Social Media and FOMO.

 

Three common causes of stress amongst S’pore students? 

Well, they are (1) Social Media and The Fear of Missing Out, (2) Stellar Grades And Parental Pressures, and (3) Self-Imposed Pressure to Excel (as per ST report by Ang Qing @ A13). 

This morning, I will just share my thoughts about the first cause...the social media and FOMO. 

It is relatively new. I suppose those born in the 1990s (or after) will bear the full brunt of it. They should be in their twenties by now, or younger. The affliction and addiction of technology especially social media catches on by lightning speed, and kids exposed to it will also be sucked into the FOMO vortex. I supposed some adults are not exempted from its vice-like grip too. 

Imagine with me a world without social media. It would be a world that is so much more smaller, right? It would also be a world that is less flat, where what we do is less visible to others. This includes our errors, mistakes and embarrassment. You can also forget about cancel culture? 

More importantly, our privacy would be protected, that is, the skeletons in our closets will be well kept and occasionally dusted (by us). Some will not see the light of day, for the entire lifetime.

But, the drawback of such a world without social media would be the dissemination of knowledge and the empowerment and freedom that comes with it. They will be seriously undermined. 

As a case in point, imagine again that Gutenberg did not invent the printing press in the 15th century. Or, for that matter, there was and will never be a Gutenberg-like Revolution worldwide. Arising from that, and as an example, you can be sure that there will not be any mass production of the Gutenberg Bible. 

All scripture would therefore be held in the ivory towers of the Catholic priesthood. Only they can read and interpret the word of God, and the people down below would just have to accept their words, or interpretation, as final, or as ex cathedra.

Without the mass dissemination in the printing word form, we will all be none the wiser. We will also suffer the bliss of ignorance, and with that, comes the disempowerment and the serious denial of personal and communal freedom to effect positive and sustainable changes for the benefit of the common good. 

For if absolute power corrupts absolutely, then this power also comes with the monopoly of essential knowledge, as the first major act of a tyrant, and that in itself is the means to support the perpetuation of such absolute corruption. 

Ok, so much for the real benefits of technology, and there are more of course. But, coming back home, from the Gutenberg press to social media, there is a dark side too. 

For in the same way that money is a medium of exchange, technology is a medium of learning. But at times, that medium is the message, and it can overpower and overlord the individual and society as a whole. 

When you take something like technology to the extreme, the change will, at some point, cross the threshold of benefit to the threshold of cost arising more from its unintended, and unwitting, consequences. 

Ultimately, the whole problem with humanity is surely not their ingenuity or inventions, but it is in their underestimation of what the byproduct of their collective intelligence can cost them over the long run. We are indeed people of the most intemperate minds and appetites. 

So, on more granular level, our kids will have to bear the brunt of our hubris, and unwitting-ness, when we constantly fail to balance the benefits and costs of technology, or in this case, social media. 

As the world becomes less flat, more transparent, with the help of social media, the world for the young minds finally becomes a stage, an open Shakespearean stage. Forget about privacy, when, by a touch of a button, you can become famous, traipsing on the social media stage, even for that 7 minutes. 

Suddenly, you can post whatever, and be “liked” by whomever, their identity is immaterial. And for that pedestal moment of fame, you feel like you are at the center of the universe. Cloud no. 9, right?

But, here comes the crossing of the rubicon threshold of unintended consequences for technology, and it is captured in this Yogi Berra’s observation: “Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked”. 

And it is that torrents of dislikes on social media that most of our kids, even ourselves, cannot take. It eats into their soul, like acid drip, because, while our kids have the knowledge (and freedom) to compose and post, and also re-post, they do not have the maturity to compose themselves when their well-manicured image and self-esteem suffer a blow. And this blow adds up as our kids trip over on the social media stage, or when their privacy, shame and mistakes are exposed for all to remark, ridicule and remember. 

And how about envy? It’s real too, very real. Before social media, we only get to read about famous and successful people strutting their stuff on printed newspapers, and maybe in the tv news.

But nowadays, kids get to see their friends’ blow-by-blow account, on a daily-by-a-mere-touch-of-the-screen moment. Some exposure can deepen the comparison, and allow envy to kick in to dry and rot the bones from within.

And the addiction to fame, and the vicious cycle of envy only cause the intemperate young minds to dive deeper into the social media’s black-hole.

As an illustration, here’s a conversation by Zuckerberg before FB became a staple of our daily life. It is about how easy it is to get information, thrown at you. 

““Zuckerberg began the conversation with a boast, telling one friend that if he ever needed information on anyone at Harvard, he should just say the word:

ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns 

FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?

ZUCK: people just submitted it

ZUCK: i don’t know why

ZUCK: they “trust me”

ZUCK: dumb fucks””

(@pg 24, “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination” by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang). 

Let me end by saying that, with social media, we have started another Gutenberg-like revolution, in all its excesses, and it can be reduced to the obsession to be right, liked and the light. That is, we can now broadcast our “rightness” to thousands, if not millions, of users, unfiltered. Our posts on the most mundane, or the most manicured part of our life, may just strike social media goldmine and elevate us to dizzying heights. We also become more superficial as a result. 

For in a postmodern world, truth is more about feelings of being right rather than one based on objectivity, established by tedious scientific facts. 

And with a critical mass of social media attention, we become a celebrity overnight with the harvest of likes. 

Overtime, we are transformed into a city on the hill, with tens of thousands of followers. We will then embody the “light” for the many who want to associate themselves with us for boasting rights. 

But it doesn’t stop there, because many young people will not want to miss out on such tidal wave of popularity, or such accessible, palpable successes as deceptively flashed on their small screens. 

Before long, the spirit of FOMO will be a constant indictment of how inadequate our kids are, as compared to the screen idols in their handphones, with such wealth/successes coming to them so easily. Alas, it’s envy to the bone all over again. 

Well, like it or not, that is what we as parents are up against. It is the monolithic of technology pushed to the extreme. It is a Gutenberg-like revolution that came in from the backdoor of our home, like little Trojan horses. And the addiction to it is very real. 

We therefore have a duty to protect them from its deleterious effects. This battle is for the long haul. And we must always remain vigilant.