According to studies, the internet is harmful to our mental health, and more people are becoming aware of this. Tech executives send their children to anti-internet schools, while internet gurus push us to give up social media. However, a more structural answer to the internet's grip on our life is required; we must consider the internet as a factory.
This year appears to be the turning point for how people feel about the internet on social media. Many people, from casual Twitter users to professional content creators, have turned on the technology that was once hailed as a liberating technology that would bring in an era of innovation and new connections throughout the globe.
For good cause, we're all re-evaluating our relationship with the internet, yet we've misclassified what this relationship truly is. It's not like a bad relationship, where you can simply leave, or junk food, where you can choose to eat less - it's an all-encompassing technology, our main economic engine, the instrument we're obliged to use to meet others and manage our entire lives.
Our current internet-use crisis cannot be solved on an individual level, any more than capitalism's awful working conditions can be solved by one person quitting their job. Content creators, gig economy employees, and even casual internet users must advocate for a structural solution if we intend to make the internet less stressful, back-breaking, and gratifying.
Internet is rotting our brains
A rising body of evidence demonstrates that the internet is actually harmful to our health. Limiting social media use to 10 minutes per day dramatically lowered anxiety in college students, according to a 2018 study. Teens who spent more time online were more likely to suffer mental health issues, according to a 2019 study. According to other studies, people who use social media end up feeling more lonely.
Several notable TED Talks by former internet engineers and executives warn people that the internet is harmful to their health and that they should avoid it.There are several popular TED Talks from former internet engineers and executives telling people that the internet is bad for them and they should leave social media behind. Retreats for the wealthy which forbid phones and computers have cropped up, and, perhaps most worryingly, the very people who build this technology are sending their kids to schools where the technology is banned - a tacit admission of its potential to harm people's minds.
We're often told that the internet is terrible for us, but worldwide, social media usage is at an all-time high, reaching 145 minutes per person per day. We're locked in a cycle where we know something is wrong, we want to change it, but we can't seem to.
Internet as a factory where we work, but don't get paid
We can't quit the internet because we've conceptualized the problem all wrong. Social media is not an individual addiction that can be addressed at an individual level - it's a societal problem that needs a societal fix.
We need to think of the internet less as a tool we all somehow can't stop using, and more as a factory we're required to be in. Our entire society has been reformulated around the internet, much like it was centered around the factory during the Industrial Revolution.
If there's an Amazon Web Services outage, much of our society stops functioning. Without the internet, we couldn't find jobs, or, at this point, even friends.
We're all required to be here - online - for our livelihoods. But even when we're not required to be here, companies attempt to make sure we still are: App and game developers use the same science that keeps people playing the slots in Las Vegas to keep us glued to our screens.
