Personal insight backed by research

Facebook began as a novelty. A curious tool to stay connected with friends, to share updates, photos, and milestones. In its earliest form back around 2007, it felt like a digital social lounge — lightweight, harmless, even helpful. But it evolved into something else.

Over time, the feed filled with ads, manipulative headlines, and engineered content designed not to inform, but to provoke. What once was a space of shared connection became a minefield of brain-altering ideas and polarizing noise. The platform shaping its users — reinforcing their biases, justifying their worst instincts, and rewarding the most extreme behaviors. Perhaps it didn’t change people so much as it revealed them — and gave them permission to stay that way.

The safe haven of friends and photos vanished. In its place emerged a tool of manipulation. Something sinister. Subtle at first, then overwhelming.

Stepping away

I recognized the shift years ago. I didn’t need a study to sense the corrosion… I felt it. My attention fragmented. Creative output declined. Energy drained into an endless scroll. So nearly five years ago, I walked away. I left social media behind and haven’t looked back.

Since then, my mental clarity has sharpened. I have more time, more focus, and more space for deep work — study, writing, and creative development. The change wasn’t subtle. It was structural. I stopped giving in to the algorithm.

What’s striking is how many studies now confirming these effects were published around the time I quit.

The science catches up

A 2023 review in Frontiers in Cognition found that digital media reduces sustained attention and increases novelty seeking — weakening the ability to focus or complete cognitively demanding tasks. A 2024 study, Short Reels and Academic Performance, linked frequent viewing of short-form video content (like Instagram and TikTok) with lower academic performance and shorter attention spans in university students. The correlation was clear and measurable.

And it’s not just a student problem. A 2022 paper in Frontiers in Psychology found that heavy social media use impairs working memory — the mental system essential for planning, reasoning, and comprehension. Another study showed that even a single session of rapid, topic-hopping video scrolling reduces prospective memory, making people more likely to forget tasks they intended to complete.

These findings aren’t theoretical. They match what I see every day. On commutes, in meetings, in daily life — people are buried in their phones, unable to sit still or engage without digital input. It’s not just distraction. It’s addiction. Conditioned behavior. By design.

I’ve watched this decay unfold in all kinds of people — including myself. Instructions are forgotten. Focus is fleeting. Problem-solving is outsourced to Google or ChatGPT. In many settings, people turn to their feeds more reflexively than they turn to their own reasoning.

And yes — life is far more complex than it was 100 years ago, let alone 10. The pressure to keep up creates stress, anxiety, and depression. Watching funny cat videos has become a coping mechanism.

A 2021 study, Daily Associations Between Social Media Use and Memory Failures, found that frequent users reported more memory lapses and worse emotional states. More content doesn’t lead to more knowledge. It leads to more noise — and less retention.

Even the people who built these systems now express regret. Justin Rosenstein, the engineer who created Facebook’s “Like” button, later called it a manipulative psychological tool that rewards shallow interaction and trains users to crave approval. He deleted his own Facebook access and publicly denounced the platform he helped create.

The algorithm

We are now in what I call the Age of Dumbification. People don’t just consume information — they consume it in forms that corrode attention, fracture thought, and suppress creativity. The algorithm rewards reaction, not reflection. And users have adapted accordingly.

We’ve built a culture of constant consumption. We scroll, react, and forget — processing less, absorbing less. Dopamine takes priority over discipline. Entertainment replaces inquiry. And the platforms profit from every second we give away.

This isn’t just visible in productivity loss or academic decline. It plays out in public morality. After the recent death of Charlie Kirk — a man who openly defended gun violence as the price of freedom — there was an outpouring of sympathy. He was mourned as a patriot, a victim, a hero. But Kirk’s legacy is not one of peace or progress. It’s one of division and weaponized resentment.

Manufactured heroes

He targeted LGBTQ youth, immigrants, minorities, and women. He called Martin Luther King Jr. a bad person. He dismissed the Civil Rights Act — the foundational law prohibiting discrimination — as a legislative mistake. He framed equity and inclusion not as progress, but as a pathogen threatening American civilization. And he did all of this while claiming moral authority.

Social media amplified his message. Algorithms promoted his talking points through echo chambers. He was rewarded with engagement, reach, and influence. And he’s not alone. Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Ron DeSantis all operate within the same narrative architecture — one that elevates white, straight, Christian male dominance as the natural order and casts any challenge to it as a threat.

It’s a formula: reframe bigotry as free speech. Twist hate into patriotism. Present empathy as weakness. Promote fear of “them” as moral clarity.

The more incendiary the message, the more visibility it gets — and the algorithm does the rest, optimized to reward division.

And this is not an isolated case. Since the rise of social media around 2007, we’ve seen a parallel rise in political radicalization, hate speech, and mass violence — particularly gun violence in the USA. While correlation isn’t causation, the overlap is too significant to ignore. Social media didn’t just distract us — it threw ideological fuel on the fire. It amplified fear. It accelerated rage. It removed the social costs of cruelty. It turned personal grievances into public performance. And it rewarded the worst among us with viral success.

