OneZero: How do
humans operate within the hive? How much autonomy do we actually
have?
Sarah Rose Cavanagh: The extent to which we are both an
individual and a collective species is fascinating - you can see
it most easily in strong groups like cults, or sports
teams, where people bond and share emotions and goals.
Not only do we share
our emotions, but on a basic level of mannerisms, facial
expressions, and gait, we line up - especially when we have
experiences where the emphasis is less on the individual.
So dancing together,
chanting together at sports events - you feel collective fury.
It's something psychologists call "collective effervescence."
This is true at a biological level. But our ways of thinking
about the world, our opinions, are also contagious and socially
formed.
Fashion trends,
whether hemlines are up or down, jeans are tight or baggy -
these seem to happen and spread from one person to another, and
we all collectively start doing whatever is in fashion.
How does the Internet
impact our collective experience in the hive?
Social media and social technology and the Internet in general
have not really introduced something brand new to our
experience, but rather act as an amplifier of our existing
nature - both in good and bad ways.
The Internet has allowed us to reach beyond, to form in-groups.
Before we had these technologies, you would form these tribes
with people who are in your everyday life. Whereas now, the
reach is global.
Emotional contagion, this contagion of thoughts and ideas, can
also spread farther and faster, because not only is the reach
farther but also we're sharing a lot more.
We're sharing
pictures and thoughts, opinions, and articles. The reach and the
amplification is much larger.
People are forming more extreme opinions and in-groups. They're
only sharing within certain groups [who are] already sharing
their opinion. There's an old psychological effect called group
polarization.
If you walk into a
room with an opinion and everyone shares your opinion, you not
only become more entrenched in that opinion, but you tend to
move more to the outskirts.
You hear everyone
agreeing with you - you don't hear dissenting opinions - and
your own opinion becomes not only stronger but more extreme.
That is something
that a lot of people have been issuing warning calls about.
The Internet acts as an amplifier of our existing nature - both
in good and bad ways.
The hive isn't just how we
behave in the world; it's how we interpret the world. What does
this mean, especially in such a fractured media environment?
We take for granted the idea that all of our opinions and our
understanding of the world, how the world works, is individually
formed - but if you take a closer look, most of what we know
about the world is given to us socially,
through
education, through books,
through television...
Traditionally, we had
fewer news sources, fewer sources of entertainment, and we had
more of a consensus as to the facts that we were taking in.
People always had
differing opinions on what should happen about those facts, but
we agreed that it was reality.
With group
polarization and people seeking new sources that confirm their
existing views and behaviors like that online, increasingly we
disagree about what did happen.
And that is rather
dangerous.
If you want to challenge
the beliefs of your hive, is this difficult? How can you do it?
There is what's called a "spiral
of silence" - when no one's willing to speak up,
everyone assumes that everyone is in agreement.
That can work in
pro-social ways, if what we're talking about are racist beliefs
- if no one says it, everyone assumes that no one should say it,
and the idea will die out over time.
But it can be
antisocial if the group is coalescing and becoming more extreme
and no one offers a contrasting viewpoint.
Sam Somers is
a social psychologist and wrote a book called
Situations Matter about
conformity in social situations. He talks about the importance
of speaking up.
The
bystander effect, for
example, means that everyone assumes someone else will speak up
in an emergency.
If you're in that
situation and there's an emergency and someone needs help, or
you're in an extreme group and realize that something antisocial
is happening, being aware of the conformist, bystander effect,
these psychological concepts, could give you the courage to act.
Our society seems to have moved
away from physical gatherings, spending more time online. Even
workplaces have disappeared as freelancing and digital work has
become more common.
What are the implications?
We don't quite know yet.
There's good evidence
that people who are isolated - say, the elderly, people
struggling with chronic illness, depression, or who struggle
with social interactions in general - actually are benefited by
social media, because it lowers the cost of admission to social
interactions.
They can find
communities online to support them if face-to-face [interaction]
is difficult because of physical or other restrictions.
On the other hand, data shows that one of the risks of replacing
face-to-face with social media is that people engage in "social
snacking" - we're all so busy with work and families and
responsibilities that one of the dangers is that when you see
your friends on social media, you know they just got a new job,
you know that their child just turned five.
Liking those statuses
or commenting on them fills enough of the social need that it
takes the edge off, but it isn't nutritious.
Some researchers, like
Jean Twenge, point to negative social consequences of
Internet engagement for teens - like depression, anxiety, less
sex.
Do teens have a hive online, or
are they feeling more alone?
With both teenagers and adults, we need to start asking
questions both from a research standpoint and from a societal
standpoint that are a little more fine-grained, because teens
are doing very different things with their screen time.
What they're going to
be doing is going to be differentially linked with higher or
lower well-being. There's such variability.
One colleague,
his son doesn't
have any social media, doesn't do Instagram,
Facebook, but he does video
games.
Whereas other
teens are spending most of their lives on social media.
Whereas other
teens, my pre-teen, couldn't care less about social media,
but she loves Netflix.
All of those are very
different behaviors that are probably going to be differentially
impacted in terms of mental health.
It's really critical
to ask what's the context, what other social support do they
have?
A teen who does not
have many face-to-face friends or extracurricular activities and
who spends a lot of time on social media is probably going to
look very different from a teen who has lots of friends and lots
of extracurricular activities and is also spending a lot of time
on social media.
We need to start parsing these things.
When you look at the
data, it's really noisy. That's because we're not asking these
finer-grained questions. There have also been big changes in
parenting practices - "safetyism," over-protective "helicopter"
or "bulldozer parenting."
Teens are driving
later, having sex later, drinking less - and a lot of these
things are good things for teen mental health. But part of that
is because we increasingly protect them and demand that they do
a million activities and shelter them.
And part of the drive
to social media is that they're looking for that social contact
they used to get by hanging out in the local park or at dances.
I think it's driving
them online...
