learning to live with the limited and imperfect. No one has time to vet all the headlines, correct all the misinformation or gain all the relevant knowledge. To deny this is to set oneself up for exhaustion.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149615/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation"></p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-satta-1173820" target="_blank">Mark Satta</a>, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/wayne-state-university-989" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wayne State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-for-information-exhaustion-and-what-to-do-about-it-149615" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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Using machine learning to track the pandemic’s impact on mental health
Textual analysis of social media posts finds users' anxiety and suicide-risk levels are rising, among other negative trends.
17 November, 2020
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Dealing with a global pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of millions of people.
<p> A team of MIT and Harvard University researchers has shown that they can measure those effects by analyzing the language that people use to express their anxiety online.</p><p>Using machine learning to analyze the text of more than 800,000 Reddit posts, the researchers were able to identify changes in the tone and content of language that people used as the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic progressed, from January to April of 2020. Their analysis revealed several key changes in conversations about mental health, including an overall increase in discussion about anxiety and suicide.</p><p>"We found that there were these natural clusters that emerged related to suicidality and loneliness, and the amount of posts in these clusters more than doubled during the pandemic as compared to the same months of the preceding year, which is a grave concern," says Daniel Low, a graduate student in the Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology at Harvard and MIT and the lead author of the study.</p>
<p>The analysis also revealed varying impacts on people who already suffer from different types of mental illness. The findings could help psychiatrists, or potentially moderators of the Reddit forums that were studied, to better identify and help people whose mental health is suffering, the researchers say.</p><p>"When the mental health needs of so many in our society are inadequately met, even at baseline, we wanted to bring attention to the ways that many people are suffering during this time, in order to amplify and inform the allocation of resources to support them," says Laurie Rumker, a graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics PhD Program at Harvard and one of the authors of the study.</p><p>Satrajit Ghosh, a principal research scientist at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of the <a href="https://www.jmir.org/2020/10/e22635" target="_blank">study</a>, which appears in the <em>Journal of Medical Internet Research</em>. Other authors of the paper include Tanya Talkar, a graduate student in the Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology at Harvard and MIT; John Torous, director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and Guillermo Cecchi, a principal research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.</p>
<h3>A wave of anxiety</h3><p>The new study grew out of the MIT class 6.897/HST.956 (Machine Learning for Healthcare), in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Low, Rumker, and Talkar, who were all taking the course last spring, had done some previous research on using machine learning to detect mental health disorders based on how people speak and what they say. After the Covid-19 pandemic began, they decided to focus their class project on analyzing Reddit forums devoted to different types of mental illness.</p><p>"When Covid hit, we were all curious whether it was affecting certain communities more than others," Low says. "Reddit gives us the opportunity to look at all these subreddits that are specialized support groups. It's a really unique opportunity to see how these different communities were affected differently as the wave was happening, in real-time."</p><p>The researchers analyzed posts from 15 subreddit groups devoted to a variety of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder. They also included a handful of groups devoted to topics not specifically related to mental health, such as personal finance, fitness, and parenting.</p><p>Using several types of natural language processing algorithms, the researchers measured the frequency of words associated with topics such as anxiety, death, isolation, and substance abuse, and grouped posts together based on similarities in the language used. These approaches allowed the researchers to identify similarities between each group's posts after the onset of the pandemic, as well as distinctive differences between groups.</p>
<p>The researchers found that while people in most of the support groups began posting about Covid-19 in March, the group devoted to health anxiety started much earlier, in January. However, as the pandemic progressed, the other mental health groups began to closely resemble the health anxiety group, in terms of the language that was most often used. At the same time, the group devoted to personal finance showed the most negative semantic change from January to April 2020, and significantly increased the use of words related to economic stress and negative sentiment.</p><p>They also discovered that the mental health groups affected the most negatively early in the pandemic were those related to ADHD and eating disorders. The researchers hypothesize that without their usual social support systems in place, due to lockdowns, people suffering from those disorders found it much more difficult to manage their conditions. In those groups, the researchers found posts about hyperfocusing on the news and relapsing back into anorexia-type behaviors since meals were not being monitored by others due to quarantine.</p><p>Using another algorithm, the researchers grouped posts into clusters such as loneliness or substance use, and then tracked how those groups changed as the pandemic progressed. Posts related to suicide more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels, and the groups that became significantly associated with the suicidality cluster during the pandemic were the support groups for borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.</p><p>The researchers also found the introduction of new topics specifically seeking mental health help or social interaction. "The topics within these subreddit support groups were shifting a bit, as people were trying to adapt to a new life and focus on how they can go about getting more help if needed," Talkar says.</p><p>While the authors emphasize that they cannot implicate the pandemic as the sole cause of the observed linguistic changes, they note that there was much more significant change during the period from January to April in 2020 than in the same months in 2019 and 2018, indicating the changes cannot be explained by normal annual trends.</p>
