Introduction: What changes has the mobile Internet brought to social trends in the past decade?
We fail to see the truth not because we are too far away from it; on the contrary, it is because we have been in it for too long that we can see nothing.
The human brain has magical plasticity.
A large number of experiments in cognitive science, clinical medicine and neuroscience have proved that whether it is monkeys or humans, playing games for just a few days will cause changes in the cerebral cortex.
And if it were said that the Internet, which we are immersed in every day, has not brought about any changes in our cognitive level, behavioral patterns, or even the entire social ideology, wouldn’t that be too absurd?
So, what changes has the Internet, especially the mobile Internet, brought about in social trends over the past decade?
How should we, as individuals or business institutions, navigate this change?
In this article, we will combine the emerging research in economics, sociology, developmental psychology, evolution theory, and Internet technology to share with you the profound changes that Internet users, that is, ourselves, have undergone in the three key dimensions of “cognitive level, social communication, and time decision-making”.
I think this still has certain reference value for both personal career development and corporate strategic thinking.
No matter how substantial the argument or rigorous the deduction in this article is, it is at most suitable for 98% of the population. Please think critically and refer to it – a warm reminder.
I. Changes in User Cognitive Levels: Binary polarization
Any change that a new thing brings to people occurs at the “cognitive level”.
The greatest changes in the Internet era can be summarized in three points:
Information explosion
Information and services are readily available
The essence of social interaction has undergone a dramatic change
You might ask, doesn’t the Internet “eliminate information asymmetry and bring about freedom, equality and diversity”? All I can say is that although this was a beautiful vision when the Internet was first established, it has clearly gotten out of control as it has evolved to this day.
(1) Excessive simplification of information caused by the explosion of information
Let’s first talk about the “information explosion”. Long ago, many experts were worried that the overload of information on the Internet would impose an excessive burden on our brains. It turns out that the experts, as always, were outrageously wrong.
Yes, the brains of modern people are not much different from those of primitive humans. The amount of information we are exposed to in a single day today is greater than what our primitive ancestors were exposed to in a lifetime. However, it seems that humans are born with a powerful “information screening and blocking ability” – the massive amount of information triggers the “rapid evolution” of the brain’s information screening ability.
Isn’t this a good thing?
It is a pity that “evolution” has never taken into account “superiority or inferiority”, but rather “adaptability”.
Apart from a very small proportion of the elite, the general public’s way of filtering information is simple and crude: information based on the preferences of the reptilian brain – namely, “love”, “hate”, “affection”, “enmity”, “superficial utilitarianism”, etc. – will prioritize occupying users’ attention.
However, I also discussed in my tweet “The Fatal Trap of Knowledge” :
The most productive thinking is that which leads us to reimagine useful and brand-new descriptions.
The acquisition of these brand-new ways of thinking requires some “new knowledge stimulation that steps out of the comfort zone”, which is exactly the opposite of the “taste” of the reptilian brain.
For example:
For a junior high school student in the pre-Internet era, during his spare time, he might flip through the “A Brief History of Time” (* Note: The thinking behind theoretical physics is actually very expensive) placed on the bookshelf, gradually opening up a thinking world that is detached from the perspective of reality and stimulating the “possibility” of new thinking development.
However, this has become so difficult for junior high school students in the post-Internet era – their leisure time is firmly occupied by games and entertainment. For children whose mental development is not yet complete, it is unlikely that they have the ability to “resist the temptation of dopamine” and settle down to read dull ideological books.
So, in general, the excessive application of the Internet is extremely unfair to a large number of people who “have the potential to further develop a sound personality” and are “up or down”. They have greatly delayed the development of their brain’s higher-order thinking abilities and missed the best period of life to build grand ambitions.
If we say that the information explosion merely reduces the probability of the general public “devoting their attention to learning high-value information”. Then, another impact of the Internet is even more fatal:
(2) The easy availability of information and services reshapes the brain’s “reward circuit”
In nature, any animal that gains nothing for a period of time will surely face the crisis of hunger and even death.
The same was true of human ancestors, which evolved into a kind of “anxiety” that modern people call “boredom”. That is, once we have nothing to do, we will feel anxious. This uncomfortable feeling will force us to “act”, and we usually tend to “step out of the comfort zone” (having a greater chance of getting out of the predicament).
In other words, humans need the necessary sense of “boredom”. For instance, when a junior high school student is bored, they might flip through thick and hard-to-read classic works. However, nowadays, the “time and space gap” that is crucial to an individual’s growth has been solved by the Internet at the lowest cost.