Emotional engineering

Entire populations are being trained to aim their anger at the wrong targets. Immigrants, LGBTQ youth, and trans people are scapegoated by those who’ve mastered the mechanics of emotional manipulation. This isn’t new. It was central to 1930s Germany — where rage was deliberately engineered against Jews, gays, and other so-called “undesirables.”

It’s easy to turn people against those who are different. To make them believe their problems are someone else’s fault. That pattern is repeating — but now the delivery system isn’t leaflets or speeches. It’s platforms. Social media provides the reach, the speed, and the dopamine.

The real driver of this hatred isn’t the existence of marginalized groups — it’s the infrastructure that allows demagogues, grifters, and ideologues to manufacture outrage at scale. With global reach. And algorithmic precision.

And social media rewards it. Get a lot of likes? It feels good. It feels righteous. It makes you feel seen, alive! But it’s not real. It’s emotional manipulation.

This isn’t just misinformation. It’s mass emotional conditioning. And the outcome is a public willing to believe anything — as long as it confirms their feelings. The enemies are chosen for them. Logic doesn’t matter.

The collapse of thought

This emotional hijacking is reinforced by the dopamine loop of instant information and entertainment. Platforms train users to expect immediacy — instant answers, instant humor, instant outrage, instant belonging. There is no room for patience, context, or contradiction. The speed of consumption replaces the process of comprehension.

Critical thinking requires friction. It demands time, doubt, and discomfort — the exact conditions that social media is engineered to eliminate. Instead of asking why, people react. Instead of exploring ideas, they attach to headlines. They want emotions handed to them — prepackaged to match their mood. Truth becomes irrelevant. Feeling becomes the product.

We’ve replaced thought with reaction – we’ve named it “engagement.”

The social media arena

Social media has become the perfect breeding ground for cults of personality. Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Noam Chomsky — regardless of ideology — have all amassed devoted followings shaped by algorithmic amplification and constant exposure.

But the further right these personalities lean, the more violence their rhetoric produces. They target minorities, immigrants, or political opponents with contempt. Their style is authoritarian, built on fear, rebellion, and dominance.

On the far left, dogma takes a different form: moral absolutism, identity politics, and ideological purity. But it rarely carries the same violent undercurrent. The manipulation is social or emotional — not existential.

Still, both sides follow the same pattern:

• Us vs. Them
• Slogans over substance
• Blaming elites and institutions
• Claiming persecution
• Preaching doom if “the others” win

The algorithm delivers it all.

“How can I make that liberal mad?” becomes content.
“How can I make that conservative cry?” becomes currency.

It leads to aggression. It leads to violence. It leads to death.

Why it works

This system works because it preys on something deeply human: the need to be seen and heard.

Social media offers instant affirmation — likes, shares, and dopamine feedback loops. It simulates recognition. It rewards conformity to groupthink and punishes deviation. Once identity is fused with digital response, any challenge to the system feels like a threat to the self.

The platforms reward emotional overreaction, not rational engagement. They encourage tribalism over nuance. And they allow bad actors to bypass institutions and appeal directly to the lizard brain — fear, disgust, rage, superiority. These reactions aren’t accidents. They’re features of a system optimized for engagement, regardless of truth or harm.

It’s a biological response, now happening at a scale and speed never seen in human history. The result: greater anxiety, greater despair, greater perceived threat. Everyone and everything becomes a threat to our fragile cerebral cortex and its regulatory systems.

This is how ideology becomes identity. And how belief turns into dogma.

How it works

Social media doesn’t just manipulate emotion — it rewires how your brain responds to the world.

What feels like simple scrolling is a system of neurological conditioning:

Neurological triggers
Dopamine surges reward engagement. Cortisol spikes amplify stress. The amygdala, the brain’s “threat center,” is activated by emotionally charged content —anger, fear, and social judgment.

Behavioral conditioning
Notifications, likes, and infinite scroll mimics slot machines— using intermittent rewards to train compulsive behavior. You return not because you’re informed, but because your brain has been taught to chase the next hit. Unnatural dopamine rush.

Cognitive reshaping
This rewiring shortens attention spans, increases emotional volatility, and builds reliance on tribal signals over analysis. Your brain stops evaluating threats and starts following whatever content feels good.

Emotional feedback loops
Algorithms reward high-arousal content. Anger and fear get more engagement — so they’re shown more, until that’s all you see. Users are trained to crave outrage, to seek enemies, and to mistake feeling for knowing.

Social media doesn’t just reflect who you are. It shapes who you become. And turns you into a weapon.

The only way out

So what’s the solution?

The most direct is also the hardest: stop using it. But for many, that’s not realistic. Social media offers comfort, connection, and a sense of belonging. That’s what makes it dangerous — it became an emotional ecosystem where identity and ideology merged.

If disconnection isn’t possible, the alternative is conscious use. Skepticism. Mindfulness. See it for what it is.

Now I might check-in and spend 5 minutes once a week or every other month. I turned off all notifications.  I unsubscribed from everything.  And everyone.  Anyone that could manipulate my emotions and trigger that lizard brain biological fight or flight reaction.

No tech update will fix this. No platform will regulate itself out of a profit engine. These systems are funded by advertising dollars. And fear, outrage, and tribal validation drive engagement. They profit from our disintegration.

