Dukkha Times

Lee Clarke, "Social media is making many people more depressed – Buddhist philosophy may offer an explanation"

In the Buddhist language, Pāli, the word for human dissatisfaction and suffering is dukkha. For Buddhist thinkers, all human suffering is caused by desire, attachment or craving.

As a Buddhist philosopher who has just completed a PhD with a focus on Buddhist thought, I believe this ancient insight describes our contemporary world more than we might think.

In Pāli, the word for desire, attachment or craving is taṇhā, literally meaning “thirst”. This form of craving forms the background to my book Thirst: A Cultural Critique of Contemporary Society. In it, I argue that craving now permeates almost every aspect of our daily lives and affects everything from how we gain knowledge and use technology to our shopping habits and romantic relationships.

Social media encompasses all of these elements of our modern lives. These platforms have become a prominent aspect of our culture and now constitute the primary medium for much of our daily communication. Buddhist philosophy would say they are also responsible for creating and perpetuating feelings of craving.

We live in the most well-connected global society in history. We can talk to people around the world at the touch of a button. But, despite this, feelings of loneliness are on the rise. So much so that in 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global public health concern.

Social media sites are supposedly engineered to increase connections between people, yet it seems that more and more they increase our isolation.

In much of the world, there is an increasing preference for digital communication among young people. In my book, I suggest that, unlike communicating face to face, contact via social media is always fundamentally a mediation (or as a recent study calls it “mediated communication” ), because it is always experienced through a screen.

Behind our phone screens, we can exercise a level of control over conversations that we do not possess in person. There is unlimited time to consider our responses, without the awkward silences.

But I believe that it is the spontaneity of face-to-face communication that allows for true connection. Physical conversations often branch out, carrying us into unexpected territories for which we did not plan in a way that overly considered conversations does not.

Social media can never capture the intimacy of being with someone else, which means reliance on it will always leave a sense of isolation that cannot be sated. For true contentment, we crave an unmediated, more stable form of presence that social media cannot provide.

How can Buddhist thinking help?

Zen Buddhism teaches that, because of our tendency to split the world into subject and object in our language and thought, we cannot see reality as it is. As philosopher Shigenori Nagatomo puts it, for Zen, “living is consumed, philosophically speaking, by an either-or, ego-logical, dualistic paradigm of thinking.” From a Zen perspective, social media platforms further separate us from what is and so increases delusion.

Another form of craving that social media intensifies is what I call externalisation – the emphasis our society places on appearance or the exterior. People increasingly feel that those who “look better” are treated better. and on social media, people’s worth is often defined by how they look. As a result, there has been a rise in people feeling shame about their body.

Social media perpetuates this phenomenon because it obliges us to exhibit ourselves – presenting our image for likes and inviting comments. Through externalisation, we are forced to constantly compare the image we create of ourselves and our lives to those of others, which can lead to us experiencing “comparative craving” – wishing that our lives were as good as those on screen.

Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han terms our current focus on perfection “the aesthetics of the smooth”, because there is seemingly no space for imperfection. Pets and children have to look cute, videos have to be funny, food must be appetising and bodies must be young and eroticised. If not, you will not receive sufficient likes. Any such imperfection would interrupt the veneer of “smoothness” that social media lets us place over our lives.

According to Buddhist philosophy, the principal thing humans crave above all else is a permanent sense of self. Unlike most other religions, Buddhism argues against the existence of a “me” or “soul” that remains the same over time. So instead of seeking to perfect your posts as an extension of yourself, Buddhism would advise accepting the impermanence of appearances and the reality of your imperfections. Craving for the contrary will only cause further suffering.

To apply Buddhist thinking to the issues social media has created, we should view it as an edited reality. As in Zen philosophy, we should recognise the screen as a barrier sometimes, rather than a bridge to other people.

Although externalisation is now the norm, remember that appearances aren’t everything: any so-called beauty we see posted, bodies and things both, will eventually fade. Permanent perfection is not as Buddhism would term it yathābhūta or “the way things are” because it is unattainable. Social media hides more than it reveals.

Although in Buddhism, craving is considered part of the human condition, the Buddha also taught his followers that there could be a cessation of it. For him, this was the attainment of nirvana (enlightenment).

While most of us won’t be able to commit to that, we should still attempt to alleviate our suffering. For Buddhism, that begins with recognising and acknowledging social media’s growing hold over our sense of contentment and inner peace – in itself, this is a form of awakening.