Trading Dopamine for Your Soul

Contrary to popular belief, social media has been around for nearly three decades. It is only recently, within the last twenty years, that it has truly become a standard. Human connection has been around since the dawn of time, yet social media has offered instant connection across nearly any distance. Although this is a huge accomplishment in the technological space, it has impacted people’s connection to humanity. You are now able to connect screen-to-screen, but not have human-to-human interactions. During 2020, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) truly took flight in the eyes of the media. People were recording altercations involving black individuals and police officers that would often be fatal. At first, sympathy was a driving force for change, but it slowly bled to a cold detachment. You could be sitting at home, on TikTok, and see a post showing the uncensored murder of an individual, scroll, and see members of the Hype House dancing to a popular song. This is also seen currently, where Palestinians would grab your attention with a trendy video, then cut it to a pleading message and unveil the horrors happening in their homeland. At first, there is moral compassion and an invocation of humanity seeing these atrocities, but over time, it becomes normal, and like any other post that did not trigger a dopamine response, it is scrolled past. Though this is a current struggle, it can closely mirror the cyberpunk genre. In cyberpunk, there is a disconnect in humanity due to the prevalence of technology or progression. There is also a need to stay in the space that is ideal to them, which is often the cybernetic version that has been established by an algorithm. It would be ideal for a person to scroll past an emotion-involving video to stay in the safety that the algorithm has created. Social media has twisted empathy into something unrecognizable in terms of the textbook definition. It is reported, in an American study, that people have a harder time responding to emotions, others, and their own, the more they use social media (Martingano, 2023). This is something that cyberpunk has warned about: losing connection with yourself and others. Li states, “The limitations of a physical body, the uncontrollable emotions in humanity, these are considered as flaws and obstacles as the path toward the ultimate utopia. The pursue of it is in fact, not building a better society for next generations but falling into a well of a ‘soul-less’ world, a world of human slave themselves by information and technology, in other words, slaved by instrumental rationality.” Rather than the installation of bionic limbs or AI chips to insert technological control, social media has taken over human emotion. There has been a shift in humanity that is less than human. People can no longer connect the same way as they did prior to the rise of social media. There is a rise of narcissism, apathy, and a dimmed sense of morality (Martingaano, 2023). If we continue to scroll past atrocities in favor of dopamine-safe content, we risk fulfilling the genre’s prophecy: a world where we are perfectly connected by technology, yet completely alone in our indifference.

References Martingano, A. J. (2023, May 9). Social media and empathy around the globe. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-do-you-mean/202305/social-media-and-empathy-around-the-globe Li, H. (2022). Reflection of modern society through cyberpunk. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities, 16, 600–604. https://doi.org/10.54691/bcpssh.v16i.518