Monkeys can teach us the dangers of social media comparisons

More depressed after looking at Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? Feel like everyone else is winning out there? You are not alone.

I cut the Facebook cord a few years ago and never looked back. We cut cable in the house last Fall and immediately felt happier without watching the news. I didn’t realize that this feeling of freedom and happiness is not uncommon without the pressures of social media and the news.

Why?

Well, let’s start with a story of two monkeys.

Cucumbers and Grapes

Scientists did some behavioral testing with two monkeys. They trained the monkeys to give a researcher a pebble in exchange for a piece of cucumber.

No big deal.

These monkeys liked cucumbers and had no problem handing over a pebble for some fresh cuke.

Then the environment changed. Researchers put the monkeys next to each other and then gave one monkey a cucumber and the other a grape. A GRAPE!

Now for the non-monkeys out there, a grape is a big deal. Much better than a cucumber. No comparison.

The cucumber monkey was pissed. He even throws the cucumber back! See for yourself in the video.

So why was this a big deal? The monkey is doing the same task as before and getting the same cucumber reward. The difference is the comparison to the other monkey. Now a cucumber is not good enough; a grape now resembles success.

This monkey will actually go on to lose motivation and give the pebble slower in subsequent tests than before the grape incident.

Downright mean, right? Who would do that to the poor monkey?

Every day we do the same thing to ourselves. We look at social media and see everyone else getting grapes. We used to be happy with our perfect cucumber lives, but now we have comparisons.

Incomplete Comparisons

The problem is that the social media comparisons are not correct comparisons because the other party only shares what they want to share. This is a selection issue.

People don’t post pictures on Instagram of their ’93 civic, but there will definitely be pictures of a newly purchased grape Mustang. Your “friends” aren’t posting about the money problems they are having, but you better believe there will be a post when a bonus comes in or about how much they are enjoying their vacation #YOLO.

The posting of only good things paints a skewed picture of reality. When comparing your life to others on social media, you are only comparing to the good things in other people’s lives.

As far as you can see you are the only person that has negative things going on. Bringing back the monkeys, you are only seeing pictures of everyone eating grapes; no one posts about their subpar cucumbers. In this world, only you have to eat cucumbers.

Look back at how mad that monkey was. We are doing that to ourselves with social media, whether we know it or not.

Fear Sells

The news and media are related issues. Stories about crisis and fear are more interesting than someone having a normal or happy day. These stories keep people watching, and people like to talk about bad things. Take gossip as an example. There isn’t any good gossip because telling others how well someone is doing isn’t as interesting as talking about the bad things in someone’s life.

Not only does the news have an incentive then to provide fear-provoking content, but television media must provide content 24/7. This demanding schedule means that the same negative story will be repeated all day and maybe all week from different angles.

Horrible.

Imagine someone in real life coming up to you every 15 min to tell you the same sad story. That would be miserable, yet we let the news do this to us every day, but more eloquently.

Eliminate Unnecessary Stress

Both social and news media create unnecessary stress. Be it by creating incomplete comparisons that make you feel inferior or constantly surrounding you with bad news; the odds are against us. Worse, the negative influences are sometimes so subtle that we do not even realize the impact they are having on the way we think or decisions we make.

Not only are these influences depressing, but they can lead to less motivation and lower efficiency. The monkey who wasn’t receiving the grape started to hand over the pebble slower. The will to work hard decreased.

Impact on Financial Independence

On a path to financial independence, we are constantly barraged with attacks against this lifestyle. Ads on TV and posts by social media friends tell us that we need a new car to keep up. There are so many vacation pictures posted that you feel like if you don’t spend a ton on a lavish vacation (and post about it), then you aren’t even in the race.

The news and social media only strengthen the attacks on an already difficult trail to financial freedom.

Minimizing these negative forces will help you feel better about your current life and not pressure you to keep up with the Joneses, which in turn helps your budget and speeds up financial independence. Also, a more positive outlook on life will unleash creativity and efficiency. These are some big wins from such an easy fix.

Financial independence goes hand in hand with independence from the actions or opinions of others. Don’t be intimidated. Breakaway and don’t let others control your emotions or your opinions about yourself.

Followup

Unfortunately, I reconnected to Twitter to promote this site @bullincaptivity. Since it is not a personal twitter account, the posts are not as grape-related. In fact, since many of the people I follow are other personal finance and FIRE bloggers, it is surprisingly motivational.

Even then though, some news and political opinion slip through the cracks and I try my best to eliminate these types of posts from showing up again. I can’t help but feel the same twinge of mind-numbing depression that social media can bring.

I hope that the benefits of spreading posts like this one will outweigh any of these minimal social media costs.

photo credit: monkey  cc license
video source: youtube