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Jonah Gardner
Professor Casey
English 1201
5th of May 2019

Are We Hooked? Examining Online Connectivity, Media Consumption, and Device Interaction

There is no denying that the internet is a useful tool that has changed the world. It is an

essential tool for conducting business and communicating with others. However, the online

network has no off button and it is limitless in its growth; it is infinite. The internet has no way

of self-regulating, yet it has become deeply engrained into our contemporary society.

Therefore, as consumers and users of this network, it is essential that we examine our uses of it

as well as our dependency on it; and it is of vital importance that we consider the effects that it

might have on our behavioral patterns. Are you using your devices to access and interact with

the network in a beneficial way? Have social media networks begun to influence our behavioral

interactions, are we too connected? Are we too dependent on our internet network?

The whole of human history and knowledge is accessible at a moment’s notice – there

are entire encyclopedias online available for free, with no direct cost to the individual reading

it. Information spreads at a rate never before seen in humankind. The Notre-Dame Cathedral

in Paris, France tragically caught fire on Tuesday April 16th – and within seconds of the smoke

starting to rise, people were watching live footage of it on fire in Paris, Texas.

The world has never before been as connected as we are today; if you live in a first

world country, you have the ability to be connected to a whole network of communication

tools and platforms. The beauty of this network is that it gives us the potential for person to

person communication across any distance. Someone can sit in their apartment in Frankfurt,

Germany instant messaging a someone on a flight from Shanghai, China – whilst simultaneously
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having a face to face video conversation with someone six thousand miles away in Cincinnati,

Ohio.

Our connected online world is of overwhelming importance for conducting business,

both on the macro and the micro scale. People rely on this network to do their jobs and to

communicate. On a macro scale, global corporations depend upon communication tools to

keep track of operations. On a micro scale, social media can use as a marketing tool for small

businesses to build their brand.

Social media gives local business an advertising platform to use to promote their brand

and offers the benefit of being able to build customer loyalty by rewarding followers with

exclusive deals and discounts. If you are starting a small business, or you own a local restaurant

social media is an important tool.

There is no questioning that, in the right context, social media aids in the growth of a

business. More interesting than that is the effect that social media can have on the employees

within a business. A study was done by two professors in Turkey; Ali Sukru Centinkaya, a

Doctor of Philosophy, and Muhammad Rashid, with his Master’s in business administration,

both whom teach at Selcuk University. The study entitled The Effect of Social Media on

Employees’ Job Performance was conducted amongst two-hundred-five Turkish professionals

and examined they examined the effects of social media use within the workplace whereby the

employees were given the right to use social media on behalf of the company they worked for...

The results of the study indicate that if a company lays out clear guidelines for social media use

but enables their employees to use social media on behalf of the business, and it actually

increases the employees job performance. In the conclusion of the published study, Centinkaya
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writes, “Social media drives organizations to decentralization and enable employees make

prompt decisions. This in return increases customer satisfaction and business competitive

advantage.” (Centinkaya, 17). If used properly, social media can be a significant benefit to

businesses.

Through social media, companies now have a platform to use target marketing in order

to get their products in front of users whom are best suited for their product. This is of

particular use for startups and younger companies whom would have formerly had to pay high

prices to get their product on the television screens and in magazine pages of potential

consumers. Now corporations have immediate, direct access to consumer data and can

enhance their marketing reach through cloud based computational services such as Amazon

Web Services.

From a business perspective, the benefits of social media use are rather concrete.

However, when taking a closer look on an individual user’s level, examining the benefits of

social media becomes far more convoluted.

The interest regarding social media’s effect on the brain is rather wide spread, there

have been studies done on both sides of the argument, that have explored the correlation

between mental health issues and social media use. Several of which have indicated that social

media could be linked to behavioral inadequacies like decreased empathy; other studies

present no signs of measurable adverse effects on mental health.

