Put your phone down and pay attention to what I’m about to say. Because trust me, by the time I’m through, you may not ever want to pick it up again.

That might be hard though; on average, we check our smartphones between 85 and 101 times a day. In 2019, we spent a global average of two hours 23 minutes every day on social media – 53 minutes of which was taken up solely by Instagram, the app that celebrated its tenth birthday last October, and has just announced it's giving users the option to hide likes.

The new feature, announced on 26th May, includes two settings:
one that allows us to turn off likes when scrolling on the feed; and another that allows us to turn off likes on our own posts. It was tested back in July 2019, and is finally being rolled out.

Okay, this may not exactly sound like breaking news. It's just an app, right? Well, this seemingly innocuous photo-sharing app is so ingrained in our lives, 39% of us say we use it just “to fill up spare time”. That’s time you could be using to cook a meal, read a book, talk to your family, have a long bath. But let’s face it, you’d probably take your phone with you to the bath, and scroll your feed while cooking that roast. You’re probably already itching to check it now – and we’re not even 200 words in…

We hear the moral panic and alarmist headlines about Instagram rotting our brains, destroying our mental health or turning us into app-addicted zombies, almost as often as we check our phones. But is this constant use really that bad for us?

In January, a report was released by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, looking at just that question, and calling on social media companies to release data on how young people are using these apps. There’s a sad justification for this. Non-suicidal self-harm in the UK has tripled in the past ten years, and an average of four school-age children die by suicide each week. The volume of social media use among young people is being directly linked to this.

When we think of poor mental health, social media is public enemy No1 – especially for young people. Yet, even if we don’t see ourselves as being ‘at risk’, are we really exempt from its dangers? After all, how much do we know about what goes on inside our brains when we devote hours of our day to mindlessly scrolling?

Neuroscientists are examining this and have cautioned that excessive use of this technology can change the way our brains work, with potential for serious damage – not just to our mental health but to human behaviour. Because if Instagram really is brain-jacking us, perhaps we will evolve into actual app-addicted zombies.

I hope your phones are still down, because it’s time to wake up to the potential dangers it poses.

Grey matters

One of the first things you probably already know is that Instagram increases dopamine – the chemical in the brain that makes us happy. Great! Ah, yeah, but not so great, because as likes, followers and more keep amping up the dopamine, it keeps us craving hits. And more and more time on Instagram could be neurologically damaging.

Last year, The Online Brain was published, a review by the World Psychiatric Association looking at what the internet does to our grey matter. It produced fascinating findings, like the fact we’re turned on by our phones. Yes, studies of skin conductance, measured when we switch to an app like Instagram, found ‘arousal increased’. Yikes.

Perhaps the most concerning finding was that being on social media has the same impact on our brains as “age-related cognitive decline”. That’s right, we may now need anti-ageing serum for our brains. The main cause of this is ‘atrophy’– namely that we are not engaging the brain muscle enough, so it’s deteriorating.

Dr Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist, says this is because we’re not using our brains properly when on social media – a medium devoid of the ‘deep thinking’ that is the exercise our brains need to keep fit. “Your brain changes moment by moment, according to what you expose it to,” she says. “When social media becomes what you overwhelmingly expose it to, you allow your brain to start changing networks and making neurotransmitters fire incorrectly. They won’t fire in harmony and your brainwaves won’t be coherent. This all causes abnormal pathways in the brain.”

I ask Dr Leaf what that looks like, and while Instagram-specific brain imaging doesn’t exist yet, those associated with excessive online and general social media use, do. “We do quantitative electro-encephalogy brain mapping, which records electrical activity in the brain, and we compare it to a ‘normalised’ database of findings from the 1970s,” she says. “There is a radical shift. The brain firing is way higher – it looks crazy.”

The lost art of boredom

So if our brains are starting to resemble drawers of tangled phone chargers, is that a bad thing? Leading neurologist Baroness Susan Greenfield thinks so. “What social media delivers is experience, not thought. These fast-paced images are driving how the brain is working – we’re not thinking any more, we’re just reacting to things. It’s about the sensory power of these apps, the stimulation it gives us. We’re faster at processing information, but not understanding it.”

She’s referring to the fact we react to an image 60,000 times faster than a word and that we, when scrolling on Instagram, are usually also jumping between other apps, other screens. Today, multi-tasking between devices is common, meaning we’re using what psychologists refer to as ‘floodlight’ attention – spreading our focus too thinly – as opposed to ‘spotlight’ attention – the kind of focus our brains thrive on.

Remember when we said deep thinking was exercise for the brain? Looks like social media means we are doing none of that. Instead, we are taking in too much surface-level information at once, from scrolling feeds, to constant notifications. It’s causing a psychological phenomenon called information overload, and a 2019 study found this hugely impacts the ‘motivational system’ of your brain. You literally perceive too much information as a threat and avoid it. Ironically, too much information means none is getting into our brains. The solution? Get bored. None of us get bored any more, because we use our smartphones for constant entertainment. In fact, a seminal experiment from 2014 showed we would rather be in pain, than bored. When left alone in a room with nothing to do for 15 minutes except press a buzzer they knew would give them an electric shock, over half the participants chose the buzzer. Shocking.

