The Era of Absolutes

 We hear a lot these days about the world becoming polarized. It is either good or bad; right or wrong; all or none. So many national and global events today draw sharp reactions from either side of the spectrum. But whichever side of the spectrum you align or identify with, more and more people have sharp opinions and extreme reactions. We hear this often from so many quarters – the world has become divided; politics is becoming polarized, and opinions have become extreme. but what does it mean exactly?

Take the recent example of China. We have people on two sides obviously; but most Indians believe that China is an evil, authoritarian regime that is hell-bent on destroying their competitors (read India) and hell bent on world domination. If you purchase and use Chinese-made products, you are branded a traitor. If you refuse to use them, you are branded a hyper-nationalist. Another polarizing topic is Narendra Modi. You can either love him or hate him. People fall into these two distinct categories. Either he can do no wrong or he can do nothing right. Either he is saving the country and the world from apocalyptic melt-down or he is taking the country down the path of a genocide and/or economic ruin. The most recent polarizing topic is of course the Israel-Hamas conflict. You see opinions expressed strongly on both sides of the dispute – you are either an antisemite or an Islamophobe. There is no middle way!

That is a most curious phenomenon. The question that comes foremost to my mind is – has public opinion always been this sharply divided? Has the discourse always been about two extremes? Perhaps we feel this way because this is the only “age” we have lived in. Statistics suggest otherwise. A 2022 study by Anindita Borah and SR Singh ^[1] on political polarization in India through social media network analysis and mining concluded that there was a significant amount of polarization (non-overlapping social media interactions) for retweets in general and controversial topics in particular. A 2023 study by the Association for Democratic Reforms found that 72% of Indians believe that the country is more politically polarized now than it was 10 years ago. A 2016 study by the American National Election Studies ^[2] found that Americans have become increasingly hostile towards the opposing political party. The study found that the share of Democrats who view Republicans as "very unfavorable" increased from 35% in 1992 to 89% in 2016. The share of Republicans who view Democrats as "very unfavorable" increased from 38% in 1992 to 85% in 2016. Prima facie, these are significant changes. To conclude, statistics from studies around the globe indicate two things - first; opinions are more polarized today than before and second; this trend is increasing.

Being a numbers guy, the second question that comes to my mind is whether this polarization has any correlation with income, education, age etc.? Extent of political polarization being the dependent variable, it would be worthwhile to check the independent variables that have the highest correlation in terms of impact. Are richer people less likely to have polarized opinions? Do highly educated people tend to avoid political extremes? Does political extremism taper off or increase with age? All truly relevant questions which should have some independent studies done for further investigation. But while this can be done by more capable people than me (read TISS or any other educational institution interested in this topic), armchair thinkers like me can sit back and contemplate more anecdotal incidents. A recent conversation with an acquaintance brought home this point in stark and brutal fashion to me. This conversation was with a young person (just under 30) about the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. It lasted around 30 minutes and it almost seemed to me that we were talking different languages. The disconnect was so obvious as to be comical. While my whole fascination with this topic was of a geopolitical nature and I kept trying to draw the discussion towards facets like the Sykes-Picot agreement, the Balfour declaration, the impact of the ‘Law of Return’; this acquaintance of mine kept brushing these topics aside and kept talking of the “ongoing humanitarian crisis” and how one side was the oppressor and the other was the victim. The conviction was absolute despite knowing that the best minds in the world agree that this is a complicated issue. At one point, I had to politely stop the conversation. This (and more such incidents) brought home to me the stark realization that political polarization might be increasing, and that income and education do not seem to have a correlation to it. This of course led me down the rabbit hole of whither did this come from?

One factor that we hear about is social media. It is cited often (and ironically enough, quite vehemently) that a glut of information and echo chambers created by social media algorithms have led to this rise in polarization. But to be honest, I feel that this simplistic solution is like missing the forest for the trees. Could very well be that echo chambers are created by polarized opinions rather than the other way around. I feel we need to go deeper. While social media might or might not be the root cause, there are two particularly important considerations that I would like to lay down – Firstly, reduced attention spans and secondly, the need/gravitation towards instant gratification.

