# How Social Media Makes Us Uniquely Stupid **Can we love the groups we are a part of without disliking or worse, hating those outside of them?** This is the central question Christakis explores in his book Blueprint. Christakis argues that humans have an innate capacity to form good societies if put in the right context. He explains this capacity comes from our genes which write a blueprint for how to form a good society. Inside this blueprint is an eight-part social suite every good society has all eight aspects of. **While I agree that humans are inherently good if put in the right context, I believe the context social media has created in our society today is bringing out the worst parts of our human nature.** This is because it is hurting what is, in my opinion, the most essential aspect of the social suite, _cooperation._ Cooperation is _the_ fundamental thing that has allowed humans to make it as far as we have. A human by themselves is merely a hunk of meat in a vicious animal world. But through cooperation, humans can create incredible things no individual could make like the iPhone. In this essay, I will explore how social media inhibits cooperation by perpetuating myside bias, and destroying intimacy, creating a context that brings out our worst human nature. ### What is a Cooperation? To make this inquiry, we must first define what cooperation is. For this essay, cooperation means working together towards an active or passive shared goal. Cooperation can be an active pursuit, like creating a business with a co-partner, or a passive one, like existing in a society with fellow groups and following the set laws agreed upon by everyone. ## Social Media is Perpetuating Myside Bias **The first way social media is inhibiting cooperation and bringing out the worst in people is by perpetuating myside bias.** Myside bias is defined in Stanovich's 2021 book The Bias That Divides Us as the disinclination to leave a favored hypothesis when searching for and interpreting evidence. Myside bias at the group level describes our tendency to see our group more favorably than other groups simply because they are part of our group rather than a different one. Social media perpetuates myside bias for two reasons: 1. It creates echo chambers 2. It crystalizes group structures Firstly it creates echo chambers which are isolated bubbles where people only get exposed to information that validates their already preconceived beliefs. Social media algorithms feed people information that will keep them on the platform, often information they already believe. In effect, not only does everyone get different information from each other, but they develop more rigid worldviews. **This makes cooperation harder because everyone is operating under different information than another.** And they become more entrenched in their own world views making them less likely to listen to the other side. In addition, social media crystalizes group structures. Because people get fed what they already believe, they imbed themselves further into the groups which believe those things. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff illuminate this in their book [[The Coddling of the American Mind]]. They explain Democrats and Republicans are bonded more over their shared hatred for the other party than over their love for their own. They claim much of the problem relates to how members of each party often have entirely different social media feeds, leading them to create echo chambers for themselves and crystalizing group structures. This, in turn, promotes myside bias and hurts cooperation. Another example of the negatives of group structure crystalization is shown by Kirk Johnson in his book [[The Fishermen and the Dragon]]. In this book, a group of Vietnamese fishermen move into an old fishing town called Seadrift and get into a tough race battle between the native white fisherman who believe they are taking all the fish. They conflict simply because of their shared hatred for the other side, strengthened by the echo chambers they create for themselves in the community. **Their myside bias blinds them from the real enemy of the book, The Petrochemical plants spewing toxic waste into the water.** ## Social Media is Destroying Intimacy Hurting Cooperation Secondly, social media is destroying intimacy, hurting cooperation. A major reason is that while we are more connected than ever, we lack intimacy and commitment. Speaking with someone through social media text isn't the same as seeing them physically for outdoor activity. The combination of social media, technology, and the social isolation of the pandemic created an environment where showing intimacy with people is hard. **This hurts cooperation because trust is a foundational aspect of cooperation.** To build trust, you must be intimate, which requires vulnerability with someone else. But through social media, vulnerability is difficult to show. Social media's lack of intimacy and cooperation is killing us. According to a 2022 study by The Cigna Group 79% of young American adults aged 18-24, and 41% of those older than 66 are classified as lonely, meaning they reported feeling lonely more than once or twice a month. These numbers are much higher than pre-pandemic and tens of percentiles higher than loneliness levels before the 2000s. Loneliness is only getting worse. According to Lunstad et al. (2010) loneliness damages our bodies:: - Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day - Equivalent to being an alcoholic - More than not exercising - Twice as harmful as obesity ### How Can We Live In A Society With Social Media I believe that in the right context, humans are inherently good. While social media is making this inherent goodness harder to stand out by diminishing cooperation, it's not going away. So we have to learn to live with it. Luckily, solutions have been discussed that can let us once again express the better parts of our human nature. While we don't have time to dive into any of them, they are worth thinking about. Firstly we can reform social media. Make it harder to share information super fast and at scale. Require that people be 16 or older before they can join. Secondly, we can prepare people by teaching them digital literacy. Helping them understand how to use social media in a healthy way. Thirdly, we can teach our friends, family, and fellow students the perils of myside bias so they can take steps to lessen its effect on their lives. **With the right actions we can use the blueprint for building good societies everyone has in their DNA for good.** # Resources [[Blueprint Lecture]] [[Blueprint]] [[Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid]]