How Social medias are killing your creativity
Social medias are built on algorithms that have as a main purpose to suck people in, and keep them in for as long as possible.
As a creative who tries to find a way to share her work around, I use social media a lot, which is great for community building and to get more eyeballs to see what you do, but it can be highly detrimental to mental health, productivity and creativity.
Obviously, the endless mindlessly scrolling for hours upon hours takes away from us time, so we don’t get to do our creative projects and feel like we are always biting off more than we can chew.
But social media has actually quite a few different ways to mess up your mind and keep you from achieving your dreams.
First of all, when producing content, you start caring a lot about the numbers, which on its own is not really an issue, but the problem is that on social media success is measured through numbers.
The more followers you have, the more successful your account is, and you feel more accomplished.
It is really easy to fall into this route without even realizing it, and ending up obsessing over the kind of content you need to make instead of doing what feels right.
Secondly, social medias are places where a lot of people share a lot of content, and we know by now that what is shared on social media is usually a highlight of people’s life, but we tend to compare ourselves to them anyway.
It’s hard to not do so when you see people posting content that is similar to yours getting millions of views and really high engagement, while you are struggling even reaching your own followers. This brings us back to the numbers.
We see people with higher numbers than ours as more successful, and as a consequence we feel like a failure. Do you know the saying “Comparison is the death of creativity”? Well, it is really true.
Lastly, this kind of fast content that is consumed quickly, sparks a release in dopamine.
Dr. Anne Lemke, an expert in addiction at Standford University, mentions how we have become so used to have different kinds of entertainment at our fingertips that are quick and easy, that we struggle focusing on longer tasks and maintaining a creative flow, because our brain becomes addicted to the dopamine released when we scroll on social media.
Does this mean that we have to give up on social media altogether?
No, they are a part of our lives, they have become very important for our economy and have also opened endless possibilities to entrepreneurs, artists and creatives, allowing for new careers to sprout.
They are not going anywhere, but knowing the risk of an over exposition to them, should bring us to be more mindful of how we spend our time on social medias, and make sure that we use our time intentionally, actively trying to net get sucked into the void.
