[KAJIAN ONLINE] OVERSOCIALIZATION_DRAFT2.4 Miftah R.A.

Over-socialization:
Is Social Media Killing Your Individuality?

“Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real
beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.” – Guy Debord

xxx
Advances in information technology has culminated into an ever-present force that we call
social media. We are all surely familiar with it, and for many of us, it has become an
incredibly pervasive aspect of our lives: we regularly scroll through Instagram, Twitter and
Facebook, keeping ourselves updated on what our peers and public figures have been doing,
where they went this weekend, what they had for dinner, or what they thought about what
someone thought about what someone said about some (surely very important) event. We
scroll through (and sometimes partake in) everlasting debates in comment sections about
whether or not homosexuals should be criminalized, or the results of the presidential election,
or if a high-schooler far, far away really did stab another high-schooler in the genitals
(Ayuningtyas, 2019).

The transfer of information between citizens have been streamlined to a degree never before
seen in human history. The rate at which we are exposed to the thoughts of collective society,
in the form of social media, keeps increasing. The implication of this is that societal moral
codes would also increase its grip on individual thought and behavior, subtly restricting our
individual freedom to think and act. Could it be that social media is paving the way for the
collectivization of human thought, or even consciousness? If so, what would the consequences
be for users of such technology? Notwithstanding the popular narrative of social media as
supremely beneficial insofar as it unites us all (globalization, et cetera), This analysis will
attempt to find answers for these questions, and delve into what the existence of social media
might mean for humanity.

The failed revolution

Ted Kaczynski, the American terrorist so-called the “Unabomber”, embarked on a nationwide
mail-bombing campaign in 1978, in a self-professed attempt to kick-start a revolution against
what he called the “Industrial Society”. Following these attacks, he demanded that the New
York Times publish his manifesto, as a condition for him to desist from terrorism. In it, he
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argued in detail that “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for
the human race”, as it has destabilized society, made life unfulfilling, and resulted in the
erosion of human freedom and dignity (Kaczynski, 1995).

Figure 1: Ted Kaczynski, the failed revolutionary

Notwithstanding Kaczynski’s questionable bid to start a revolution via violent terrorism, The
Industrial Society and its Future raises striking points regarding the unfavorable impacts
mankind has suffered as a result of industrial and technological advances. One especially
interesting concept he discussed was that of “over-socialization”, which he defined as the
condition wherein moral codes and social norms are so well-internalized into members of
society, to the point that attempting to think, feel and act against social expectations impose
a severe psychological burden. He further argued that over-socialization can lead to low self-
esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, and guilt.

The idea of social control, i.e. society’s means of imposing rules and punishing violators of
these rules, has been well-established within the field of sociology (Janowitz, 1975). However,
the entrance of social media, with its constant and ever-tightening grip on our lives, might
change the way social control works – perhaps for the worse. If this were the case, it would
stand to reason that people will increasingly be more prone to over-socialization.

The centralized consciousness

The notion of “collective consciousness” has been established by sociologists far before the
dawn of social media. Coined by Emile Durkheim, he defined it as the set of shared beliefs,
ideas, and moral attitudes which is common throughout all members of a society (Durkheim,
1893). While initially conceived as a collective “conscience” of sorts, it may well be that the
advent of social media is constructing for itself a true pseudo-consciousness, consisting of the
sum total of all its participants. To understand this, imagine the entire social media sphere as
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an organism in itself, and the people who communicate through it as neurons of the creature’s
brain, sharing and receiving information through the interconnected network every participant
is plugged into. For its users, social media has managed to replace, or at the very least
enhance, nearly all aspects of society and the interactions within it.

The consequence for the participants, then, is that the distinction between the “real” and the
“virtual” worlds become blurred. Social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson writes in his blog
Cyborgology, “We live in a cyborg society. Technology has infiltrated the most fundamental
aspects of our lives: social organization, the body, even our self-concepts” (Jurgenson, 2018).
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in June 2017 that social media is the new “public square”,
where people find entertainment, read the news, communicate, and engage in discourse
(Livni, 2017). The key difference is that now, the public square is always in our pockets,
readily accessed at the tap of a screen. This means that we are nearly always connected to
the collective consciousness – for the pace at which we exchange information with the web,
there might as well be routers implanted directly in our skulls.

Figure 2: Times Square, the public square of New York – images galore, it even looks like social media.

Raised by social media

Socialization refers to the process in which moral codes and social norms are internalized into
new members of a society (Macionis, 2017). In essence, socialization occurs naturally for each
person, as representatives of society around them control their behavior in order to instill
commonly-adhered values. Conventionally, this is done by traditional institutions such as
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parents and schools. The individual gradually synthesizes what they learn from these
institutions, combines them with their own personal experiences, and forms their own moral
codes they will live by, which are subject to changes as they accumulate more experiences
(Crain, 1985).