Being bored means being alone with our thoughts, which Baroness Greenfield tells me is pivotal for our brain’s development. “Using our imagination is really important cognitively,” she says. “You need to develop an internal thought process – something you’re in control of. Now, social media is driving these thought processes for us, and this can have a profound psychiatric effect.”

(Un)appy people

Of course, let’s not forget social media was created with these neurological processes in mind. It’s no accident Instagram increases our dopamine. It’s meant to, that’s what keeps us on the app. Social media was made to fulfil existing human needs like vanity, social interaction and social acceptance. The founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, were essentially taught this at the creepily titled Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab in California (more on this later).

But if social media was built to fulfil these needs, in doing so, it also heightened the worst parts of humanity (bullying becomes cyber bullying, mean thoughts become trolling) and the human psyche – FOMO, social anxiety and upward comparison – are all magnified on Instagram. This negative exacerbation is what is ravaging our mental health, and what led a survey in 2017 to label Instagram the social media platform most damaging to young people.

Professor John Gabrieli, of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, says this is down to the way the brain regulates emotion. “We’ve seen that children and adolescents have a much harder time reacting to bad emotions,” he explains. “We normally adapt as adults into being resilient, but that’s harder for these younger generations, because they are now exposed to constant negative interactions on social media.”

Before social media, we could worry our friends were hanging out without us, that people didn’t like us. Now, social media provides a metric for our popularity, proof our friends are hanging out without us. And it can be too much for a developing brain to cope with.

I speak to a psychiatric nurse (who cannot be named for safe-guarding reasons) who works on the front lines of this issue, in a mental-health facility for young people. “The most dangerous thing you could bring in here is a smartphone,” she confirms, saying social media seriously magnifies mental-health issues. She describes a patient who shows signs of improvement when she’s away from Instagram, but as soon as she’s back on, “the self-harming and suicide attempts return”. Another girl has suffered awful sexual traumas, but her perpetual anxiety is about pictures of her abuse ending up on Instagram. “She told me that would mean her life was over – because for most of my patients, their life is lived online.”

Kathrin Karsay, a social psychologist from KU Leuven university in Belgium, says young people suffer in particular because of a socio-cognitive process called internalisation. This is where you “adopt a socially constructed idea as a personal goal and it becomes part of your identity”. Kathrin’s research found 47% of 12-to-19-year-olds got their social, professional, sexual and physical goals from Instagram, and that negative wellbeing sets in the moment they don’t feel they measure up (read: when #Goals goes wrong).

Instagram vs reality

This is, of course, the mess of comparison culture, and teenagers are not the only ones who suffer from it. Olive Watts, 31, from London was, two years ago, in a therapist’s office weekly, suffering from debilitating anxiety. “I felt like a lesser version of myself. That I wasn’t smart enough, thin enough or well-dressed enough,” she says. “I couldn’t see the great things in my life, I just focused on what I didn’t have.”

Her therapist made her delete all social media and Olive hasn’t looked back. Her anxiety greatly reduced, she is now down to monthly therapy sessions and feels “freed” from “seeing everyone live ‘better’ lives”.

Olive is not alone. The rise of this Instagram-induced issue has led to the creation of a new role – the world’s first comparison coach, Lucy Sheridan. “All of my clients talk about Instagram like Olive,” she says. She coaches them to understand that what they see on the grid is often not real.

Raising awareness of this is why journalist and Instagram influencer Katherine Ormerod wrote the book Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life in 2018. She says she now consciously puts more ‘real’ content on Instagram; “but I think it’s almost impossible to disentangle fantasy from reality. We can see a picture and realise it’s edited and it still has a psychological impact. You still think, ‘I wish I was that happy/thin/successful.’”

“Instagram is the Las Vegas of comparison,” agrees Lucy, parroting what many experts I have spoken to have said – comparing Instagram to a slot machine. After all, we keep dragging to refresh, scrolling to see more, perhaps gambling with our brains and mental health each time we do.

How to lose friends and influence people

I know what you’re thinking. So far, all evidence points to the fact we are living in a digital dystopia. And while that may sound far-fetched, it’s true that entirely new behavioural codes have emerged since we first logged on.

Kathrin talks to me about ‘phubbing’ (using your phone in company) and how scientists are looking into the impact that may have on social development. And Dr Amy Orben, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, tells me social media has altered how we humans form friendships.
“The social model is based on the reciprocal exchange of information that happens over time and in a balanced way. Social media tears up that model,” she says. “We can get a huge amount of information about someone without ever revealing anything about ourselves. I think that is causing major changes in how we connect to people.”

Instagram is also having a big impact on the spread of narcissism over a sense of community. Ironically for a ‘social’ network, 80% of output on Instagram is us talking about ourselves, compared with 30-40% of self-reference that would occur in an IRL conversation.