In a 2017 study, published in Psychiatric Quarterly, Chloe Berryman a student at the

University of Central Florida - Christopher Ferguson co-chair of psychology at Stetson University

in Florida – and Charles Negy PhD a psychology professor of at the University of Central Florida
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sought to clarify the relationship between social media and mental health. The study looked at

four-hundred sixty-seven undergraduate students, examining their time spent on social media,

how important it was in their lives, and the correlation between mental health issues and

behavior on social media. Regarding the study, Berryman was quoted saying “We propose that

research focus on the behavior of individuals rather than assume media is the root cause of all

socio-personal problems” (Springer). Results from the study show that with the exception of

vague booking (a behavior characterized by posting something vague to causing a reaction from

friends, in attempts to get them to reach out) concerns regarding social media use may be

misplaced. This study claims that how an individual uses social media is more important than

the time spent on it. Which may very well be true; but by focusing on behavior within social

media, it fails to take into consideration what that time spent on social media is costing the

individuals in their lives outside of the network.

The network that has been engrained into our social structure is accessible through a

rectangular device sitting in our pockets and purses, and on our desks and dinner tables. The

access is instantaneous and pain free, so It can be hard to perceive when we have spent too

much time on our devices.

Studies have shown that time spent looking at screens can adversely influence sleep

patterns (Driller); LED screens emit blue light, a type of light that mimics sunlight, which can

trick your brain into staying up longer, thereby loosing vital deep sleep. Sleep deprivation takes

a toll on your body and effects your brain chemistry; these effects are obvious for anyone who

has had a few short nights of sleep in a row. Furthermore, those effects are exponentially more
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negatively impactful especially in adolescence and young adulthood, when the brain is

undergoing development.

In a study called Technology Trumping Sleep done at the California State University,

Sacramento, members of the Department of Graduate and Professional Studies in Education

conducted research amongst high school and college aged individuals to examine the effect

that screen time has on sleep… The sample included ages sixteen to twenty-five… The study

used a series of online survey to examine for Electronic habits, internet and social networking

usage, sleep and rise times, as well as daily sleepiness. The study indicated that seventy-two

percent of high school students sleep with their phone in the bedroom, and that eighty-six

percent of college students sleep with their cell phone, tablet, or laptop in the room. Over half

of those students continue to access their devices while in bed, and many reported waking up

after going to sleep to access their device or respond to messages. In the conclusion of the

study Moulin writes:

“The research indicated that unhealthy sleep habits may be creating a

generation of sleep-deprived individuals who may not be functioning at top

capacity. Although this first truly digital generation is seeing great benefit from

their electronic and media access, they are also paying a cost. Findings regarding

a correlation between lack of sleep and quantified academic success are

inconclusive, however, student perceptions indicate that they believe there is a

relationship, which means there is one… Students allow their social digital world

to impede and compete with their academic time and biological sleep time…

Therefore it is strongly suggested that teachers, parents, and medical personnel

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adopt and provide healthy guidelines for parents to use with pre-teens and

teens, to facilitate and develop in the next generation of students some

structure and means of protecting their health in the realms of electronics and

sleep.” (Moulin)

Time spent on devices can influence the natural sleep patterns of individuals. Which can have a

direct impact on physical development and cognitive wellness. This is known to be true, and

yet our internet network has gotten so deeply engrained into our society that well over half of

teenagers even sleep with the internet right next to their pillow.

We are constantly connected to our online world through our devices. Whether it is to

use an instant messaging application to chat with a friend, to watch a show on Netflix, or to

check for your friends latest posting - our devices have become deeply engrained into our

contemporary society. Therefore, as internet consumers we need to be more conscious of our

dependency on the networks that we are a part of. And it is of vital importance that we

consider the effects that it might have on our behavioral patterns.

In regard to exploitation of consumer behavior, the cat is out of the bag for the social

media giants. It is no secret that social media platforms are engineered to keep you on the app

for longer periods of time and coming back to visit the site more frequently.

