Instant Genius - Healthy Start: How to cut down your social media use

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

With a smartphone in our pockets at all times, social media is only ever a few clicks away. With this, problematic social media use is easy to fall into. As part of our Healthy Start series, we spoke to Niklas Ihssen, an associate professor at Durham University about what this means and how to avoid it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a bite-sized masterclass from the BBC Science Focus magazine, where we interview some of the biggest names in science and tech. With a smartphone in our pockets and a wealth of social media apps to choose from, a fierce debate is raging. Are we facing a social media addiction epidemic? Part of our Healthy Start series, I spoke to Nicholas Ishen, an associate professor at Durham University who researches the big question of what motivates human behaviour. He argues that we've been looking at our reliance on social media all wrong.

and that to tackle and over-reliance on it, we need to re-address how we think about it. So today we're talking about the idea of social media addiction or for people that have become reliant on the use of social media. I wanted to start things off by getting a bit of a definition in stone here. It's something that the majority of people are used and they use it often. What turns this into an addiction or something that's maybe overused? Yeah, first of all, I personally would prefer the term problematic social media use. And I think the emphasis here is really on problematic use. So that would entail that the use affects your personal life in a way that there are conflicts with your parents or that you neglect things at school or at work.

So we always need to consider not only the behavior in relation to a specific reward, say, drugs or social media, but also the impact it has on other areas. And I think it's important to point out that we need to check whether the use itself has that impact before calling it problematic behavior. And what are maybe the signs that someone's got into a level where it has become problematic? I would say it is something that we would characterize with a certain loss of control. so people just can't stop. Then we could look for signs that somebody has very strong desires to use the medium

and thinks of it all the time. And then we can, of course, look at how the use affects other areas, say, is there kids or other lessons neglect their homework? Or is there a lot of arguing at home regarding social media use? And if you then have a behavior that continues, despite these issues, we would probably consider it as a problematic or even sometimes compulsive behavior. And as you mentioned there, you don't like the use of the term addiction. And I think that's quite a commonplace thing with other researchers in this area. Pete Etchols, for example, a whole book on this idea.

Why is it that you prefer that terminology when we're addressing this? I think we need to be careful with demonel. humanizing technologies, new technologies. There have always been these movements when new things have been introduced like TV or even radio or the internet. There's always this angst that something is happening with us that we cannot control. But I think we need to be carefully looking at whether we classify something as an addictive behavior because that term is historically related to drugs. and we know well that drug addiction entails brain changes and there's a certain pathological process

happening so the brain gets sensitized to those drugs and there's a strong cravings and there's also withdrawal however before we call compulsive social media use an addiction we need to compare those profiles and we really need to understand that perhaps it might be a different level so i think what we see with drug addiction, for instance, is a very strong functional impairment at severe levels. And I doubt that we can easily identify this functional impairment, this really strong symptoms manifesting at a physiological and a psychological level in high social media uses. So it's not just a lack of clear research in this area, but also you identify it as it's unlikely to ever get to that same level where it could be seen as an addiction. So the problem is that the physiological process that underpins a drug addiction is per se a physiological process.

So there's a substance that you ingest that changes your reward system in a way. And we don't have that with social media use, of course. On the other hand, you could argue, okay, there's, but we have, for instance, a gambling disorder, which is also a non-substance addiction. In contrast to social media addiction, this is actually recognized as a clear addictive condition. And it has been included in those diagnostic manuals that psychologists use to classify addiction. But that's the only so-called behavioral addiction. So there's no consensus yet among professionals and researchers to also include social media addiction in those standard manuals,

diagnostic classification systems. And I think there's a reason for it not to include it at the moment. So would you say that it's more similar to terms you hear like shopping addictions or things like that? Exactly. So that's a problem. So if we start using those labels, we could easily label all other kinds of behaviors as a pathology.

And that's the danger that we're pathologizing behaviors. So there's an interesting research article showing that if you apply the same approach to social media to having friends, who classify many people as being addicted to friendships, which is, of course, a nonsense. So we need to be carefully what we are looking at and how the profile of those behaviors compares to really what we see in people with a gambling disorder or with a substantive. And in my view, we have done some research on that, we don't see those strong signs, essentially those diagnostic criteria that we see with those established addictions, like withdrawal, for instance. So when we're looking at problematic social media use, is this something that is quite common,

or is it that there is maybe people that have decided that they have that from just a high level of social media use? Again, I think we need to be really careful here. So there's various different studies reporting, varying what we call prevalence rate. So how many people in a population are affected? However, what I think is also important to always look at the detail here. I think the term social media is very broad. So we should, for instance, in my view, differentiate between the use that is mainly driven by social motives. And that's sort of the search area that we are looking at. So what are people looking for in terms of likes and shares and followers? But then of course we have short video platforms, which is a completely other process and which has its own issues in terms of the algorithms and we call that reinforcement learning. So it reinforces you to stay within that medium. But yeah, I think we have to be really be careful with saying 20% of the population is addicted to social media. What is it?

