You Don’t Know But You Are a Lab Rat
In the era of social media, we assume we are in control. We scroll, post, like, and share at our own discretion. What if I told you that beneath all this innocuous digital engagement, social media platforms are running experiments on you? You are not even aware that your online behavior is being studied, manipulated, and shaped by algorithms that treat you ultimately like a subject in a digital laboratory. Though you might not feel like a rat in a laboratory, each scroll, click, or interaction is treated to analysis, subtly impacting your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
The ‘Hidden Experiments’ of Social Media Sites
In short, social media moguls like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are continually fine-tuning their algorithms with the goal of getting people to come back. But how? Precisely by using A/B testing and behavioral experiments.
A/B testing means presenting each different version of a post, ad, or interface element to different user groups to determine which one to engage with more. This means that while one might be seeing one version of the layout or design, another person is seeing something just a little bit differently. The platform then tracks which variation keeps people around longer or better stimulates engagement. Facebook, for example, has famously used A/B testing to refine its News Feed. They’re always measuring what kinds of content get people to click, comment, and share more.
Other than A/B testing, other platforms have performed more direct behavioral experiments. For instance, in 2012, Facebook ran an experiment on nearly 700,000 users to determine whether the moods that people experienced could be influenced by the type of content one was being shown. Researchers determined that people’s emotions were influenced by what they saw when the same users were shown more positive or negative posts in their News Feed thus making it clear that social media is powerfully capable of manipulating our moods.
So each platform’s business model is designed to keep you there as long as possible, and that can be achieved by monitoring and stratifying what you’re doing. In this way, social media companies know exactly what you look at for a longer time, which ads caught your attention, and what you share with other people. Then all this information is used to build this kind of digital profile of you — a profile in which they can predict what you will do in the future and influence these actions.
For example, Instagram and TikTok’s algorithm is crafted to feed you something personalized. They learn from the videos that you are watching, the comments that you leave, and the accounts you’re following. The content that pops up is so carefully curated for a reason, to get you scrolling endlessly. There is no randomness; it is based on a calculated probability of you engaging with it. The more you scroll, the more these algorithms become honed and keep pulling you deeper into this feedback loop.
Such algorithms, therefore tend to promote and increase content that elicits strong reactions. Angry, surprising, or joyful content is more likely to be shared. Hence, provocative and emotive posts figure most prominently in your feed. Social media platforms are not neutrally passively reflecting opinion public; they actively participate in opinion via content generating engagement over accuracy or even impact.
The Implications for Mental Health and Society
What can terribly harm one’s mental well-being is simply the constant manipulation of our feeds. A plethora of exposure to social media has caused anxiety, depression, and inadequacy among individuals. This is often the cause of why many on social media can only present the best of their lives, which makes one feel that he or she is lagging behind.
Today, social media has the capacity to influence society’s trends, political opinions, and even elections. In insidious but powerful ways, they can shape opinion and sway public opinion by amplifying other voices and topics. And so, instead of feeding us something we thought we wanted in our lives outside the internet, the algorithms controlling our feed are active agents in shaping our collective consciousness.
Are We the Lab Rats of the Digital Age?
We must realize that in many senses, we are the lab rats of the digital generation. Each click, swipe, and tap goes into the refinement of algorithms working against keeping us engaged and formulating our perception of the world. The more we engage, the more data these platforms gather, increasing the predictability and influence of our behavior.
First, this awareness gives one the stepping stone to regain some control. One can step back and change privacy settings and be more critical of what they consume. Social media is an amazing tool but not a tool that can independently serve different purposes. The awareness of how the platforms work will help in using them mindfully instead of having them use us.
It is for us in the end: to remain a producer of these experiments or to take one step back and reclaim our freedom over our digital lives.
