Tag: Addictions

I Am Addicted to Social Media

One of the ways I try to get people to understand just how wrong feeds from places like Facebook are is to think about Wikipedia. When you go to a page, you’re seeing the same thing as other people. So it’s one of the few things online that we at least hold in common.

Now just imagine for a second that Wikipedia said, “We’re gonna give each person a different customized definition, and we’re gonna be paid by people for that.” So, Wikipedia would be spying on you. Wikipedia would calculate, “What’s the thing I can do to get this person to change a little bit on behalf of some commercial interest?” Right? And then it would change the entry.

Can you imagine that? Well, you should be able to, because that’s exactly what’s happening on Facebook. It’s exactly what’s happening in your YouTube feed.

—Jaron Lanier, from the documentary The Social Dilemma

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

This is not the blogpost I originally started writing.

The first draft of my blogpost is quoted below:

As I lie on the sofa in my darkened apartment, listening to an LGBTQ “Queeraoke” room in Clubhouse (and wondering if I have the audacity to inflict my pitchy tenor voice on the assembly), it occurs to me that my relationship with social media has evolved significantly since I started this blog, a little over four years ago.

I don’t kid myself; my divorce from Facebook (not so much a single event as a series of steps), led not to a reduction in my use of social media, but an overall increase, something about which I have strong mixed feelings about. (It would appear that I am not alone in this: I have noticed a significant uptick in recent views of a blogpost I wrote about Jaron Lanier’s 10 reasons to quit social media, according to my WordPress blog statistics.)

Spending so much of my time in social isolation since the pandemic started 20 months ago, I find myself spending varying amounts of time every day on five wildly disparate social media platforms: Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Discord, and (the newcomer) Clubhouse. I tell myself that it helps me stay connected to other people, but I also

And then, like so many other blogposts I write, I set it aside, literally mid-sentence, to complete on another day, when the muse struck.

Well, today is another day.

And it is a day that I started watching a one-and-a-half hour documentary on Netflix, which is also available to watch for free on YouTube: The Social Dilemma. And, as it happens, Jaron Lanier also appears in this particular documentary—along with two dozen other experts, many of them executives who formerly held high-ranking positions at social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

I full well realize the irony in asking you to watch a YouTube video on social media addiction (given the platform’s at-times-scarily accurate recommendation engine, algorithmically designed to keep you viewing long past your bedtime), but I would urge you to set aside 93 minutes and 42 seconds of your time, and watch this documentary. It is eye-opening, it is disturbing, and it is a wake-up call.

One shocking thing I learned from this documentary is that even the people who designed, created, and tweaked the algorithms that glue us to our cellphones, are addicted to social media and its attendant ills (for example, a more divisive society and increasingly polarized politics).

We are participating in an experiment that is slowly but surely rewiring our brains in ways that we are only now starting to comprehend. Particularly disturbing is the impact that social media algorithms are having on children and teenagers, something once again brought to light by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen last week in her testimony to the U.S. Senate.

According to the video description on YouTube, The Social Dilemma was only supposed to be on YouTube until September 30th, 2021, but it’s still up as of today. I don’t know how long it will be available on YouTube, so if you don’t subscribe to Netflix, please don’t delay in watching this.

As I said up top, while I might be proud of my emancipation from Facebook, I have landed up spending more time—a lot more time—on other social media, notably Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Clubhouse, and Discord. The pandemic (and its lockdowns and social distancing requirements) have only exacerbated the problem over the past 20 months. And I suspect that I am not alone in this.

I might be free of Facebook (which I consider the most egregious culprit), but I am still addicted to social media.

Are you?

Here’s a resource to help you learn more: The Center for Humane Technology.

Help Club: Peer-Based Mental Health Intervention Using Social VR

What if a virtual reality headset isn’t just for gaming, but instead it can deliver an intervention that’s appealing to a younger generation and allows them to anonymously explore problems with a virtual coach as much as they want, whenever they want, all for the cost of two therapy sessions?

