#10. Email Is Addictive (Just Like Gambling)
Email is one of the most useful tools to come out of the Internet. The trouble is, email follows something called the "variable interval reinforcement schedule," which is the same process that drives gambling addiction. It's also turned billions of us into unwitting addicts. It's one of the strongest habit-training methods known to man, and nearly everyone who owns a computer has been subjected to it for years.
#9. Facebook Makes You Miserable
Facebook is the craze that refuses to die; the flash-in-the-pan website we've all ridiculed for years but can't bring ourselves to quit. A joint American/Belgian study monitored participants' Facebook usage for two weeks while simultaneously keeping tabs on their mood. They found that frequent users reported lower life-satisfaction both at the end of the fortnight and after individual visits to the site. The theory goes that most of us inflate our achievements and happiness on our profiles, but somehow miss the logical assumption that everyone else is doing it too. And according to science, it's making us all miserable.
#8. We Get Twitter Rage
Think back to the last Tweet you saw that really caused a reaction in you. Chances are it was something that pissed you off: a liberal howling for more gun control, or a conservative snarling about abortion doctors, or whatever. Chinese researchers studied over 70 million posts on Sina Weibo (China's version of Twitter) to see how different emotions spread across the network. Well, according to researchers, that's because social media is basically powered by anger. In short, social media is steadily making us less happy and more angry.
#7. Facebook Also Makes You Racist
We all know that the Internet is a breeding ground for racism; anyone who thinks otherwise can try spending an hour or so surfing YouTube comments and report back. A recent study looked at the links between social media use and racism and found that people who spend a lot of time on Facebook are more likely to be accepting of prejudice. One statement claimed that whites were superior to blacks, another that whites are victimized by society, while a final one gave examples of anti-black prejudice "Jack" had witnessed. Now, this could simply mean that racists are more likely to frequently use Facebook than us non-racists, but either way it's a pretty grim result.
#6. It Might Make You Dumber
In 2009, the journal Science published an overview of studies about the effect of new media on our cognitive abilities. They found that while the Internet can increase "visual literacy skills," that increase appears to be offset with decreases in other areas, such as critical thinking, inductive problem solving, imagination, and "abstract vocabulary." In other words, we may be getting better at some stuff, but we're becoming a lot dumber in other areas. If we end up trading them in for super-duper "visual literacy skills," it won't exactly be the trade of a lifetime.
#5. It's Rewiring Our Brains
It's pretty much undeniable that the Internet is changing the way we think and do things. Well, in 2011, a study came out suggesting it might be doing exactly that. By scanning the brains of 125 students in London, researchers noticed a direct link between the number of Facebook friends the students had and the amount of grey matter in certain regions of their brains. But there is plenty of evidence that the Internet is affecting the way we behave, so who knows what else it might be doing.
#4. It Allows Companies To Influence Us
"Astroturfing" is when companies set up thousands of fake "grassroots" personalities to swamp message boards with a specific opinion in the hopes that you will notice the sheer number of comments arguing that Snooki should be president (or whatever) and be swayed by them. They were then randomly assigned to view either a real climate science page, or an "astroturf" one set up to discredit the idea. It's used by everyone from tobacco companies to the US Air Force-and the terrifying thing is, it's working. And companies are using them to acquire illegitimate influence all the time.
#3. It Spreads Extremism
Social media is one of the greatest recruitment tools extremists have. In 2011, the UK government declared it had "transformed the extent to which terrorist organisations and their sympathizers can radicalize people in this country." A year later, the BBC investigated Al-Qaeda's Twitter strategy (yep, they totally have one) and found that the terrorist organisation's presence was "limited, rather sophisticated and increasing." But it's not just Islamic extremists who are benefiting from social media.
#2. It's More Addictive Than Heroin
Internet Use Disorder (IUD) is a not-yet-official mental health disorder, whereby sufferers find themselves addicted to the Internet. It sounds like the sort of hilarious excuse 14-year-olds make up when their mom asks why they spend all day online, but there's a lot of research out there that suggests it's both very real and deeply unpleasant. That's right: Using the Internet every single day apparently effects your brain very similarly to shooting up behind a dumpster.
#1. Social Media May Destroy Empathy
Students today are less likely to feel for others, to show concern for others, and are significantly worse at prescriptive talking-the ability to perceive other people's thoughts, feelings, and motivations. There's a lot of research out there to suggest today's youth are way less empathetic than youth 30 years ago. Now, the research into this is far from conclusive, but it does make you wonder: If this is what a decade of social media can do, what will the effects be in the future?
