With one scroll, users of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram switch from consuming content surrounding new fashion styles and trending fidget toys to corruption and global warming. The way these digital companies set up their algorithms creates a feed that constantly switches between a diverse range of topics and overloads consumers with trends. This leads users to get trapped into a cycle of doomscrolling.
The system’s focus on content-overload and trending topics causes nuanced ideas to become trivialized and leads consumers to simply scroll past critical ideas instead of engaging in deep thought. It pairs videos about car crashes, school shootings, and violence with makeup videos, shopping hauls, and other low-stakes topics. In doing so, it desensitizes viewers to brutalization.
Prior to the digital age, society sought entertainment in novels, cinemas, operas, ballets, and more long-form, concentrated content dominated the sphere of leisure. With clear focal points, which artists developed through sizable works, these compositions forced the audience to sit with and contemplate the ideas laid out in front of them and gratification was delayed.
Currently, social media sites prioritize short-form content and the latest fads, providing users with instant gratification. Without having to work for dopamine, consumers continue chasing the next thrill without processing what they just digested. Many students at Benilde-St. Margaret’s do not even consider what they last watched. “I don’t really think about it,” sophomore Grace Zhao said.
Curated algorithms rarely allow users to maintain focus long enough to thoroughly engage with a complex concept. Users find themselves bombarded with drastically different topics within minutes. Many students explained how they see a mix of politics, clothing, makeup, and more. “Each video is different as you scroll,” junior Audrey Villarreal said.
The constant stream of new videos allows consumers to scroll past in-depth videos or complicated topics and still find entertainment. Even when social media feeds present audiences with current events and real-world issues, which Villarreal finds she sees about every five videos, they often fail to hold BSM students’ attention. “Maybe I’ll spend a minute or two thinking about [the content], but I won’t dwell on it or anything,” junior Samantha Gross said.
Videos discussing breaking news and similar topics often use defeated, fear-invoking tones and spotlight bleak aspects of recent events over optimistic ones. By creating somber moods, they inadvertently encourage users to stop watching and scroll to the next upbeat video. Since social media platforms pair together such contrasting content and distract viewers from videos about current events, which often show violence and misconduct, by showing lighthearted content, they foster an environment where users may feel less shock or discomfort around sensitive issues after excessive media coverage.
BSM students discovered through extensive use how apps, such as Instagram and Tiktok, fill feeds with trending content and implement rapid shifts from one week to the next. Each trend follows a similar pattern. One topic rises in popularity with exponential growth until it reaches its peak and soon it becomes outdated. Students’ algorithms tend to feed into this cycle. “There are a lot of videos that I watch that are a part of trends. So a lot [of] like do my makeup routine with me at like 4:30 in the morning, kind of thing. I see a lot of those,” Gross said.
Recently, these digital sites have found a new target for the trend cycle: social justice issues. Users, especially on Instagram, will repost content to their stories after seeing the same substance on their friends’ own accounts. Suddenly, a whole community posts about the same subject matter within just a few days.
“I think they’re people who want to help. They don’t really know how, and they think that’s all they can do, but they’re not really helping,” Erickson said.
Junior Tessa Erickson saw this happen with the Black Lives Matter Movement. She explained how many influencers put a black square as their profile picture and put ‘‘BLM’’ in their bios. However, Erickson saw that the bios were removed and the profile pictures were changed soon after others did so as well. “I think they’re people who want to help. They don’t really know how, and they think that’s all they can do, but they’re not really helping,” Erickson said.
Turning activism into a trend often leaves the impression that social justice issues are temporary as advocacy dies out. Additionally, using reposts and hashtags as the main outlet for fighting injustice can often give a surface level impression of deeper issues. When users don’t conduct additional research, which many don’t, they fail to learn the complexities of the issues discussed and get a minimized understanding of the subject matter.
Nevertheless, highlighting societal imbalances through digital platforms has some advantages. It helps present critical issues and concerns to a more widespread audience. Distance can be combatted and organized action has become easier to plan.
In order to combat the rise of desensitization and shallow processing, those who use social media as their main form of entertainment should consider increasing their consumption of long-form content or decreasing their use of trend focused digital platforms.