<h3>Mental health resources</h3><p>This type of analysis could help mental health care providers identify segments of the population that are most vulnerable to declines in mental health caused by not only the Covid-19 pandemic but other mental health stressors such as controversial elections or natural disasters, the researchers say.</p><p>Additionally, if applied to Reddit or other social media posts in real-time, this analysis could be used to offer users additional resources, such as guidance to a different support group, information on how to find mental health treatment, or the number for a suicide hotline.</p><p>"Reddit is a very valuable source of support for a lot of people who are suffering from mental health challenges, many of whom may not have formal access to other kinds of mental health support, so there are implications of this work for ways that support within Reddit could be provided," Rumker says.</p><p>The researchers now plan to apply this approach to study whether posts on Reddit and other social media sites can be used to detect mental health disorders. One current project involves screening posts in a social media site for veterans for suicide risk and post-traumatic stress disorder.</p><p>The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the McGovern Institute.</p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a target="_blank" href="http://news.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer">MIT News</a>. Read the <a target="_blank" href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/covid-19-impact-mental-health-1105" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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The Matrix is already here: Social media promised to connect us, but left us isolated, scared and tribal
The more you like, follow and share, the faster you find yourself moving in that political direction.
12 November, 2020
Photo by Dan LeFebvre on Unsplash
About a year ago I began to follow my interest in health and fitness on Instagram. Soon I began to see more and more fitness-related accounts, groups, posts and ads.
<p> I kept clicking and following, and eventually my Instagram became all about fit people, fitness and motivational material, and advertisements. Does this sound familiar?</p><p>While the algorithms and my brain kept me scrolling on the endless feeds, I was reminded of what digital marketers like to say: “Money is in the list." That is, the more customized your group, people and page follows, the less time and money is needed to sell you related ideas. Instead, brand ambassadors will do the work, spreading products, ideas and ideologies with passion and free of charge. </p><p><a href="https://www.starclab.org/members/arash-javanbakht" target="_blank">I'm a psychiatrist</a> who studies anxiety and stress, and I often write about how our politics and culture are mired in fear and tribalism. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/marina-arakcheieva-57850916/" target="_blank">My co-author</a> is a digital marketing expert who brings expertise to the technological-psychological aspect of this discussion. With the nation on edge, we believe it's critical to look at how easily our society is being manipulated into tribalism in the age of social media. Even after the exhausting election cycle is over, the division persists, if not widening, and conspiracy theories continue to emerge, grow and divide on the social media. Based on our knowledge of stress, fear and social media, we offer you some ways to weather the next few days, and protect yourself against the current divisive environment.</p>
<h2>The promise, the Matrix</h2><p>Those of us old enough to know what life was like before social media may remember how exciting Facebook was at its inception. Imagine, the ability to connect with old friends we had not seen for decades! Then, Facebook was a virtual dynamic conversation. This brilliant idea, to connect to others with shared experiences and interests, was strengthened with the advent of Twitter, Instagram and apps.</p><p>Things did not remain that simple. These platforms have morphed into Frankenstein's monsters, filled with so-called friends we've never met, slanted news stories, celebrity gossip, self-aggrandizement and ads.</p><p>The artificial intelligence behind these platforms determines what you see based on your social media and web activity, including <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ds/preferences/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">your engagement</a> with pages and ads. For example, on Twitter you may follow the politicians you like. Twitter algorithms quickly respond and show you more posts and people related to that political leaning. The more you like, follow and share, the faster you find yourself moving in that political direction. There is, however, this nuance: Those algorithms tracking you are often triggered by your <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-of-fright-why-we-love-to-be-scared-85885" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">negative emotions</a>, typically impulsivity or anger.</p><p>As a result, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_Jq42Og7Q&fbclid=IwAR0rdHWlYYnBmmxVwTD36JZ__HQfaU9BcgifDNFuG4stTLLyQvykIh5cvNo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the algorithms</a> amplify the negative and then spread it by sharing it among groups. This might play a role in the widespread anger among those engaged in politics, regardless of their side of the aisle.</p>
