During lockdown (which seems such a long time ago, and slightly surreal now), I did a lot of work on my mental health. Not because we were in lockdown, as an introvert I thrived on it, but because I’d recognised earlier that year that I wasn’t in a very good place mentally. If you have ever done my “Imposter Syndrome” workshop, you will know that one of the things I found really effective was daily gratitudes, which in turn impact your internal dialogue making it much more optimistic, positive, and kind.
by Jill Spurr
One of the things that occurred to me during that exploration of what I was feeding my brain, was my relationship with my social media accounts. It occurred to me that it was largely a passive aggressive moan-fest. Couldn’t park in front of my house? Rant on Facebook. Poor service at the supermarket? Post on their page. Some imagined slight against my person? Yep, you’ve guessed where that ended up.
So I started to curate my socials more. To engage mindfully, and to post much more positively. These days, my social media is more reflective of me, part way between an online diary and an homage to the things that matter most to me (dogs, mainly), with a healthy smattering of cheesy wellbeing memes. It’s probably not to everyone’s taste, but it suits me and most of all, it’s a nice room to sit in and look at what’s going on. That exercise really showed me how social media had both impacted my mental state and reflected it, and it was entirely imperceptible to me. I hadn’t been aware.
Many years ago, I was a Digital Publishing Manager for a local newspaper group. In fact, my original job title was “New Media Manager”, because the spread of the tinterwebs was, well, new in the early 2000s. My role consisted of training advertising sales staff to sell the new online format, and persuading curmudgeonly “hot metal” editors to put stories onto their websites. It will never take off, all but one of them told me. As we now know, they couldn’t have been more wrong.
At the last centre, Hemel Hempstead, subeditor Tom Price was fascinated by the internet and saw its worth, particularly for a paper that published weekly. His foresight paid off on 11 December 2005, when early in the morning there was a devasting explosion at Buncefield oil storage facility. He deployed journalists to different points around the town, who texted him images and copy which he then uploaded on a timeline – an early example of live blogging. By mid-morning, five out of the top ten Google links for Buncefield led to the paper’s site against nationals with immense traffic, long before we really understood anything about SEO. A David and Goliath moment for local press that saw me quoted in the Guardian, who had rung up to find out how on earth we’d managed to dominate Google so decisively from nowhere.
Fast forward twenty years, and the internet is a very different place. We carry it around in our pockets and have apps to access parts of it with greater ease. Tim Berners-Lee’s gift to the world isn’t just the creativity and collaboration tool he envisaged, it has become a machine to generate vast amounts of money. Mackinsey estimated the internet economy to be worth around $8trillion as far back as 2015, and the world’s current billionaires include the founders of staple web brands Amazon, Facebook, Google and TikTok.
It seems had to believe that social media is less than 30 years old (Tik Tok is about to celebrate its tenth birthday), it is now so ubiquitous and has changed the way we consume information so profoundly. There are huge benefits to having such interactive, responsive channels widely available and easily accessible – but there are also massive risks; psychological loopholes that are being exploited.
Perhaps the most important thing is that social media is an operant conditioner. Operant conditioning is a phenomenon identified by BF Skinner in the late 1930s, building on Edward Thorndike’s 1898 theory, the Law of Effect. What both identified is that reward increases the likelihood of a behaviour occurring, ie the behaviour is reinforced. Research has shown that social media triggers dopamine release in the brain – a neurotransmitter that controls learning and motivates us to seek more reward. That little neurochemical boost drives us to repeat the behaviours, and the closely guarded algorithms capitalise on that. In short, the more you use social media… the more you use social media.
The dopamine seeking loop in itself is worrying enough, but critical thinking is further compromised by the way social media content utilises our cognitive biases, either by luck or – colour me cynical - judgement. The human brain, for all its complexity and brilliance, can’t half believe some bloopers sometimes:
Availability heuristic – we estimate the probability of something happening by the ease with which we can recall examples, often completely disregarding real risk while focusing on the imagined.
Confirmation bias – we are more likely to believe information that aligns with what we already believe.
Declinism – or “the good old days” … a cognitive bias that overly romanticises the past and views other times more negatively, leaving us with the belief that things are constantly getting worse.
False consensus effect – believing that our views are more mainstream and popular than they actually are. “Everyone agrees…”
Illusory truth effect – we believe what we hear on repeat, even when it’s not true. We even adopt the language that’s used when we hear it again and again.
Messenger effect – we base our belief on the profile of the person saying it, rather than the validity of what they are saying.
Throw in content that is designed to make you angry, scared, or both, which makes it less likely you will engage the thinking part of your brain, the cortex, and the ability to share before you have the opportunity to consider if that’s wise, and you have a giddy cocktail of noisy nonsense gaining broadcast rapidly.
So how do we, as communications professionals working with those channels, hold our own? There’s no one simple answer, and there are others who have devised a workable response far better than I have. If you are not already familiar, explore the Government Behaviour Unit’s Wall of Beliefs, which was first launched in 2022 and has been recently updated. It provides a toolkit to assess the level of harm disinformation or biased posting can cause, and recommends strategies to deal accordingly.
In addition, feed those battered brains by ramping up your storytelling. Use it to challenge assumptions, counter bias and tell your organisation’s story in a human (ie relatable!) rather than corporate way. Storytelling builds trust and connection, something that is as primal as our brain’s fight or flight response. It helps us work through scenarios to make sense of the world. It’s memorable, it’s persuasive, it promotes empathy and cultures critical thinking – that thing we are losing.
Because ultimately, people are on social media because they are looking for connection and community. Perhaps the real solution to countering the growing nonsense in a digital age is the oldest in the book: human stories.
Jill Spurr is a strategic communications and marketing leader.
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