It all happened when Instagram went from a humble photo-sharing app, to the home of the selfie, and birthplace of the ‘influencer’ – the idea of the individual as a brand.

“Millennials see social media as a space to document themselves,” says Sara McCorquodale, author of the book Influence and founder of digital consultancy Corq Studio. “And that interpretation of what social media is for has been key in changing broader behaviour.”

Of course, you don’t have to be an influencer to think this way. Take self-confessed Insta-addict Rhiannon Simmons, 26: “I see my life as a series of photo opportunities and I stress out about it.” Her job – or life – is not dependent on her feed, yet she feels “this constant, low-level pressure” to post.

I wonder what this looks like to someone who has never been on Instagram. Ianthe Carter, 29, has avoided the app her whole life. “I find it weird people seem to be hyper aware it’s about constructing an image, then do it anyway,” she says. “I see my friends taking pictures of how much fun we’re having rather than experiencing it. I don’t get it.”

The new normal

Ianthe has a point. This is the insidious nature of Instagram – this subtle rewiring of our human behaviour. The ‘influence’ of Instagram is not just affecting our brains but our entire sociological framework. Is this the new normal now? Is our life just a series of Instagrammable moments?

Chris Sanderson, chief creative officer and co-founder of The Future Laboratory, calls smartphones “pocket fires”, for the way they have become our security, the replacement for the “campfire” cavemen would gather around. Social psychologist Adam Alter agrees, but warns social media is increasingly filling the only free time we have in a working day not spent working, sleeping or ‘surviving’. “Psychologically, humans need time spent face-to-face with people, time spent on themselves, time in natural environments,” he warns.

Tristan Harris, the founder of the Center for Humane Technology, an ex-Google employee and classmate (yes, in that Persuasive Technology Lab) of Instagram’s founders, thinks this social media is “not aligned with the fabric of society” and is inherently dangerous. He is on a mission to clean up these tech companies, and his organsiation is campaigning for serious regulation of apps like Instagram.

Re-wired?

So… are we doomed? Are our brains forever wrecked? Digital anthropologist Juliano Spyer thinks not, and downplays our panic at being “post human” in a digital world. “I believe the world changed social media, and not the other way around,” he says, pointing to his fieldwork, which shows how different cultures across the globe forge social media in different ways. “It is a human-driven app, still it has not changed who we are.”

There is also, of course, a pronounced – and growing – backlash against social media. After all, Tristan’s organisation is only just beginning and the professor who taught him in that same Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, BJ Fogg, tweeted last year: “A movement to be ‘post digital’ will emerge in 2020. We will start to realise being chained to your phone is a low-status activity similar to smoking.”

Chris tells me searches for digital detoxes were up by 314% last year and a rising trend for ‘dopamine fasting’ has emerged in the States, where you spend concerted amounts of time without the neurological-stimulus of your phone and other stimuli, in order to reset the natural dopamine levels in your brain. This is often as simple as lying in a dark room being – you guessed it – bored.

Gen Z are also slowly moving away from existing social media apps to TikTok and other ‘sonic stimuli’ like podcasts and voice notes; with 55% of 15-to-37-year-olds wanting to avoid ‘visual stimulation’. In response, new music app Iris launched in February, which aims to improve sound quality and encourage ‘active listening’. Its research has produced tech that “increases the phase information sent to the brain. The listener’s brain then reassembles this vast increase in information and becomes more active in the listening process.”

Perhaps this is the key to fixing our brains, which – you’ll be relieved to hear – are fixable. “It’s about mind management,” says Dr Leaf, who says we need more time off Instagram – reading, thinking, focusing on one thing at a time. “When you do this, you reboot your brain – you reactivate the networks and restore your brain health.”

This way of thinking is clearly in vogue. Dr Leaf’s created her own app, Switch, to help with this, and a book, Indistractable, was released last September by behaviour expert Nir Eyal, highlighting the importance of this form of self-moderation as opposed to a total digital detox. Dr Leaf shows me a QEEG scan of someone pre this kind of mind management and after. The results are a clearer, less ‘crazy’-looking brain. It’s impressive – and hopeful.

Social media firms and tech brands are starting to respond to these issues, too. Instagram has taken strides towards safeguarding, from in-app support for sufferers of mental health issues, to its rollout of ‘likes’ removal. And Google has started a Digital Wellbeing initiative, which, earlier this year, produced envelopes for your smartphone that prevent you from using it for anything but calls.

While we may have a long way to go before social media companies are fully regulated, we can regulate ourselves. We can leave our phones at home, not use them while waiting for a bus, consciously use that extra time on activities that will strengthen our brains, like reading a book. Perhaps, we could simply let ourselves be bored. We have the power to take back our brains and, in the process, restore some balance to our mental health.

So, may I suggest you run that bath and read our latest brilliant magazine there? And please, for your brain’s sake, don’t bring your phone.

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