Hilary Andersson of the BBC interviewed multiple Silicon Valley designers whom

formerly worked for social media companies. In her interview of Aza Raskin, the mind behind

the “infinite scroll” feature - now commonly used across many media platforms, he opened up

about just how much effort goes into engineering these various apps, "’Behind every screen on

your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this
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thing to try to make it maximally addicting’. Infinite scroll allows users to endlessly swipe down

through content without clicking. 'If you don't give your brain time to catch up with your

impulses…you just keep scrolling.’ He said the innovation kept users looking at their phones far

longer than necessary.” (Anderson).

While it may seem unethical, to intentionally design something to be addictive in nature,

the companies are motivated by the opportunity for generating more financial profit. From the

same interview, Anderson writes about Raskin, “He said, many designers were driven to create

addictive app features by the business models of the big companies that employed them. ‘In

order to get the next round of funding, in order to get your stock price up, the amount of time

that people spend on your app has to go up,’ he said. ‘So, when you put that much pressure on

that one number, you're going to start trying to invent new ways of getting people to stay

hooked.’” (Anderson). In the same piece, Hillary Anderson interviewed Sandy Parakilas, a

former Facebook employee whom said, "You have a business model designed to engage you

and get you to basically suck as much time out of your life as possible and then selling that

attention to advertisers." (Anderson).

Companies are motivated by profit, and in our online world today, the profit that is

generated is predicated on clicks and time spent on a page. The more time a user spends on a

page means increased likelihood that user will click on an advertisement or another node

within the platform’s network. So of course, companies would be motivated to implement

features which help attract and keep users’ attention.

One such feature is the “like” button, a Facebook innovation co-invented by former

employee, Leah Pearlman. In her BBC article Hillary Anderson wrote of Pearlman, “she had
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become hooked on Facebook because she had begun basing her sense of self-worth on the

number of ‘likes’ she had. ‘When I need validation - I go to check Facebook,’ she said. ‘I'm

feeling lonely, 'Let me check my phone.” (Anderson). The features that are designed to grab

and keep users’ attention, simultaneously prey on humankind’s desire to be well liked.

The same innovations that social media corporations use to drive profit, can have dire

side effects. Although these features may not have been directly invented for the purpose of

becoming addicting, the corporations are well aware of their addictive nature. This is

something that former President of Facebook Sean Parker opened up about in a 2017 interview

with Axios. In it he said:

The thought process that went into building these applications… That thought

process was all about, how do we consume as much of your time and conscious

attention as possible? That means that we needed to sort of give you a little

dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a

photo or a post... It's a social validation feedback loop... You're exploiting a

vulnerability in human psychology ... [The inventors] understood this,

consciously, and we did it anyway. (Parker)

The social media inventors used various design tactics that consequently created powerful

platforms that are addictive in nature - Hüseyin Bilal Macit, a professor of computer science at

Mehmet Akif Ersoy University in Turkey, verified this point which in a 2018 study entitled

Research on Social Media Addiction and Dopamine Driven Feedback, which concluded, “The

results of neurological and psychiatric tests on social media users show that similar biological

and psychological symptoms of alcohol, cigarette and drug addicts are seen in active social
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media users.” (Macit). It is then factually true that social media is capable of becoming a neuro-

chemical addiction to its users.

Corporations were driven by profits to employ people to create features that kept users’

coming back for more. The features were optimized over time with the consequence being

extremely addictive, but the strength of this addiction seem to be far out of scale with what

some of the inventors ever could have predicted.

In a 2017 interview at Stanford Graduate School of Business, former Facebook executive

Chamath Palihapitiya was asked a question about the exploitation of consumer behavior in

building the largest social media platform ever. His response went viral, as he said;

“I feel extremely guilty… I think we all knew in the back of our minds… something

bad could happen, but I think the way that we defined it was not like this… It is

literally at a point now where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart

the fabric of how society works. That is truly where we are… The short-term

dopamine feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society

works… It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between

each other.” (Stanford Graduate School of Business)

These words are made more powerful when you know that Chamath wasn’t just another

Facebook Exec., he was formerly the longest tenured member of the Facebook Executive Team.