—Noah Robinson

I have been meaning to write about Help Club and Very Real Help for quite some time now! I’m glad that today I have finally had the opportunity to talk about a program that is very special to me.

Help Club is the brainchild of Noah Robinson, the founder and CEO of Very Real Help, the company that is building this social VR platform, and a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Vanderbilt University. (Many of you will no doubt remember Noah as PsychNoah, one of the three convivial hosts of the former popular VRChat talk show called Endgame, which I have previously written about on my blog here, here, here, here, and here).

In the following TEDx Nashville talk (which I highly recommend you watch in full), Noah explains how he turned his early experiences with virtual worlds and virtual reality into an idea for a portable, accessible, anonymous, and more affordable solution for those battling mental health and addiction issues:

The purpose of Help Club is to provide a safe social space for peer-based mental health and addictions support, combining cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) tools with social virtual reality in a process called Cognitive Behavioral Immersion (a term which Very Real Help has trademarked). According to their website:

Help Club utilizes the immersive nature of the VR ecosystem to help users defy distance and the physical constraints of the real world, transporting them to their own happier place. Once transported to our built-for-wellness worlds, users will be immediately provided with resources, calming games, and guided exercises to help them recenter, recharge, and reenergize their mental wellbeing.

After passing a short screening, most users will also have access to a groundbreaking form of group intervention called Cognitive Behavioral Immersion™. This proprietary, peer-led group approach gives users unlimited access to potentially life-changing mental health help. These event-based group sessions focus on issues that are important to users. These aren’t led by therapists or doctors—anyone can train to become a helper and begin to make an impact in the lives of others.

We will also have staff in Help Club 24/7 to ensure a positive, curated experience for all.

Noah describes his model for Help Club in a quote from the above TEDx talk:

In cognitive behavioral therapy, we have three ways to address negative mood: examine thoughts, change behaviors or adjust physiology. What we’re seeing with VR is that there may be a 4th way to change mood—by immersing the person in a virtual environment…

We’re building an intervention that’s more portable, accessible, anonymous and affordable than therapy. Instead of using a therapist, we’re teaching peers how to help each other—an immersive, therapeutic social world filled with people, represented as anonymous avatars, who can teach each other the key skills in therapy…

We can provide a change in environment—the thing that’s being sought through drug use—to give immediate relief to people. Yes, it’s an escape into a virtual world, but when they escape—when people escape to get very real help, we can help them confront the situations that lead them to want to escape, in the first place. And our research suggests that we can train peers on how to help each other to make it much more affordable and accessible, and just as effective as therapy.

Help Club is available for in a VR version for users of both tethered and standalone headsets, including the Oculus Quest via the App Lab, and in a flat-screen version for Windows and MacOS users (there’s also a beta iOS mobile client). You can download client software here.

Specially-trained volunteers take turns as moderators, guiding small groups of users in hour-long virtual meetups scheduled throughout the week, in which they discuss issues in their daily lives, troubleshoot solutions, and provide positive affirmation for each other. I can tell you that during the pandemic, it was wonderful to be able to slip on my Oculus Rift or Valve Index VR headset and attend a meeting, rather than having to put on my parka, get into my car, and drive somewhere across town! I always came away feeling that I had been listened to, heard, affirmed, and empowered.

After a closed beta-text period (full disclosure: I was one of the people who participated in group sessions and helped test and debug the platform late last year and earlier this year), Help Club is now available to everyone who is interested. Please note that there is a short screening process which takes place, to explain how Help Club works, what your responsibilities are, and to give you fuller access to their Discord community, which is a key part of the program. Everyone assumes an anonymous avatar identity for privacy purposes, both in-world and on Discord. So I am not “Ryan Schultz” on Help Club…but if you do decide to join based on this blogpost, tell’em Ryan sent you! 😉

For further information about Help Club, you can visit their website (there’s a contact form at the bottom of the home page), join their Discord server, or you can follow them on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. (You can also follow Noah Robinson himself on Twitter or LinkedIn, where he shares some of the interesting work he is doing in the area of mental health and addictions using virtual reality.)