It may be an article shared on Facebook, a meme you see on Twitter, or the comment section under a news story. Somewhere, at some point in time, all of us who spend time online have seen something that filled us with shock, disgust, and anger. We ask ourselves questions like “How could they say that?” or “What kind of person would do this?” We’re flooded with emotion and sometimes even inspired to act, typing out an angry response and sending it out into the internet as a comment, email, or instant message. Oftentimes these responses include things we would never say in person, and in fact they may be completely out of character for us.
If you can relate to this, then you know very well the outrage that can be provoked on social media.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, online spaces had already been getting increasingly vitriolic. Politics, religion, and even differences over sports teams could ignite furious debate. And occasionally these debates spilled over into real life.
However, the past three years has turned the internet into a pressure cooker. Now more than ever social media is a battleground, with extremes on both ends of the spectrum that show the uglier side of humanity. And even people close to the middle of every issue are starting to join in the fight.
It seems clear that the prevailing emotion of social media is outrage.
So what’s making us so angry these days, and how can we turn this trend around? As with so many mysteries of human behaviour, the answer lies in the field of evolutionary psychology.
As natural selection occurred, humans who were better able to survive in the face of challenges were more likely to pass on their genes to future generations. One of the responses we evolved in order to better face threats was the fight-or-flight response—the ability to shift our body’s resources away from everyday activities, like problem-solving and controlling our emotions, and reallocate those resources to being aggressive. This kill has helped us survive.
It's also made us worse at so many things that make us human, like being empathic and understanding and examining our own thoughts and beliefs for errors.
Flooding our brains with adrenaline causes this fight-or-flight shift to occur, gearing us up for conflict and less ready to hear out someone else’s opposing point of view.
This physical change in our brain also makes us less able to examine our own views. When we’re in this heightened activated state, we are filled with a strong drive to protect ourselves. This includes our beliefs. In fact, research shows that we tend to mentally and emotionally react to an attack on our views as if we were being physically attacked. Our brains just can’t tell the difference between an online attack, and a physical one.
How is this relevant for understanding social media outrage? Simply put, when we get into an argument on the internet, we become unable to think clearly, examine evidence that may contradict what we believe, and change our beliefs in the face of new evidence.
And just as importantly, neither can the person with whom we’re arguing.
There is another element to our relationship with social media outrage, that this is where the addiction component comes in. Research has shown that when we engage with social media—when we get messages, likes, comments, and notifications—our brains give us tiny boosts of dopamine. Dopamine is our brain’s reward chemical, and it’s present whenever we do something pleasurable. Food, sex, laughter, and many other good things in our lives give us dopamine.
Dopamine production can also be triggered by other sources, such as alcohol, certain drugs, and getting angry. Our fight-or-flight response gives us a hit of dopamine, too, in order to help us feel motivated.
On the plus side, this has been hugely beneficial for our survival.
On the other hand, this also means we can feel a sense of pleasure when we’re outraged. We can crave that feeling, which is why we find ourselves gravitating towards stories and interactions online which allow us to get angry and lash out at others.
Let’s face it: it feels good to crusade for a cause, to feel righteous anger. But those same feelings prevent us from critically examining our views and the views of others. Crusading prevents us from being human.
And in the long run, it can be bad for our health.
This isn’t to say that we should never feel angry about what we read or see online. There’s certainly enough going wrong in the world, and at times outrage is not only appropriate—it’s necessary. Racism, fascism, homophobia, sexism… for all these things and more, only collective action, often spurred by outrage, will make a difference.
However, if you find yourself continually drawn to arguing online or to stories that keep you in a stage of simmering rage to the point that it affects your life, your health, and your relationships, you may want to try a few strategies to reduce your social media experience.
1. Avoid triggers. The best way to avoid feeding your outrage addiction is to cut it off. Unfollow or block media outlets, or even friends and family, that continually feed the anger. Avoid reading about certain subjects you know to be triggering. And consider staying out of online discussions entirely. If you don’t engage, you can’t get drawn into late-night arguments with strangers in the CBC comment section.
2. Improve your communication skills, especially when talking to people with whom you disagree. Listen, summarize, ask for clarification, and seek understanding before you respond. If you model this for others, they might be more likely to respond in kind.
3. Finally, unplug—if not forever, then at least for a while. The jury is still out on whether social media has been a net benefit for humanity, but the evidence isn’t looking good. It might be better for us all if we spent less time in the fake environment of the “metaverse” and more time with our neighbours, and others whom we may have an opportunity to help and support.
The world is full of problems and anger is often the appropriate response. However, it can take over. Maybe it’s time to prevent its spread and flatten the curve of social media outrage.
