The Social Media Addiction is Worse than You Think. And It’s Not Going Away.

You have to tap out of the hivemind before it’s too late. The hivemind I am talking about is social media and scrolling, mostly found on TikTok and Instagram. It is something that has become a part of all our lives, and we love it and hate it. It started as something to entertain, but it has become an addictive habit that has plagued our minds and views on life. It has infiltrated our interests and swag (aka personal interests and styles), and has meshed us as people into consumer groups for advertising. Meta, the company that owns Instagram, has lost the bid to dismiss claims that their apps are designed to addict minors.

The algorithms these social media apps use clump groups of people with similar interests and show them all the same content. We are getting pushed closer and closer into the same group. The group the algorithm puts you in is a huge oversimplification of who you are as an actual person. It may take small parts of you that might fit a few other people, and it will completely pile you into that group of people and assume you enjoy their interests. For example, when interacting with a sports post on Instagram, there is a high chance you will see mostly sports content right after. This strategy is used for sponsored content, not only Meta’s in-house ad platform but also UGC (User Generated Content) creators that advertise privately for companies. One branch of companies that have been huge in this marketing space is online gambling companies. Companies like Polymarket, Kalshi, or Stake are using many different creators to show people their platforms. This has created a lot of deceptive advertising, which is harmful to the audiences that they target, which are mostly the youth. When you get home from your job, you will most likely sit down on your couch and scroll on TikTok or Instagram for an hour or two, consuming for hours what Mark Zuckerberg wants you to consume. The Georgia Tech study shows that whatever you consume on social media, even if it is just for a little or a few specific things, will affect what you think and express in your day-to-day life. Gen Z, or youth aged 14-29 is struggling the most with using social media apps. We are spending the most time on them, at a point in our lives when we should be trying to find out who we are, what we want to do, and who we want to be.

We are being targeted and put in a cluster because that is what makes the most money for these social media companies. Putting you in a group is how to make money through audience-targeted advertisements. There are many types of artificial intelligences that Meta and TikTok use to track who you are in ways you don’t even know yourself, and they do that by taking the common denominator out of everyone similar to you. Another way we can view this is by understanding social media as a hive mind. When you scroll or consume, you are reconnecting to a hive mind that is spouting out the same slop or content to all the people slightly similar to you. Separating yourself from it is how you form your own identity, interests and swag. How Gen Z youth can do this is by consuming different forms of media from time to time. When you have alone time, it is vital that you don’t waste it by devoting your attention to something unimportant online. It is important that you focus on yourself or learn to be in the true present, to enjoy being quiet and still. It’s important to not put all your free-time and attention eggs into the social media basket. When you do want to consume or watch something, it should be something that you truly enjoy or believe will fit with what you truly want. A lot of people are confused right now; they don’t know what to do with their careers or with their free time. That is in turn because these companies have you so distracted, they would rather you not think about your own life and what you want to do with it. Staying off social media doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consume any other kinds of media. I think that everyone should consume a lot, read a lot, and watch high-quality shows or films, but be wary of what you are consuming. It is what you produce in every part of your life.