Let us first talk about attention spans. Herbert A Simon, An American economist, political scientist, and computer scientist uncannily prophesized this in a 1971 paper titled “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World.” ^[3]

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

Gloria Mark, a psychologist and currently the Chancellor's professor in the Department of Informatics at University of California, Irvine, lays out the data in her new book - “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.” ^[4] In the early 2000s, she and her team tracked people while they used an electronic device and noted each time their focus shifted to something new—every 2.5 minutes, on average. In recent repeats of that experiment, she says, the average has gone down to about 47 seconds. Another study by Microsoft Corp ^[5] published as a consumer insights report highlights that attention spans (defined here as the amount of time consumers spend on one screen before moving on to another app/screen) has dwindled from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2015. To put this finding in perspective, Microsoft themselves have compared it to the average attention span of a goldfish, which is about 9 seconds. This means that by 2015, on average, humans (at least Canadians as per this study) had a lesser attention span than goldfish. The study goes on of course to discuss the implications of this for marketers but we need not get into that. The point is attention spans have reduced markedly in the last two decades. Even citing high-level data, that hypothesis seems to be true. There has been a 66% increase in viewership for the “Shorts” format from 2022 to 2023. The average length of a typical music video ^[6] has decreased from 259 seconds (about 4 and a half minutes) in the 90s to 197 seconds (about 3 and a half minutes) today. The average length of a typical newspaper article ^[7] has decreased from 1222 words in 2000 to 589 words in 2022. A 2023 report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) ^[8] found that the average length of a digital video advertisement had gone down from 30 seconds in 2000 to about 15 seconds in 2022.

In an interview with Time magazine, Adam Brown, co-director of the Center for Attention, Learning, and Memory at St. Bonaventure University in New York cited technology (read phone usage) as a key factor in reduced attention spans. ^[9] To quote him verbatim -

Human brains want novelty, excitement, and social connection, and devices play into those desires. Checking a notification flashing across your screen can provide a small hit of dopamine, creating a sense of reward that keeps you coming back for more. When you give in to temptation by pausing a task to check your phone, your brain also has to shift gears to stop what it was previously doing and move to a new task, Brown says. This process negatively affects the overall speed and quality of your work in the short term, research suggests, and in the long term, “the more you engage in task switching, the more your brain wants to wander and look for that new thing,” Brown says. In other words, your brain gets used to constant diversions and engages in them out of habit—hence why you might find yourself mindlessly checking your phone even as you watch your favorite television show.

This “malevolent” design is everywhere. To understand how instant gratification has become inextricably linked to our shortened attention span we need to understand the reward mechanism in our brain. The first analogy to draw on is the spike in blood sugar levels after eating carbohydrates. Refined carbohydrates cause a much steeper spike in blood sugar levels than whole/complex carbohydrates. This is because the fiber in whole/complex carbohydrates need more work to be digested. This happens more slowly and therefore supplies a slower release of glucose into the bloodstream. Unfortunately, refined carbs can be highly addictive. Carbs release glucose into the bloodstream and a burst of dopamine in the brain, and this can act like a drug for some people. There is a reason these foods are called comfort foods. The essential molecular structure of the carbohydrate is similar in refined as well as the complex variants. However, the addition of fiber causes us to do more work to digest it and hence delays the gratification. Another example is the ubiquitous slot machine. When one pictures gambling, one often thinks of poker tables, and people in dinner jackets calculating the odds of various combinations in their mind. This notion of traditional gambling was made very popular by actors such as Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. However, slot machines are far more popular. They contribute over 70% of any casino’s revenue. The slot machine hacks into a very primal reward mechanism of the brain remarkably like Pavlov's dogs. We "salivate” at the sight of those reels lining up and that familiar sound which is a precursor to a reward. We continue to press that button, mindlessly tuned in to the short, quick bursts of dopamine or the painful thrill of disappointment laced with hope for the next turn of the reel. Delayed gratification is mostly not addictive. Instant gratification is. It is that simple. This design is embedded by large corporations into everything they try to sell us – from chips with the perfect blend of salt and fat to cola drinks with the perfect blend of sugar and caffeine to tobacco companies with the perfect blend of nicotine and tar to shopping apps with the perfect blend of deals and customized recommendations to social media and smartphones! The last two are a veritable smorgasbord of addictive choices with instant gratification. Smartphones reel us in with the very design of their UI and the way user experience is built. Notifications keep us hooked. That small red number indicating the number of unread messages, the buzz or ping or beep of the notification sound . . it's a science that is being perfected at alarming rates.