After this interview, several news programs had him on to probe and ask questions of him

regarding the nature of his comments. During his co-hosting of CNBC’s Squak Box, he doubled

down on the issue, saying “The reality may be that the whole business model of the internet
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may be fundamentally somewhat broken… because we allow ourselves to get interacted with in

ways where we don’t necessarily control the medium or the messenger.” (CNBC)

The reality is that social media as we know it has not been around long enough to

examine the long-term consequences of its use, and there are too many variables in regard to

quantifiably assessing its impact on school or job performance. However, what is objectively

true is that the social media tools we so frequently use today were designed to exploit

consumer’s behavior by effectively hacking into the dopamine centers in the brain, thereby

creating feedback loops that can become addictive.

At sixteen years old, I was prescribed an ADD medication and I have been battling to

improve my ability to focus ever since. Upon examination of all of the data behind device

usage, some of the stories behind design features within these social media tools, and opinions

of individuals whom were involved in creating these platforms, I have begun to seriously

question not just my use of social media, but the relationship I have with the internet at large.

It is important to remember that the internet has no off button and it is limitless. If the

network cannot regulate itself then we as consumers have a responsibility to regulate

ourselves… So, the question remains, are you controlling it or is it controlling you?

figure 1. Are you hooked? (Coach, Does Your Phone Own You?)
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Works Cited

Andersson, Hilary. “Social Media Apps Are 'Deliberately' Addictive to Users.” BBC News, BBC, 4

July 2018, www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959.

Berryman, Chloe & Ferguson, Christopher & Negy, Charles. (2017). Social Media Use and

Mental Health among Young Adults. Psychiatric Quarterly. 89. 1-8. 10.1007/s11126-017-

9535-6.

Cetinkaya, Ali Sukru, and Muhammad Rashid. “The Effect of Social Media on Employees’ Job

Performance: The Mediating Role of Organizational Structure.” Journal of Organizational

Psychology, vol. 18, no. 4, Nov. 2018, pp. 94–116. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=133658870&site=eds-live.

“Coach, Does Your Phone Own You?” Tudor Collegiate Strategies, 7 Jan. 2018,

dantudor.com/coach-does-your-phone-own-you/.

CNBC. “Former Facebook Exec Chamath Palihapitiya On Social Media, Bitcoin, And Elon Musk

(Full) | CNBC.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Dec. 2017,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zyRpq2ODrE.

Driller, Matthew, and Liis Uiga. “The Influence of Night-Time Electronic Device Use on

Subsequent Sleep and Propensity to Be Physically Active the Following Day.”

Chronobiology International: The Journal of Biological & Medical Rhythm Research, vol.

36, no. 5, May 2019, pp. 717–724. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=135672109&site=eds-live.
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Hüseyin Bilal MACİT, et al. “A Research on Social Media Addiction and Dopamine Driven

Feedback.” Mehmet Akif Ersoy Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi, no.

3, 2018, p. 882. EBSCOhost, doi:10.30798/makuiibf.435845.

Moulin, Kerry L., and Chia-Jung Chung. “Technology Trumping Sleep: Impact of Electronic Media

and Sleep in Late Adolescent Students.” Journal of Education and Learning, vol. 6, no. 1,

Jan. 2017, pp. 294–321. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1125237&site=eds-live.

Springer. “More Time on Social Media Is Not Linked to Poor Mental Health.”

Www.springer.com, Springer, 2 Nov. 2017, www.springer.com/gp/about-

springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/more-time-on-social-media-

is-not-linked-to-poor-mental-health/15185572.

Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO Social Capital,

on Money as an Instrument of Change.” YouTube, Stanford Graduate School of Business,

13 Nov. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk.