Is social media our generation’s cigarettes?

*I’d like to preface this article by saying I don’t want to wipe out all social media, but rather restore it to the social NETWORK vision of its infancy. This article is about not what it can be, but what it has become…

“I’d rather give my kids Jack Daniels and weed than Instagram.” — Scott Galloway

Strong statement that includes fairly strong whiskey, depending on who you ask. Regardless, Scott Galloway, a podcaster, author, and NYU professor is on a warpath to educate America on how social media is ruining our minds, especially those of our children.

Professor Galloway has done more research than I have, but his sentiment is one I’ve been wrestling with for several years now. I’ve tackled this topic before, cautioning that higher ed communicators and fundraisers should be sketching out a plan for the day their administration decides using social media for engaging students and alumni presents a moral dilemma. Previous opinions have felt a little like a “hot take,” but as more research is released, the more I feel confident there will come a point where younger generations will ask us why we let this go on as long as it has.

Tobacco is as old as America itself, but cigarettes didn’t peak in popularity until the 20th century, reaching it’s pinnacle between the 1920’s and 1960’s. Finally, in 1969, the US Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act which banned cigarette ads from TV and radio. By 1990, smoking was banned on domestic airplane flights and in 1997, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order banning smoking inside federally owned buildings. Today, only 12 US states don’t have some form of indoor smoking bans. So what happened in the 1960’s that brought an end to Joe Camel’s golden age? Data.

“Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service” was published in 1964. There were organizations pleading with the government to launch a study and take action as early at the 1940s, but it took 20+ years for the federal government to act. The 1964 report served as the first “official” examination of how smoking is linked to disease. By 1972, Surgeon General Steinfeld issued another report that started a conversation around the impact of smoking on NON-smokers aka secondhand smoke. By 1986, there was no doubt that secondhand smoke was causing disease/cancer in non-smokers.

(Tobacco lobbying $, Glantz, 1997)

Now you might wonder, “why did it take so long to shutdown public smoking if all the data was agreed upon in the 80s?” You probably know the answer: lobbying. Big tobacco had deep pockets and they made sure politicians didn’t do anything hasty like ban cigarettes inside buildings, restaurants, and bars. They had “scientists” and “doctors” making their case.

Joe Chemo, 1996

To combat the lobbying, organizations fought back with anti-smoking campaigns that aimed to educate and scare. With government inaction frustrating millions of Americans, these ads pulled no punches and were pivotal in the fight against tobacco companies that many felt were destroying lives for the sake of big profits. One issue at the heart of the battle was debate over whether or not cigarettes were made to be addicting. Tobacco companies, of course, argued they weren’t, despite the evidence being against them.

The risks to adults, children, and babies in the womb was clear, but it wasn’t until 1998 that a state (California) banned all indoor smoking. It would take another ten years before a majority of states followed their lead. Consider all the non-smokers impacted by smoking between the 1960s and the 2010s. We wrestled with the impact of smoking for over 50 years before legislation finally acknowledged what the American Heart Association knew in the 1940s. Today, through the combination of legislation and continued activism, smoking has been all but completely obliterated as illustrated in this Gallup poll.

At almost the exact time we finally crushed out smoking, a new cancer began growing in America. Social media started gaining traction in the mid/late 2000s, but it would be a piece of hardware that would make it explode. The iphone debuted in June, 2007 and by the end of the year 6% of Americans would own a smartphone. One year later, that number doubled and by 2012 more than half the country would own one. Come 2015, nearly EIGHTY percent of the country had a super computer in their pocket that enabled a love affair with social media. It’s right around that time that we start seeing the bad stuff happen.

Suicide rates of 15–19 year olds

By 2015, teen suicide is rising. Americans are increasingly unhappy. Political polarization is reaching a fever pitch as disinformation is always a click away…and then it’s shared. From 2004–2014 the powder keg was built and in 2015, we lit the fuse. We know the impact it’s having on our mental health. We know it has inspired a record amount of distrust for institutions. We also know it’s making people increasingly isolated, lonely, and unstable.

We also know it’s hurting young people most of all. They’re more depressed, they’re socializing and dating less, and 60% claim to be the victim of cyberbullying.

They’re also increasingly overweight:

I think you get the point. Now, you might want to make a causation v correlation argument here and there’s probably some room for that. However, people far smarter than me have connected all the dots and concluded we have a crisis on our hands.

Much like cigarettes, this problem persists in large part because no one can quit. In addition to all the physical and mental health problems associated with the social media/smartphone era, we also know algorithms are at work that blast us with dopamine that makes it nearly impossible to walk away from our screen. They know exactly what we want to see and they keep feeding it to us again and again and again. A more recent insight is that NEGATIVE content on twitter spreads 6 times faster than positive content. (Galloway) We’re being manipulated and it’s dividing and, at times, killing us.

“But Keith, cigarette smoke created physical harm for non-smokers in close proximity of the smoker. There’s no physical contact from one social user to the next.” Correct, but the ability to bully, shame, humiliate, and spread false information in a space that the brain won’t let you quit, is comparable.

So why is no one stepping in and shutting it all down? Is it for lack of data? I think you see there’s clearly enough research done on the topic. A few years ago we were in the 1970s version of smoking awareness. Today, it’s 1986 and still little has been done. Why? Now you definitely know the answer:

Facebook has more than doubled it’s lobbying spending since 2014. In 2022, tech companies spent over $70M more in lobbying than “infamous” industries such oil and gas and pharmaceuticals. (Bloomberg) They’re assuring our representatives that everything is okay. But everything is clearly not okay. We’ve reached the point where activism will need to push back against the influence being bought by big tech money.

It brings me no joy to talk about this. Social media and digital engagement was my way into higher ed advancement, an industry I love. But much like many of us social media enthusiasts who urged peers and senior leaders to see the future and embrace it, we may now need to embrace the reality of the moment and prepare a strategy that doesn’t include contemporary social media.

That’s not to say the space couldn’t get cleaned up and return to it’s vision that was about better connections/networks rather than SOCIAL. The original intent of social networking was wonderful. Making the world more connected has all the potential to breed acceptance, spread knowledge and celebrate diversity. But that’s not going to happen until legislation disrupts the disrupters.

Unlike cigarettes, which had no redeeming benefit outside of stimulating socialization in a time where chat rooms, texting and online dating were still a half-century away, social media has the potential to make the world a smaller place in all the right ways. However, it’s going to require one hell of a comeback story. Shareholders need their profits and that means companies will continue to find ways to keep people swiping, scrolling, liking, and commenting. The recent debate around TikTok could open the door to a deeper discussion on the harms of social media. The US Congress continues to debate whether TikTok should be banned and the White House has threatened a nationwide ban if the Chinese owners don’t sell their shares of the company. This recognition of how social platforms can weaponize data is hopefully the beginning of a broader discussion on the overall impact of social media on our national discourse and health.

Tobacco is harmless…as a plant sitting in the ground. When you decide to cure/age/ferment it and smoke it, you’re unleashing the toxic/addicting nicotine found within its leaves. Social networks were relatively benign before they became “media” and now we have an epidemic. As an advancement professional, I think mostly about how do we prepare for alumni engagement without social media. As a parent and citizen, I think about how do we save our children and country from plummeting further into despair. The cure won’t come easy considering those of us who need to demand change must first break our own addiction, but that’s a great place to start. Where once we advocated for higher ed to utilize the power of social to engage and connect alumni, we may now have to present alternatives. There are many reasons to do so beyond what is mentioned in this article. Much like the change we tried to inspire more than a decade ago, this will require a mass group effort.

I was there for the beginning of social media strategy for advancement, I’m here for starting the discussion of how we move on from it.