I’m working on a psychology writing question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.
Critical Reasoning
This paper must be two pages (not including your heading), single-spaced with 1-inch margins, and typed using a
12-point Times New Roman font. Please include a heading with your name, section number,
and paper number.
Paper should consist of five paragraphs, one for each of the following points:
1. Summarize the article’s main points, describing the author’s argument. The “argument”
is what the author would like the reader to believe after they read the article.
2. Explain a research study included in the article. How does this study support the author’s
argument?
3. Relate the article to a topic covered in this course. Does what you learned from lecture,
class, or from the text support the author’s argument? Why or why not?
4. Relate the article to a personal experience or current event. Cite specific ways in which
the author’s argument applies to the experience or event.
5. Describe your personal opinion of the author’s argument. Why do you or why do you not
agree with it?
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Why Social Media Makes People Unhappy—And Simple Ways to
Fix It
Research suggests platform designs make us lose track of time spent on them and can heighten conflicts,
and then we feel upset with ourselves
By Daisy Yuhas on June 20, 2022
Credit: Matthew Holland
Disrupted sleep, lower life satisfaction and poor self-esteem are just a few of the negative
mental health consequences that researchers have linked to social media. Somehow the same
platforms that can help people feel more connected and knowledgeable also contribute to
loneliness and disinformation. What succeeds and fails, scientists say, is a function of how
these platforms are designed. Amanda Baughan, a graduate student specializing in human-
computer interaction at the University of Washington, studies how social media triggers what
psychologists call dissociation, or a state of reduced self-reflection and narrowed attention.
She presented results at the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery Computer-Human
Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Baughan spoke with Mind
Matters editor Daisy Yuhas to explain how and why apps need to change to give the people
who use them greater power.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
You’ve shown how changing social media cues and presentations could
improve well-being, even when people strongly disagree on issues. Can you
give an example?
The design of social media can have a lot of power in how people interact with one another
and how they feel about their online experiences. For example, we’ve found that social media
design can actually help people feel more supportive and kind in moments of online conflict,
provided there’s a little bit of a nudge to behave that way. In one study, we designed an
intervention that encouraged people who start talking about something contentious in a
comment thread to switch to direct messaging. People really liked it. It helped to resolve their
conflict and replicated a solution we use in-person: people having a public argument move to
a private space to work things out.
You’ve also tackled a different problem coming out of social media usage
called the 30-Minute Ick Factor. What is that?
We very quickly lose ourselves on social media. When people encounter a platform where
they can infinitely scroll for more information, it can trigger a similar neurocognitive reward
system as in anticipating a winning lottery ticket or getting food. It’s a powerful way that
these apps are designed to keep us checking and scrolling.
The 30-Minute Ick Factor is when people mean to check their social media briefly but then
find that 30 minutes have passed, and when they realize how much time they have spent,
they have this sense of disgust and disappointment in themselves. Research has shown that
people are dissatisfied with this habitual social media use. A lot of people frame it as
meaningless, unproductive or addictive.
You’ve argued this experience is less a matter of addiction and more an issue of
dissociation. Why?
Dissociation is a psychological process that comes in many forms. In the most common,
everyday dissociation, your mind is so absorbed that you are disconnected from your actions.
You could be doing the dishes, start daydreaming and not pay attention to how you are doing
the dishes. Or you might seek immersive experiences—watching a movie, reading a book or
playing a game—that pass the time and cause you to forget where you are.
During these activities, your sense of reflective self-consciousness and the passage of time is
reduced. People only realize that they dissociated in hindsight. Attention is restored with the
sense of “What just happened?” or “My leg fell asleep while we were watching that movie!”
Dissociation can be a positive thing, especially if it’s an absorbing experience, meaningful
activity or a needed break. But it can also be harmful in certain cases, as in gambling, or come
in conflict with people’s time-management goals, as with social media scrolling.
How do you measure people’s dissociation on social media?
We worked with 43 participants who used a custom mobile app that we created called Chirp
to access their Twitter accounts. The app let people interact with Twitter content while
allowing us to ask them questions and test interventions. So when people were using Chirp,
after a given number of minutes, we would send them a questionnaire based on a
psychological scale for measuring dissociation. We asked how much they agreed with the
statement “I am currently using Chirp without really paying attention to what I’m doing” on a
scale of 1 to 5. We also did interviews with 11 people to learn more. The results showed
dissociation occurred in 42 percent of our participants, and they regularly reported losing
track of time or feeling “all-consumed.”
You designed four interventions that modified people’s Twitter experience on
Chirp to reduce dissociation. What worked?
The most successful were custom lists and reading history labels. In custom lists, we forced
users to categorize the content they followed, such as “sports” or “news” or “friends.” Then,
instead of interacting with Twitter’s main feed, they engaged only with content on these lists.
This approach was coupled with a reading history intervention in which people received a
message when they were caught up on the newest tweets. Rather than continuing to scroll,
they were alerted to what they had already seen, and so they focused on just the newest
content. Those interventions reduced dissociation, and when we did interviews, people said
they felt safer checking their social media accounts when these modifications were present.
In another design, people received timed messages letting them know how long they had
been on Chirp and suggesting they leave. They also had the option of viewing a usage page
that showed them statistics such as how much time they’d spent on Chirp in the past seven
days. These two solutions were effective if people opted to use them. Many people ignored
them, however. Also, they thought the timed messages were annoying. Those findings are
interesting because a lot of the popular time-management tools available to people look like
these time-out and usage notifications.
So what could social media companies be doing differently? And is there any
incentive for them to change?
Right now there is a lot working against people who use social media. It’s impossible to ever
fully catch up on a social media feed, especially when you consider the algorithmically
inserted content such as Twitter’s trending tweets or TikTok’s “For You” page. But I think
that there is hope that relatively simple tweaks to social media design, such as custom lists,
can make a difference. It’s important to note that the custom lists significantly reduced
dissociation for people—but they did not significantly affect time spent using the app. To me,
that points out that reducing people’s dissociation may not be as antithetical to social media
companies’ revenue goals as we might intuitively think.
What’s most important for people using social media now to know?
First, don’t pile a bunch of shame onto your social media habits. Thousands of people are
employed to make you swipe your thumb up on that screen and keep you doing what you’re
doing. Let’s shift the responsibility of designing safe and fulfilling experiences from users to
the companies.
Second, get familiar with the well-being tools that are already offered. TikTok has a feature
that, every hour, will tell you that you’ve been scrolling for a while and should consider a
break. On Twitter, custom lists are a feature that already exists; it’s just not the default
option. If more people start using these tools, it could convince these companies to refine
them.
Most important, vote for people who are interested in regulating technology because I think
that’s where we’re going to see the biggest changes made.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Daisy Yuhas edits the Scientific American column Mind Matters. She is a freelance science journalist and
editor based in Austin, Tex. Follow Yuhas on Twitter @DaisyYuhas Credit: Nick Higgins
Recent Articles by Daisy Yuhas
There’s a Psychological ‘Vaccine’ against Misinformation
Your Response to Stress Improves as You Grow Older
Why Sleep-Deprived People Are More Selfish and Lonely
Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them
can be found at www.springernature.com/us). Scientific American maintains a strict policy of editorial independence in reporting developments
in science to our readers.
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A LL RIG HTS RE SE RVE D.
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