Business organizations rack their brains to occupy every minute of our “boring time”. Everyone seems to be very “busy”, so busy that even when waking up, going to the toilet, washing up, having meals, or even chatting with others, they are staring at their phone screens.
Once the Internet is disconnected, many people will experience symptoms such as irritability and depression. Does it sound familiar?
A 2012 study on Chinese teenagers titled “Abnormal White Matter Integrity in the Brains of Internet Addicts” revealed that the changes in the brains of addicts are very similar to those caused by alcohol abuse and drug use.
Drug addiction can alter the brain’s reward circuits. How could Internet addiction not “reshape” the brain?
So, here’s a response to the question that reader @R mentioned yesterday:
Will electronic devices affect human cognitive abilities, such as decreased attention and memory?
From a physical perspective, it won’t. Some games also have an enhancing effect on human cognitive abilities. However, compared with this benefit, more stimulating Internet applications can easily alter the brain reward circuits of the “majority”, passively and significantly reducing people’s concentration.
I mean, most people. A few mentally sound people merely regard the Internet as an efficient tool and can navigate it with ease. Thus, they can gain great “benefits” on the Internet.
So, here’s a response to another reader @Zhong Yiyi’s question about the trailer:
Personally, I feel that the Internet has more advantages than disadvantages for me. For instance, I can obtain information that I had no idea about in the “pre-Internet era”, and I don’t seem to be addicted to the Internet either?
Yes, that’s why I just mentioned “mentally sound” people without any discrimination. True intellectual elites can basically get rid of the excessive interference of the “reptilian brain” with ease. Of course, this is not due to the innate wisdom of these people, but rather the “opportunity” of their growth environment, which is rather fortunate (as mentioned in previous tweets, it will not be elaborated here).
So, from a macro perspective, the Internet is not beneficial to the majority of groups whose minds have not yet fully developed.
It is particularly important to note that many human mental intelligences can only be acquired at specific stages of life, and once this stage is missed, it will never be truly mastered again.
For instance, “bilingual proficiency” can only be learned almost once before the age of five. At present, brain science research is still at a shallow level, and we have no idea how many advanced human mental intelligences can never be acquired after missing a certain stage.
In 2014, Susan Greenfield, a renowned British scientist specializing in consciousness research, published “Mind Changes” : The Internet is not creating smarter machines, but rather creating dumber humans.
There is a joke by the renowned technology journalist Piero that I really like: “There are two ways to make artificial intelligence surpass humans: one is to make intelligence smarter, and the second is to make humans stupid!”
It is expected that artificial intelligence will not prevail through the second way.
If you want to test whether you are a “mentally mature person”, the simplest way is to “disconnect from the Internet” for a week to see if you feel “uncomfortable” and verify whether you still have the ability to “enjoy quiet solitude”.
Summary of Users’ Cognitive Levels in the Post-Internet Era:
The Internet itself is a brand-new and neutral technological tool. Due to the above-mentioned influences, it makes the brilliant even more brilliant and the foolish even more foolish.
However, the vast majority of ordinary people who can move up or down have greatly reduced the probability of this group moving up.
Second, social media: It has ruined both social interaction and the media
Among the numerous applications of the Internet, the one that has brought about the greatest change to “human civilization” can be said to be “social media”, without any doubt.
The greatest contribution of social media to society can be said to have both beautifully stifled “social interaction” and gracefully ended “media”.
(1) Social media has stifled social interaction
Just like the Internet, the original intention of social applications is also very beautiful: to create a group of efficient and like-minded virtual social Spaces, unrestricted by region and time, with low energy consumption and collaborative efforts to create more social value.
However, just as in the physical world, “order always spontaneously evolves into disorder (entropy)”, the “macroscopic group instinct” that humans exhibit once they gather seems to have a tendency to use “neutral tools in a negative way”. Didn’t the ancients often say, “Good news stays at home, but bad news travels thousands of miles?”
Human beings are social animals, and socializing is an attribute of being human. This has become a rigid need engraved in our genes: we can only obtain a sense of “self”, “existence”, “belonging and security” from the genuine emotional exchanges with our relatives and friends.
However, after the invention of social media, especially the magical “like”, social networks gradually evolved into amplifiers of personal “vanity”. People only need to select a specific corner, take photos and edit them, and then post them to create a “virtual good self-image” at a very low cost. In contrast, real “emotional socializing” is really very troublesome.
For the human species, vanity (with a sense of superiority behind it) can stimulate the secretion of “dopamine”, but dopamine merely rewards “expectations”, changes behavior, but does not bring happiness. This is the case with online socializing. (” Emotional social interaction “is the opposite.)