What is their behavior? Are they spending time on TikTok or on X or on Facebook? So we need to, yeah, be more specific. And I mean, if you look at teenagers, they're using it all the time, but they're using it for social interactions mainly. And humans are social animals. So we have inborn needs for belonging and we want to be part of groups. So I think probably a useful comparison is with food and not with drugs.

So we all need to eat, but sometimes we eat too much. We also all need social interaction. And sometimes we spend too much time on Insta to interact with others. However, comparing this to drug addiction, in my view, is not right. So it's difficult to come up with a clear number of how many people are affected. But my hunch is that certainly many young people spend quite a lot on social. But in our studies, we usually have estimates of three to four hours people spend on social. We call it social networking sites.

So it's a long time. So it's part of the issue when we're talking about the sort of terminology, a classification of trying to cram so many different ideas into one term saying all of these people have a social media addiction or a problematic social media use, but that could. mean a whole variety of different things. Exactly. So we really need to look at specific behaviors and at specific platforms. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in a crowd. But too often, life gets busy or the price holds you back.

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Don't wait for a problem. one, go to guardian hr.com. GuardianHR.com When we are looking at this kind of idea, whether it is video or it's social media such as X, Instagram, Facebook, what is it that's happening in the brain when we're using these? Because obviously when we talk about drugs,

there's a very specific pathway that's happening in the brain. Is that similar when we're looking at the use of social media? Yeah, I mean, we're looking at it from a perspective of reward. So we know well that we humans are always looking out for rewards. And if you look at social media, what we find there is, of course, a lot of social rewards, whether it's likes or shares or followers or tags or positive comments. And this is quite enticing and or even be insiductive. And we show, for instance, in one of our studies that if you present logos of social networking sites social media on a screen.

People are very quick to approach these stimuli with a, we use a joystick where they move forward and the picture gets larger. That's much quicker than if you would present a neutral stimulus on the screen because we know that we get something nice on those platforms. So there is also research looking at brain mechanisms or brain processes underlying social media use. And I think my take on is that it is comparable to what happens when we encounter other rewards like food, attractive food, or also, of course, drugs like alcohol. So there's a response of the brain's reward system, which makes us seek those things, but also approach them.

But I'm not sure whether there's a permanent change based on excessive use over time. There's some indication that this can happen, but it can also happen with, like, food similes. So there's changes, for instance, in people who are from overweight or obesity. So a brain change does not necessarily mean that there's a disorder or pathological condition. It means sometimes that something is just very important to us. And I'm interested to get your take on this idea that gets thrown around a lot, that social media is designed to be addictive or to keep you on it for a long time. Like it's a gamble where you pull down and it brings up your feed or it's a never-ending feed. I'm interested in your opinion on that.

Yeah, I think there's definitely a dimension to this, what we call reinforcement learning. So basically what's happening. So you log on and then you're looking for something. And that could either be in the case of short video platforms, something that entertains you, something that is funny. Okay. So you swipe through, suddenly you find something. And that we know from experimental psychology reinforces behavior. So it makes that behavior that you did to reach that point more likely. So you do it again. And you find something new that is nice and entertaining.

The same, I guess, could happen with social rewards and social media. So you could just browse your feet until you get something that makes you feel good because it might be a comment, a nice comment or a like. And then you continue doing this. And this is basically a learning process. And of course, those platforms are designed in a way to engage users and keep them on their platform. So I think there's definitely an element to it. But that's, again, the same with all types of rewards.

Food is made to taste nice. So we continue seeking it. but yeah i absolutely understand that there are a lot of concerns especially among parents how those platforms can make their kids stay on them for for too long and i think we need to probably train them to to find those stopping points when is enough when can i log off actually from what you're saying i assume it's more that there's a balance that can be found that's what we're looking for a healthy level of social integration that's good for us before it gets to a point where it becomes dangerous to us or harmful.

I would agree. So I think we need to have a nuanced view on this. So we did one study where we asked our participants to abstain from social media use for a week. And the interesting finding we had there was that it has a sort of effect that was offsetting. So we had a reduction in some negative feelings. feelings like there was less fear of missing out. But there was also reduction in positive experiences because you miss out on certainly social rewards. So I think we have to recognize that we gain something from social media. But as with any behavior, we should try to use

it responsibly. I mean, that's the same logic that would ultimately apply to certain kinds of legal drugs like alcohol or even to food. So we do not need to detox, as many people say, this term digital detox is, in my view, a misnobre. But we need to look at our behavior and consider whether it's healthy use, whether it's responsible use. And also what we use is quite important. I do want to ask you about the idea of digital detoxes, actually.

