---
title: "Social Media: A Psychic Cancer"
date: 2021-07-29
author: Heartmender
tags:
 - nosocialday
---

There is a leech at the heart of many people's daily routines. It is a vampiric
leech designed to broker access to dopamine, created and maintained by
psychology experts in order to manipulate you into scrolling, posting, sharing
and to just be angry. By leeching away these positive feelings (and feeding into
the baser sides of the lizard brain's anger) it makes it harder to focus on
things other than its iron grip on your focus.

How many times have you looked at newsfeeds today? How many minutes have you
burned scrolling down in a desperate hope to find something that gives you the
happy chemical? How many times have you thought against posting something
because it has a lower chance of being accepted by the community?

How many times has the notification bell given you joy by seeing the number go
up?

This is becoming a cancer on humanity. It is leeching our focus and
reprogramming our minds through operant conditioning.

For me it has been a huge factor in why my larger projects just fade into
obscurity and never really go anywhere. I have limited focus as it is. Social
media operant conditioning has made it worse.

Yet at the same time it is a pillar of modern civic participation, and with the
pandemic it has become a vital communication flow for people that were once able
to communicate in person easily.

I'm not sure how to best handle this issue, this is a bigger multifaceted issue
than individuals can really take on their own. It's a societal problem. It's
bigger than just people or small groups of them, it's something that affects us
all.

I'm going to participate in Social Media Detox Day on August 2nd, 2021. To get
more information about it, click here: [detox.earth](https://detox.earth/). I
will embed [a video by Techlore](https://youtu.be/HUQqHYjl2Pk) below:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HUQqHYjl2Pk"
title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay;
clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
allowfullscreen></iframe>

I'm going to keep notes on paper with my feelings. I will probably not release
them.

Be well.