PS: The essence of “social media addiction” includes vanity addiction, voyeurism addiction and gossip addiction.
Of course, we cannot deny that this kind of “pseudo-socializing” has brought about huge commercial value:
From then on, people were more willing to spend a lot of money to “experience a colorful” life. If there were no circle of friends, the high-end consumption and tourism industries would probably have shrunk by more than half of their markets.
When I was in Sri Lanka, I once shared a table with some Chinese people. They had just finished taking photos and forced an extremely superior smile. After putting down their phones, they immediately said, “This country is so boring…”
Not to mention the multi-billion-dollar advertising market on social media every year.
The even greater business derived from the combination of big data based on social media and new business (user behavior contributes data, but the profits then belong to large companies).
However, behind numerous commercial successes, we will never know what “humanity” and “happiness experiences” we, as individual human beings, have sacrificed, and whether these “humanity” and “happiness” can be bought back with tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars.
The forced communication through text, pictures and emojis on social tools can never replace the emotional value brought by the contextualization of the “surface tone” in face-to-face social interaction. The replacement of emotional social interaction by utilitarian social interaction among people will make humans more self-centered and selfish, with extremely low mutual trust.
Among my close friends, many have expressed that they “seldom open Moments” or “would like to close Moments if it weren’t for work requirements”.
(2) Social media has killed media
In the post-social media era, the criterion for judging the quality of an article is no longer “social value”, but has been extremely superficially simplified by the market mechanism to “reading volume” and “sharing volume”.
As a result, most social media platforms only offer “gossip” and “uninvestigated and unthought information”, and these trashy pieces of information fill the public’s vision. The “viral spread phenomenon” carried out by some advertising and marketing agencies is not only uncriticized but also regarded as a classic of MBA programs by many institutions, which are competing to imitate.
Where there is attention, there is money to be made. In fact, social media has directly wiped out a large number of traditional high-quality media and publications. Even the few survivors can only gradually become vulgarized and linger on.
The evolution of social media to this point has a highly causal cycle relationship with the “decline in the overall cognitive level of the general public” discussed in the first part. In turn, social media further contributes to the “decline in cognitive level”.
Of course, I did not attribute all these problems to the Internet itself.
National entertainment (foolish) has already begun in the era of print media and television. The Internet, like money, merely serves as a magnifying glass or accelerator.
From my personal perspective, the Internet is definitely a “positive factor”. After all, I’m neither addicted nor have I lost my real social life. I have always maintained a neutral attitude towards the Internet. In fact, the above-mentioned problems have more quickly and intensely exposed the drawbacks of the market mechanism – the market mechanism cannot solve many social problems.
According to the above evolutionary inference, several points can be determined:
First, real interpersonal social interaction has shrunk, and the effect of word-of-mouth communication has declined. (Note that it is genuine emotional social word-of-mouth communication, not social media communication.)
Second, when the moon waxes, it wanes. As an individual, I still believe in the decisions of the elite class. The negative impact of social media on society is bound to be greatly restricted. Major institutions and platforms have gradually introduced measures to weaken the spread of vulgar information. To put it bluntly, “sharing and spreading on Moments” will no longer be as effective as before.
Thirdly, my personal suggestion is that marketing and operation personnel should not be overly obsessed with researching the “virus spread” based on the reptilian brain. Even if it can avoid legal risks for the time being, it will inevitably come at the cost of damaging the brand image.
A large amount of data proves that the contribution rate of attention brought by articles with a high number of shares is actually very low.
So, with the post-Internet era having brought about such significant changes in the public’s cognition and social patterns, what kind of impact will it have on people’s way of using their time?
Iii. User Time Decision-making Mode: Stories shape our time
If I ask you, “How much of your spare time can you control by yourself?” Do you think my head was kicked by a donkey?
But before we doubt whether I have just come out of the zoo, we’d better reflect: Can we really manage our time well?
As previously discussed, the immense pressure of market competition has led all Internet business institutions to recruit the most outstanding talents, “desperately thinking and researching” on how to seize users’ scarce attention resources to the greatest extent – I mean, users’ time.
For instance, after work, on the surface, you seem to have a few hours of free time.
During this period of time, you can “freely control” it. You can study and recharge, exercise and keep fit, or take a quiet walk with your family… However, if you happen to see a “game advertisement that particularly attracts you” on the subway on your way home, or if you “happen” to receive the gossip information you like while browsing Weibo (based on behavior analysis), does your “time” that night change as a result?
This is the current decision-making pattern of users’ time – being influenced by the countless online and offline media information surrounding them