Having plumbed many examples of how instant gratification can get addictive, let us dive a little deeper. What is it that makes instant gratification addictive? Think of the baseline dopamine levels in our brain as an “elastic” string tied across two poles. It is a crude but effective metaphor often used by Andrew Huberman (A Stanford researcher and neuroscientist with a special focus on ophthalmology) on his podcast. From sugar to shopping to sex, any addictive substance has two (amongst others) important characteristics – firstly, the time lag between an activity and the associated burst of dopamine (rate of onset); and secondly, the introduction of a spike in the level of dopamine in the brain. This spike must be significantly higher than baseline. The higher the rate of onset, the more addictive a substance. The higher the spike, the more it's addictive potential. This elastic that I mentioned earlier is impacted by these two factors – the flood of dopamine and its rate of onset. But in a short time after the flood, the dopamine levels in our brain drop back down. The higher and steeper the surge, the more they drop. The more they drop, the more the craving for the same experience again. The more the craving, the more reinforcement for addictive behaviors. It is a vicious cycle. Spike, drop, crave, repeat. Over time with repeated abuse of this reward mechanism, the baseline dopamine level drops too. The elastic loses strength, and it sags down. This leads to a host of other problems such as depression, which is a topic unto itself.

Smartphone manufacturers and social media companies have tapped into these characteristics of the human brain just like all other large corporations have done. Some of the key addictive features ^[10] of smartphones in general and social media in particular are infinite scrolling, instant push notifications, pending notification count, personalized recommendations, constant profile customization and instant messaging. Small things like a slight delay when refreshing the feed are by design! They increase the anticipation of a refreshed feed.

Which brings us to the impact. Over the last 10 years, daily average screen time ^[11] has increased by a whopping 23%! A large chunk of that is because of smartphones which has registered an increase of 43% in the same period! As of 2022, we spend around 7 hours in front of a screen every day and around 4 of these in front of a smartphone. But because of the addictive nature of its usage, we are not focusing on anything for too long. These 7 hours in front of a screen are spent scrolling/browsing/flitting from one screen/app to another. As per research done by Gloria Mark (cited above), the average time we spend on a screen is 47 seconds (8 seconds if you believe Microsoft). Even at the higher end of the spectrum, 47 seconds is just not enough to form a nuanced opinion. At this point we will have to delve a bit deeper again ^[12] into neurobiology and how humans make decisions/form opinions. While it is an oversimplified theory, the Triune model of the brain’s evolution suggest that the limbic system is more involved in decisions and actions involving emotion and the neocortex is involved in higher-order decisions, analytical thinking, and rational decision flows. While decision-making is an extremely complicated process from a neurological standpoint and the triune model is considered an over-simplified framework, it does provide a frame of reference or a point of ingress for us to understand the very crude basics. It is safe to say however, that the limbic system is highly involved in lower order emotional processing of input from sensory systems. On the other hand, the neocortex is understood to be involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, spatial reasoning, language, and analytical decision-making. The effect of social media on how we think has been well analyzed. A 2023 paper by Sergey Yu Tereschenko titled "Neurobiological risk factors for problematic social media use as a specific form of Internet addiction: A narrative review.” ^[13] found that internet addiction can lead to several changes in the structure of the brain. To quote -

