Hedonism and Social Media

Our relationships with others have long been recognized as one of the primary sources of happiness.  Epicurus, the quintessential enlightened hedonist himself, is oft quoted: of all things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

I’ve been thinking about social media - actually I’ve been thinking about Facebook - the site that
everyone hates and yet cannot quit. The promise is that with its ubiquity, it keeps us connected to all our social circles. Truely,  it delivers on increasing the number of our connections; however, the connections themselves are nominal at best.

We share moments of our lives, and we know the moments are edited and curated to present our best selves (to be sure we also do this offline as well). At its worst we’ve adopted the language of marketing, trying to create or establish our “brand” turning ourselves into products of the social marketplace. As part of this process we also censor ourselves to keep peace among judgemental family members, old school acquaintances, and if we were foolish enough to add them, coworkers. Often even our vulnerabilities are performative, staged for responses of encouragement.

Ultimately, we connect our thinnest self to the thinnest representations of our communities. There is no depth their and while the vernacular is “friending” there is little that actually contributes to actual friendship. And yet the FOMO, fear of missing out, keeps us refreshing our feeds.

We all have that friend who’s either dropped out or refused to join, and while they claim their happiness, we still view it with a bit of suspicion. We know they get left off of invitations, and seeing them less online appears to translate into seeing them less offline as well. There are studies that show social media makes us less happy, and other studies that show it has no effect. So what’s a hedonist to do?

I often think of Dunbar’s number - that limit we have to maintaining stable social relationships. The research seems to indicate that we can maintain somewhere between 100-250 social relationships. I’ve seen this play out a number of times in different internet groups. Anytime the active membership hits these limits, factions start to develop and splits are likely to occur. So I wonder if keeping one’s friend count to below 250 might be one strategy? Perhaps another part of that equation is identifying how many “friends” are really people, and not just products or brands acting like individuals or individuals acting as brands.

I also think of the social media before Facebook, specialized message boards, websites, Live Journal. Their anonymity encouraged candid conversation and enabled one to find others who shared interests - people who should be friends but otherwise wouldn’t due to the restrictions of geography, race, or social class.

Certainly one advantage of social media is its ability to transcend geography. Suddenly I can connect to like-minded individuals anywhere on the globe - and indeed I’ve made friends with people on several different continents. I would hate to give that up.

The real key probably comes down to intentional use: recognizing the psychological tricks the various apps use to keep us scrolling, curating our friend lists as well as our posts - can we ever be authentic on social media? And reflecting on that thought, is that any different than our other social encounters? Perhaps Facebook makes us so uncomfortable because it confronts us with our own manufacture?

I don't have a solution yet. But I remain engaged, hoping to find, connect with, and foster the relationships that enrich my own well being while hopefully contributing to others.