We have to protect ourselves — and our children. Because the damage is no longer confined to the screen. Studies show that online hate speech, especially anti-trans rhetoric, contributes to bullying, harassment, and real-world violence.

Just ask Charlie Kirk’s family. Or the families of the children murdered in school shootings across the US of A. Or my step-dad, shot in his own home. Or anyone harmed by something that should not exist.

See your favourite platform for what it is. Use it for what it was meant for:

Connecting with friends.

And sharing cat videos.

Algorithmic America: Tribalism and the cult of social media

This is part of a 3-part series examining the dangerous psychological and social effects of modern social media — and how platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and X have reshaped attention, identity, and ideology. A study into how platforms, group psychology, and cultural decay intersect.

Part 1: The Age of Dumbification
Part 2: All Heil the Peddler of Death
Part 3: Ode to the Second Amendment

Stuff that backs me up

I came to this completely from my own hypothesis and conclusions based on observation, then I researched my claims to find studies that come to the same conclusions.

How social media makes us dumb and easily manipulated

Wilmer & Chein (2023). Digital Media, Attention, and Cognition.
Shows how digital media (social media, AI and smartphones) reduces sustained attention and increases novelty-seeking behavior.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcogn.2023.1203077/full

Uncapher & Wagner (2022). Media Multitasking and Working Memory.
Demonstrates how frequent social media usage weakens short-term memory and cognitive control, influencing anxiety and depression.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8772695/

Oh et al. (2021). Daily Associations Between Social Media Use and Memory Failures.
Links higher social media use to memory lapses and emotional dysregulation.
https://midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/2107.pdf

Li et al. (2023). Short-Form Videos Degrade Our Capacity to Retain Intentions.
Finds that short video formats weaken short-term memory.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.03714

Hoxha & Morina (2024). Impact of Short Reels on Attention Span.
Connects frequent use of Instagram Reels and TikTok with decreased academic performance.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1454296.pdf

The people who made it recognized it as their own Frankenstein

The Guardian (2017). ‘You Are Being Programmed’: Facebook’s Like Button Creator Now Regrets It.
Justin Rosenstein describes the Like button as addictive.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/facebook-addiction-creator-regret

The Atlantic (2016). The Binge Breaker.
Explores how tech insiders designed apps using dopamine-based feedback loops—and later rejected what they built.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/

How social media influences people to cause harm

Shaw (2023). Social Media, Extremism, and Radicalization.
Explores how platforms contribute to ideological extremism and emotional manipulation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10468141/

Carnegie Endowment (2023). Polarization and Political Violence in the United States.
Summarizes research on how social media accelerates polarization and undermines civic trust.
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2023/09/polarization-democracy-and-political-violence-in-the-united-states-what-the-research-says

Pew Research Center (2021). The State of Online Harassment.
Documents widespread digital harassment and political abuse linked to social platforms.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/01/13/the-state-of-online-harassment/

Direct quotes from Charlie Kirk

Said Martin Luther King Jr. was a “problematic figure” (Turning Point USA event, 2021)
Called the Civil Rights Act “government overreach”
Routinely frames LGBTQ+ rights as a cultural threat (e.g., “trans agenda” on TPUSA Live)
Media Matters, Right Wing Watch, and Kirk’s own social posts confirm these positions
https://www.mediamatters.org/person/charlie-kirk

How LGBTQ+ people are targeted by the spread of hate

GLAAD (2024). Meta Fails to Moderate Extreme Anti-Trans Hate.
Describes inaction regarding anti-trans hate speech.
https://glaad.org/smsi/report-meta-fails-to-moderate-extreme-anti-trans-hate

HRC and CCDH (2022). Anti-LGBTQ+ Grooming Narrative Surged 400% After “Don’t Say Gay.”
Links legislation to dramatic increases in hate content.
https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/new-report-anti-lgbtq-grooming-narrative-surged-more-than-400

Sánchez-Sánchez (2023). Mapping Homophobia and Transphobia on Social Media.
Analyzes how hate is amplified by social media.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-023-00879-z

Leitner et al. (2025). Anti-Trans TikTok Networks.
Examines how transphobic messaging spreads on social networks.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16507

How social media biologically hacks our brains to reprogram them

The Atlantic (2016). The Binge Breaker.
Explains how app design exploits dopamine systems to create habitual use.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/

Psychology Today (2025). What Social Media Does to Stress and Hormones.
Links digital content exposure to cortisol and adrenaline activation.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/digital-world-real-world/202502/what-social-media-does-to-stress-and-hormones

De Choudhury, Monroy Hernández, Mark (2015). Narco Emotions.
Finds that users become emotionally numb to violence yet more reactive to increasingly extreme content.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.01287

Scott et al. (2023). Trauma-Informed Social Media.
Addresses how platform design retraumatizes users and escalates harm.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.05312

Fan, Xu, Zhao (2016). Higher Contagion and Weaker Ties Mean Anger Spreads Faster Than Joy in Social Media.
Shows that anger spreads more rapidly and widely than other emotions on social media
https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03656