Social media is making us all crazy. Or, at the very least, it’s making us anxious. So why are we all so addicted?
David Baddiel : Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC2 on Monday began with shocking CCTV footage of the moment the Smithy family, who have 3.3 million TikTok followers, had their car firebombed.
Their young children were pulled from their beds at night as flames charged up the walls of the house. “What happened here?” asked David.
“Trolls,” said ex-builder-turned-social media star Nick, who sobbed: “I put my kids in danger.”
How could he have known that posting silly videos online could lead to arson?
This was a thought-provoking documentary which asked whether we are living in an age of rage because we communicate online instead of in person.
David, a self-confessed Twitter addict with 785,000 followers, said: “I want to find out if something originally designed to help us talk to each other is just leading to everyone shouting at each other.”
Then there was a deluge of evidence that scrolling through posts and tweets and checking our likes and followers is actually pretty bad for us. We all know this deep down, right?
David, who tweets about everything from his hotel breakfast to anti-Semitism, is no stranger to both adoration and abuse online. While he read his tweets, a brain scan revealed a dopamine hit for the nice tweets and a physical trigger at the bad.
Do these feelings bleed out into the real world? They must do.
In one quietly powerful scene, David’s daughter Dolly, 20, revealed she struggled with anorexia in her teens and latched on to an Instagram recovery community.
David realised social media can exploit self-hatred in young people, admitting: “She would have been better off without it.”
Computer scientist Jaron Lanier, who wrote the book Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, said social media kickstarts a fight-or-flight response, causing paranoia and irritability.
Basically, we’re all being triggered by a manipulative popularity contest that follows us around all day and occasionally has a temper tantrum and starts shouting or telling big fat lies. But we’ve all got FOMO and can’t leave it alone.
David quit cold turkey for a fortnight, admitting afterwards that it was “a bit like a holiday” and he felt more zen.
But the need for an audience and being part of the conversation meant he dived straight back in afterwards – after all, social media is complicated.
A tweet about his dad’s dementia showcased peak Twitter joy as strangers rallied with tearjerking messages of love and support.
David seemed to be saying, social media is deeply flawed but brilliant, so maybe let’s just all be careful out there.