The stages of moral development are divided into two stages: the primary stage administered
by parents, and the secondary stage administered by the rest of society (Kohlberg, 1973).
Social media changes things for both stages. At the primary stage, young children are
increasingly given access to smartphones. One study found that across Europe, around 46%
of children 9 to 16 own a smartphone (Howard, 2017), and the numbers are similar elsewhere.
This shows that kids are now not only raised by parents, but also by everyone on Instagram,
Facebook or Twitter.

Similarly, the secondary stage of moral development is no longer done by small communities
in which the individual belongs, but by everything they access online. In internalizing norms,
socialization also programs how a person views themselves in relation to society as a whole,
and people derive satisfaction and happiness in relation to their perceived position in society.
It has been found that social media directly affects our brains’ reward circuitry (Hinchcliffe,
2018; Vedantam, 2017). Coupled with how we are constantly hooked up to social media, it
becomes inevitable that it has become the main force of socialization for everyone involved,
and thus people will increasingly derive their satisfaction and happiness from their online
identities, and how they are perceived online. As we have established, the amalgamation of
the “real” and the “virtual” means that a person’s online identity will become indistinguishable
from their “actual” identity.

The “spectacle”

With the ubiquity of social media and the constant influx of the collective consciousness
manifesting itself through the digital screens we scroll through on a daily basis, the dangers
of over-socialization raised by Ted Kaczynski starts to appear extremely relevant. Can we
truly deem ourselves individuals, free to think and free to act, when nearly everything we
think and do is sources from, and eventually circulates itself back into our smartphones?
When we are spoon-fed news and opinions about events near and far, and in return upload
our entire lives to Instagram as tribute to satisfy our hunger for social validation? Have we
become slaves to the all-encompassing collective mind?

Eerily similar ideas have been raised, quite far back in history. French philosopher Guy Debord
wrote in his revolutionary Society of the Spectacle that “all of life presents itself as an
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immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into
a representation” (Debord, 1967). If social media comes to mind reading that quote, keep in
mind, Debord wrote it in 1967. In line with Marxist theory, he aimed to strike against the
capitalistic machine of society, and the “mass media”, which he viewed as the tool it used to
pacify the masses - to make them forget their true status as slaves to a system hell-bent on
producing goods endlessly. To Debord, the “spectacle” was the great distractor, hypnotizing
the people to chase hollow pursuits such as wealth, fame, and all the conventional trappings
of “success”. The spectacle was advertising, television, and celebrities, which functioned to
keep people from self-reflection, from independent thought, from contemplating the self as
an entity apart from the restrictive shackles of common norms and values.

It would not be unreasonable, then, to consider social media as the ultimate spectacle. While
manifesting itself today as billboards, popup ads, and the latest political news, the spectacle
also takes the form of holiday photos we post on Instagram, the fierce debates we take part
in on Facebook, and the hoaxes we unknowingly share on Whatsapp. Every time we
participate in social media, we become the spectacle, adopting the role of the collective mind,
and agglomerating ourselves to the great “global community” that is social media. For each
selfie we take, and each minute we sit fidgeting, anticipating the next “like” from people we
barely know, we are letting the collective mind strengthen its hold on our individual
consciousness. The alienation each individual inevitably feels, Debord argued, would mean
that people will eventually be wholly subject to the spectacle, with no time or energy to live
a life for themselves.
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Figure 3: Us, according to Guy Debord – eternally our own audience.

Much-needed self-reflection

For some, the argument presented above might not seem sufficiently compelling. You might,
for one, flippantly deny that social media has such a strong hold on your subconscious, your
thoughts, and your actions. You might feel free, but for one moment, you might want to re-
think: are you really? How long can you spend, on your own, with your own thoughts, without
feeling the nagging urge to take out your phone and connect yourself once more with the
Instagram-“stories” of people you barely know? How many times have you woke up and
immediately checked how many people liked your newest post? Have you ever been self-
conscious of how many “followers” you have compared to your peers? How many of the
“personal opinions” you passionately hold are truly, wholly yours, and can’t be traced to some
random rant on a comment section somewhere? Contrary to what you might think, you would
be surprised just how much the “collective mind” has influenced you.

For Debord, the perceived degradation of humanity inflicted by the spectacle was simply
unacceptable. Suffering from depression and alcoholism, Debord shot himself in the head on
November 1994 (McDonough, 2003). An article called him “the victim of the spectacle he
fought” (Baker, 2001) – perhaps Debord felt he could never escape, lest by death. His view
of media as such an evil force might give too shocking or radical of an impression – however,
it is plenty food for thought. In any case, while we are not yet literal cyborgs with physically
implanted internet connections, perhaps this might be our last chance to rethink what
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relationship we would like to have with the collective social consciousness – while we still have
the option to keep a distance.

References

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