<h2>The digital tribe</h2><p>Eventually, the algorithms expose us mostly to the ideology of one "digital tribe" – the same way my Instagram world became only superfit and active people. This is how one's Matrix can become the extremes of conservatism, liberalism, different religions, climate change worriers or deniers or other ideologies. Members of each tribe keep consuming and feeding one another the same ideology while policing one another against opening up to "the others."</p><p>We are inherently tribal creatures anyway; but particularly when we're scared, we regress further into tribalism and tend to trust the information relayed to us by our tribe and not by others. Normally, that's <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-the-politics-of-fear-and-racism-how-our-brains-can-be-manipulated-to-tribalism-139811" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an evolutionary advantage</a>. Trust leads to group cohesion, and it helps us survive.</p><p>But now, that same tribalism – along with peer pressure, negative emotions and short tempers – often lead to ostracizing those who disagree with you. <a href="https://civicscience.com/the-majority-of-americans-are-also-social-distancing-from-politics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">In one study</a>, 61% of Americans reported having unfriended, unfollowed or blocked someone on social media because of their political views or posts.</p><p>Higher levels of social media use and exposure to sensationalized news about the pandemic is linked with <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32945123/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">increased depression and stress</a>. And more time spent on social media correlates with <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27723539/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">higher anxiety</a>, which can create a negative loop. <a href="https://www.journalism.org/2020/10/07/before-trump-tested-positive-for-coronavirus-republicans-attention-to-pandemic-had-sharply-declined/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">One example</a>: The Pew Research Center reports 90% of Republicans who get their political news only from conservative platforms said the U.S. has controlled the COVID-19 outbreak as much as possible. Yet less than half of Republicans who rely on at least one other major news provider thought so.</p>
<h2>The Matrix does the thinking</h2><p>Human thinking itself has been transformed. It's now more difficult for us to grasp the "big picture." A book is a long read these days, too much for some people. Scrolling and swiping culture has reduced our attention span (on average people spend <a href="https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/capturing-attention-feed-video-creative" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1.7 to 2.5 seconds</a> on a Facebook news feed item). It has also deactivated our critical thinking skills. Even really big news doesn't last on our feed longer than a few hours; after all, the next blockbuster story is just ahead. The Matrix does the thinking; we consume the ideology and are bolstered by the likes from our tribemates.</p><p>Before all this, our social exposure was mostly to family, friends, relatives, neighbors, classmates, TV, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines and books. And that was enough. In that, there was diversity and a relatively healthy information diet with a wide variety of nutrients. We always knew people who were not like minded, but getting along with them was normal life, part of the deal. Now those different voices have become more distant – "the others" we love to hate on social media.</p>
<h2>Is there a red pill?</h2><p>We need to take back the control. Here are seven things we can do to unplug ourselves out of the Matrix:</p><ul><li>Review and update <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ds/preferences/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">your ad preferences</a> on social media at least once per year.</li><li>Confuse the AI by flagging all ads and suggestions as "irrelevant."</li><li>Practice being more inclusive. Check other websites, read their news and do not "unfriend" people who think differently from you.</li><li>Turn off cable news and read instead. Or at least put a disciplined limit on hours of exposure.</li><li>Check out less biased sources of news such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">NPR</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BBC</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a>.</li><li>If you think everything your tribe leaders say is absolute truth, think again.</li><li>Go offline and go out (just wear your mask). Practice smartphone-free hours.</li><li>Finally, remember that your neighbor who supports the other football team or the other political party <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1324926298762870785?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">is not your enemy</a>; you can still go for a bike ride together! I did today, and we didn't even have to talk politics.</li></ul><p>It's time to take the red pill. Take these seven steps, and you won't give in to the Matrix.</p><p><em>This piece was co-authored with Maryna Arakcheieva, who is expert in digital solutions and marketing</em>.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148799/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation"></p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/arash-javanbakht-416594" target="_blank">Arash Javanbakht</a>, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/wayne-state-university-989" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wayne State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-matrix-is-already-here-social-media-promised-to-connect-us-but-left-us-isolated-scared-and-tribal-148799" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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Why you should cut back on social media and how to do it
Social media seems to stress some people out. Maybe its time for a break?
06 November, 2020
Photo by mikoto.raw from Pexels
- Social media can make people anxious, depressed, lonely, and stressed out.
- There are several ways to cut back your use of it.
- Even using it slightly less has been shown to reduce depressive symptoms.
<p> Between the stakes, the uncertainty, and the increased polarization of our discourse, it is little wonder that 68 percent of Americans reported that the election was causing them a considerable amount of <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/10/election-stress" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">stress</a>. Not helping matters is how much time people spent last week doom-scrolling their social media <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-now-may-be-the-best-time-to-take-a-long-break-from-social-media" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">feeds</a>, checking every few minutes for news that either doesn't arrive or merely stresses them out further.</p><p> Perhaps now is an excellent time to review how many studies show that too much social media can stress you out and consider simple ways to cut back. </p>
We used to smoke during five-minute breaks at work; now, we check the feeds.