"To date, a large number of studies have been devoted to the pathogenesis of Internet addiction using various neuroimaging techniques, including magnetic resonance imaging, positron and single photon emission computed emission tomography. These techniques have revealed a number of structural brain changes associated with Internet addiction: Decreased grey matter density in several areas, including prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortical layers and an additional motor area; abnormal functional activity of brain regions associated with reward dependence; activation of sensorimotor synchrony with a concomitant decrease in audiovisual synchrony; activation of brain regions associated with compulsive craving and impulsivity; increased glucose metabolism in brain regions associated with impulsivity, reward dependence and the urge to repeat sensations; increased dopamine secretion with a concomitant decrease in dopamine receptor availability in the striatum.

To sum up, social media addiction leads to two especially important effects – it increases our stress, and it increases our impulsivity. This leads to impaired decision-making (amongst other things). As we saw earlier, the neocortex is involved in higher-order processing of information. However, if the brain is hijacked and does not get enough time to involve the neocortex due to a greatly reduced attention span and a highly active need for instant gratification, the result is not surprising – polarized opinions, extreme reactions, and simplistic solutions. We use the limited time our attention is focused on a particular screen to react emotionally and instinctively to the content. In our hard-coded need to make sense of what we are seeing, we jump to conclusions, search for the simplest solution without analysis and form opinions based on emotion rather than logic/rationality. In essence, we are losing our ability for deep, focused, and nuanced thought. That is truly a scary thought. An even scarier consideration is that the brain is a veritable "learning machine” up to around 25 years of age. Neural pathways are being formed and it is extremely easy to pick up skills and reinforce them. After this age, it is generally considered that neuroplasticity goes down and it takes a lot more effort to "rewire” the brain (pick up new skills or change mindset). Young adults who have grown up with an internet addiction and have never picked up the skill for focused, deep, neocortex-worthy thinking will have an especially tough time dealing with complex topics. If this trend continues, we can expect future generations to be even more polarized in thought and even more easy to influence through nefarious techniques of social media manipulation. A whole generation of brain-washed consumers of information ready to amplify whatever is being fed to them and spread it even faster to other brain-washed consumers of information.

So what is the solution? As someone who has quit a debilitating alcohol and nicotine addiction and has stayed clean for the last decade or so, I can vouch that the path is not easy. To top that off, this is not an individual that we are talking about. We are trying to solve for the addiction of an entire population. We are also fighting the systemic disinclination of the entire establishment (from Big Tech to governments) to do something about this problem; mainly because it serves their needs. A population of these aforementioned brain-washed consumers of information are easy to influence. They’re easy to manipulate and easy to bring to a boil. In this moment of despair, I am reminded of Rabindranath Tagore’s timeless poem which can easily serve as a call-to-action for us and a fitting conclusion to this journey through the rabbit hole.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 

References 

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13278-022-00939-z
3. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-animosity-in-2016/
4. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00019845
5. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60795084
6. https://dl.motamem.org/microsoft-attention-spans-research-report.pdf
7. https://www.statista.com/chart/26546/mean-song-duration-of-currently-streamable-songs-by-year-of-release/
8. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/10/new-york-times-story-length/
9. https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IAB_PwC_Internet_Advertising_Revenue_Report_2022.pdf
10. https://time.com/6302294/why-you-cant-focus-anymore-and-what-to-do-about-it/
11. https://medium.com/swlh/the-secret-design-tools-which-social-media-apps-are-using-to-create-addiction-e6a502ccb79f#:~:text=The%20psychology%20behind%20all%20this,see%20if%20you've%20won
12. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/screen-time-stats
13. https://seattleanxiety.com/psychiatrist/2022/7/22/anxiety-social-media-use-amp-maintaining-mental-health#end1
14. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370906115_Neurobiological_risk_factors_for_problematic_social_media_use_as_a_specific_form_of_Internet_addiction_A_narrative_review