It seems like a no-brainer, but given the number of crisis managers and image consultants out there, and the financial gains that come from influence and virality, how do you know if someone is sincere? Given how well emotional content performs online, what impact does this have on our ability to communicate face-to-face?
The Era of the “Mac Loophole”
Psychologist and author Maytal Eyal says true vulnerability is hard to come by these days.
The vulnerability, or lack thereof, that people experience also contributes to the rapid development of parasocial relationships. Anyone with a cell phone can use social media to quickly fix composition and performance bugs, a phenomenon Eyal calls “McVulnerability.”
It’s “comfortable, simple, cheap, but ultimately just like fast food, [McVulnerability is] This is especially true during a time of increasing loneliness, Eyal continued. “Social media platforms have shown us something very insidious and brilliant, that people no longer need to be exposed to real vulnerability in person,” she said.
In addition, teenagers are spending more and more time online. Although it’s difficult to determine the exact impact of social media on teens, research shows that teens’ mental health has been declining over the past few decades, and their in-person social interactions have declined sharply.
So what happens when teenagers watch McVulnerability?
Ultimately, Eyal said, the more time spent online and the more time potentially spent watching “McVulnerability,” the more disconnected teens become from the social activities that build interpersonal skills. “The consequences are dire because vulnerability and the discomfort involved in it are inherent in having intimate relationships with others…Without vulnerability, we don’t have intimacy,” she added.
Instead of going to parties and pursuing romance, teens are spending more of their free time on their phones, said Eyal, who works with teenagers and their families through private practice. This behavior isn’t unique to teenagers—adults do it too—but adolescence is critical for the development of social skills, vulnerability, and empathy.
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist at the USC Rossier School of Education and author of “Emotions, Learning, and the Brain,” says that compared with younger children and older adults, adolescents undergo dramatic neurological changes during adolescence and are extremely sensitive to how they fit into their social environment. Teens also tend to be reactive, making it difficult for them to be vulnerable when they feel unsafe, Imordino-Young continued.
When schools are not safe places and don’t focus on giving students enough time to develop their developing empathy and social skills, teenagers may respond to serious cues in a non-serious way, Imardino-Young said.
She continued, citing classroom lessons on civil rights marches as an example, where participants fought for change that was meaningful to them. Teenagers who are not yet familiar with the civil rights movement may not be impressed by what they see in front of them, like registering to vote.
Immordino-Young’s team found that teenagers take longer to think about complex stories and ideas.
But given a safe space and enough time, teens are more likely to let go of their teenage fears of judgment and social status and ask for more information, revealing their innate curiosity.
When teenagers seek to learn more information, they are developing valuable skills for adulthood, such as expanding their background knowledge. This deeper, more complex type of thinking is called transcendental thinking, and according to Imordino-Young, teens want to achieve it, but it takes work.
Imordino-Young also recommends setting a calm tone in the classroom to give teens a space to explore big ideas. When teenagers are allowed to think deeply about a problem that is important to them, and then back up and learn more about how to solve that problem, they are more likely to abandon histrionic responses and take advantage of their newly developed vulnerabilities. Imordino-Young believes that transcendental thinking—such as thinking about the value, intent, and meaning of more complex ideas—not only helps young people better understand the world around them, this kind of thinking actually grows their brains.
“In other words, when they think about these larger, more complex, hidden moral concepts, they’re actually exercising their brains like a muscle,” Imordino-Young continued.
get rid of discomfort
According to Eyal, teens are not learning how to express their vulnerability to their peers as they once did, and instead they are “bombarded with vulnerable content” online without the need to respond.
The teenagers Eyal works with realize that the content they see on social media is somewhat synthetic. The bigger problem, she says, is that teens hide behind their parasocial relationships, escaping the discomfort of face-to-face vulnerability and real-life confrontation. “It’s almost like a retreat from discomfort,” Eyal continued.
Of course, teens don’t just browse social media, they also post on it. Eyal found that many of her teenage clients were extremely afraid of exposing their vulnerabilities to peers in person, but found it much easier to do so online. According to Eyal, this is another form of mike vulnerability that can also lead to a lack of reciprocity, but isn’t as far-reaching as a tearful apology from an influencer. Teens’ vulnerable posts online remove “the tender, awkward waiting experience that occurs in a truly vulnerable exchange,” she said.
J’Nyah is very confident in her ability to navigate online spaces, but even so, she has difficulty interpreting her friends’ social media posts, especially when they don’t reflect her own behavior or emotions at school. J’Nyah uses abbreviations like KMS (for suicide) nonchalantly, and when she sees friends posting about it on social media, she makes sure to reach out to them personally.
Online, the lines between right and wrong can easily become blurred, especially for young people who are expanding their social skills and refining their relationship identities. When online behavior goes too far, J’Nyah often has to wait until days or weeks later when her suspicions about questionable content are confirmed before she can be sure of the information she was given. Other online content was clearly malicious to J’Nyah, such as someone recording and posting themselves being rude to store customers and employees.
J’Nyah also noted that people on social media tend to take more extreme measures because they feel protected behind their screens. J’Nyah says this has negative consequences. Trends like “Sly Licking” encourage middle school and high school students to steal and destroy school property, causing thousands of dollars in damage to some schools across the country. “I think things go too far sometimes,” “I feel like I’m numb to a lot of things,” J’Nyah added.
To avoid becoming too comfortable behind a screen, Eyal encourages her teen clients to seek healthy discomfort away from electronic devices, such as becoming summer camp counselors, where they may be responsible for caring for young children, spend a lot of time outdoors, and be required to do some form of manual labor.
“Put them in situations where they might feel nervous, shy, socially awkward, or where they might have to be around other kids,” and stay away from cell phones, she said.
While teens may feel more comfortable escaping from screens, parents must show them that they can find meaning and value in the temporary discomfort of unfamiliar social situations and activities.
Empathy Issues
Teachers may question a student’s ability to empathize when a student laughs during a lesson about the Holocaust or tells an inappropriate joke while learning about the segregated South. These concerns among adults may stem from concerns about increased social media use among teenagers. But to Eyal, these reactions “sound developmentally normal” because teens are trying and learning how to express their emotions. Teens have a strong sense of self-awareness about how they are viewed by their peers, she said, and responding to serious topics in an emotionally inconsistent way is a way to avoid discomfort and vulnerability.
In these cases, the immaturity of the adolescent’s nervous system manifests itself. According to Imordino-Young, teenagers will sometimes express an emotion before considering the appropriateness of the context, but it’s also a social reaction. “I don’t think they would laugh if they were alone,” Immordino-Young said.
Teenagers are also learning how and when to use transcendental thinking, but sometimes get it wrong, Imordino-Young said. “They often think about very deep things in superficial ways…or they think about superficial things in quite profound ways.” Immordino-Young continued that when thinking patterns are used over and over again, such as scrolling through social media for hours, these patterns are retained. So checking out McVulnerability regularly online “may change the way you see things in school, too; I mean, your thinking goes with you wherever you go, and it’s structured by the way you use it,” she adds.
For parents concerned about the McVulnerability of their teens watching online, Immordino-Yang recommends watching the videos with them and discussing the matter with them. Ask questions like: Why do you think this person behaves this way? Or what is their motivation for posting this to millions of people online?
“Help them start to question, as an adult, your ability to notice the bigger picture,” Immordino-Young said. Remember, your child doesn’t have to agree with what you say, she continued; it’s important to learn to unpack the things you’re looking at instead of letting them absorb your attention and future decisions.
“participate [online] Media is a great way to learn things. It’s a great way to gain exposure to things outside of your immediate sphere of influence,” Immordino-Yang added.