<p> A variety of studies show that too much time spent on social media can stress us out, leave us <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/digital-world-real-world/202002/anxiety-and-social-media-use" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">anxious</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/12/cutting-back-on-social-media-reduces-loneliness-depression-study-finds.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">depressed</a>, and ironically increase feelings of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/12/cutting-back-on-social-media-reduces-loneliness-depression-study-finds.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">loneliness</a>. These findings have been confirmed for both adults and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0706743719885486?journalCode=cpab" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">children</a>. <br> <br> These effects are caused by several factors. The curated images of other people's lives we see on the screen can leave us feeling like we're comparatively inadequate. The often spoken of "<a href="https://psychcentral.com/blog/fear-of-missing-out/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fear-of-missing-out</a>" is a real thing. When you have dozens of people doing something once, with continual updating it can appear like everybody is doing something all the time. The political aspects of social media can make things worse. Even when people agree with you, the slew of information can be too much, says Dr. Erin Elfant, a clinical psychologist working out of California. <br> <br> She goes on to mention that social media provides a perverse incentive for being <a href="https://www.ksby.com/news/social-medias-impact-on-stress-during-contentious-election-season" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stressed</a>:<br> <br> "When we tend to say something that is a strongly worded opinion, we tend to get more response for that which also means that it positively reinforces us getting really stressed."</p><p>It seems like a vicious cycle. Posting things that make people react is the point, even if that reaction is to make them stressed. Whatever works at getting a reaction will be posted again. <br></p>How to spend less time on social media
<iframe width="730" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fE_QoebLUFQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><p> There are a variety of ways to make avoiding checking your feeds every six seconds a little easier. </p><p> <strong>Delete your apps</strong></p><p> Making it a little harder to get to social media can help you use it less. Beyond making a kind of initiative sense, this method is supported by empirical evidence. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nudge Theory </a>in behavioral economics is based around this. People often do what's easiest, and that can be manipulated for good. Having to spend that much more effort getting to your social media page might be the thing that keeps you off it. <br> <strong><br> Set time limits on your usage.</strong></p><p>If you don't want to delete the apps outright, that's fine; there are other options. Most smartphones can show you a breakdown of how much time you're spending on an app, either through included features or through third-party apps that are readily <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/5-ways-to-cut-back-on-social-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">available</a>. You can easily track your screen time and change your behavior accordingly. </p><p>If you use a web browser to access these sites, you can use a variety of <a href="https://launchparty.org/google-chrome-extensions-that-help-block-time-wasting-websites/" target="_blank">extensions</a> to control how long you're allowed to browse before blocks kick in. Others allow you to set times when you can't access the sites, like working hours, or to set other conditions. <br> </p><p> <strong>Consider what you're following</strong></p><p> If you're like me, you've been invited to endless pages by other people, which you accepted to be polite. After a few years, you start to wonder why you still get updates from these random pages that mean nothing to you. If you aren't going to cut back, you can reduce your stress and your feed's clutter with a review of what pages you're following. Is there a page (or person) whose posts only make you mad? You should consider not following them anymore. </p><p> Plus, if there is less to look at, you may find yourself spending less time on social media as a result. A feed with only 1 pages will have fewer updates to review than one with 20. </p><p> <strong>Set a day of rest</strong></p><p> There's a reason most cultures had a designated day of rest; we need it. <br> <br> The idea of a <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/why-and-how-to-do-a-digital-detox-4771321" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">digital detox</a> is increasingly popular, and an offshoot of that is setting a "<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/digital-sabbath-20_b_5288740" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">digital sabbath</a>." Much like the religious one, the idea here is that you take a set amount of time (either the weekend or a part of it) as a day of rest during which you cannot use or check social media. <br> <br> This solution has the added benefits that you're not giving up on social media, just limiting your use to specific days, and that you can make the rules for it as strict or lax as you require. You could ban all internet use outside of email on the sabbath, or you could just keep yourself from looking at Twitter. </p><p> <strong>Turn off notifications</strong></p><p> If all else seems like too much, try just turning off your notifications. You should be deciding when you want to look at social media, not the social media pages. Who knows, if you aren't told every time your aunt posts a new image of her cat, you might not find the need to look at each one of the pictures. </p><p> Social media has an extremely mixed track record of doing what it was supposed to do in terms of bringing people together in a new and fun way. Given how much stress it's caused us lately, maybe cutting back can do us all some good. </p>
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