Do you consider that to be an overreaction to a problem, a little bit like fasting with food or something along that line. Yeah, I mean, detox means that there's a toxic substance in our organism that we need to get rid of. And I guess that's already the misnomer because in contrast to drug detox, like heroin detox or alcohol detox, nothing needs to be removed in the first place. And I guess it's more looking at what you consume rather than that you consume. So in our study, we actually found that from 50 participants, only few could really abstain completely. So only seven were able to remain dry in a way over that week.

However, what we also found that the majority of our participants were able to reduce the time they spend on social media quite dramatically, which means there is always sort of a baseline level of social needs that you need to have. You couldn't fulfill that, certainly in an offline personal interaction. But we have grown used to using social media to fulfill those social needs. So I think it's something in a way natural. But still, we need to look at the level of that use. So I don't think that idea of detox is really an accurate thing in terms of the processes that happen. In continuing, I guess, this comparison to food,

because I think this is somewhere where this comparison is quite important. When you eat food that's bad for you, you go for a period of eating unhealthy foods, you tend to feel worse at that period at the end. Is there, I guess, a comparison to social media in that extent that a lot of people when they complain about social media or say that they feel negative emotions with it, it's because of interacting with content that maybe doesn't make them happy

or it's because they're interacting with content that's stressful, is that where the risk does lie, where you start to only interact with things that you're not enjoying? Absolutely. I mean, it's not my own research area, but I think there's good understanding now that certain content, especially for other lessons, is not healthy, like when you start comparing yourself to others,

when we look at the idea of body image. So there's a lot of, different risks and things that can happen on social media. But again, I think we need to have a nuanced view on this. We need to look at what are we talking about. And I think that idea of body image and attractiveness, we have to treat differently than when we talk about social media addiction. And if someone does find themselves in a place where they have that problematic social media use,

they're unhappy with them out there using it, but they maybe struggled to bring that back down. What would be the best way to sort of deal with that? Is that a case of maybe putting restrictions on how much they use it or, you know, seeking help? Or is it not that far into a problem? Yeah, I guess it's difficult to answer that. But I guess there are tools available. And I think like with any behavior, starting to gain an awareness. of how much you use and what you use is a good start.

But there's no general strategy I would recommend it. I think you always have to look at individuals, but of course training yourself to build an environment where you can avoid those excessive usage pattern like using screen time apps or creating sort of internal policies. Okay, so no fur news while I'm doing homework. And sticking to those rules is, I think, a good start.

But there's no easy answer to that question. We talked about this a little bit earlier in the conversation. It's something I want to heart back to you quickly is this idea that people talk about social media and the reliance on it as being a new experience and something that's so prevalent because it's there all the time. Is social media the first of its kind in this problem? Or is this just, you know, one in a line?

Was it the same with TV before it? Or, you know, all of these different things in history and we just think it's a new thing that's followed? Good point. A difficult question to answer. So again, I think we need to be careful and look at what we are talking about. So social media is so far different. involves that social element.

I think that's a new thing. So I guess the effect of TikTok short video platforms would probably, or the bait surrounding this would be probably more similar to what we have seen when we had the technologies introduced and people started to worry about kids spending all their time in front of the TV. However, that element of interaction and comparisons and trying to be popular and to be able to have quantifiable social rewards, I think that is new and that is probably something that we still need to study a lot to give good advice and to understand it better. So we've covered quite a lot here. One thing that I'm intrigued to hear from you is obviously, as we've explained, it's an area that has a lot of confusion around it and it's not entirely clear on details or, you know, there is a lot of information on one very specific topic. What would you say to people that are worried about social media addiction or people that have heard these headlines around it? Is there any kind of? thing you would tell those kind of people?

I think what we should avoid is to try to stigmatize these people. And I think one risk is with accepting that there's something like social media addiction is indeed that stigma. So we think it's important for those people to understand. They're not disordered. So it's okay to have those worries and to tell them. But that depends on what they are using. So if they're spending a lot of time on Insta,

is to probably talk with them about why they're using it. So talk about their motives and then maybe discuss with them. Is there another way you could perhaps get what you seek on social media? Could you just meet up with your friends and have those interactions? And is it really good to have those expectations? I think expectations are quite important. How many friends can you really have? Do you really need to have 800 phologists?

Is that something that is good for you? And how are these interactions? Are these really, do they provide anything meaningful in terms of your social needs? And how many likes do you want to get? And is it not better to have a few friends telling you really their honest opinion and whether you're good at something? So I think it has to be a lot. nuanced discussion. And there's no easy advice, certainly.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Insengenius. That was Nicholas Eschen talking about social media reliance. The Instant Genius podcast is brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine, which you can find on sale now in supermarkets and newsagents, as well as on your preferred app store. Alternatively, you can come and find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal,

Name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at Name Audio.com. Thank you.