Jon Stewart uses ‘food’ analogy to explain how social media trains us to go against our gut instinct
'Everything that we have that's great can be weaponized against us.'
The use of the internet and social media, once meant to be for knowledge and entertainment, has become a sly tool to disrupt our lives. Without us even realizing it, social media has taken away the peace and replaced it with a harrowing exhaustion. American comedian, writer, and host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, shared a spectacular food analogy to explain how all the social apps are actually a deceiving presence draining the very life out of us. Speaking with The New Yorker, Stewart used processed foods to put forward his point about how algorithms have compromised our functioning.
Stewart first debunked a popular theory that said social media is meant to connect us. He agreed that, to some extent, the algorithms do bring together people with common interests. However, he noted that there’s a bigger purpose at hand. “You know, we are victims of the circadian rhythms of social media,” he remarked. He added that the sole idea is to keep users hooked to the platform. “They want you there as long as they possibly can have you. And the way that they have rigged our brains to figure it out is that outrage, and anger, and hate, and hostility are much stronger drivers of engagement than anything else,” he remarked.
Think doomscrolling, there’s no reason to be watching half the stuff we do while scrolling, but we’re on there for hours. And the algorithm is designed in such a way that you stay till you’ve seen what you’re meant to because the feel-good stuff works as a reinforcer. Sharing his food analogy, Stewart asked people to think about eating in a restaurant, where their food seems richer and flavorful because there’s a ton of other items or extras they add to enhance it. Stewart doubles down on the funding being given to food engineers whose sole purpose is to manufacture ingredients that bypass our brain's capacity to recognize 'wrong' or 'bad'. These ingredients are meant to cover up our natural gut responses to these foods and keep us munching on them without registering their harm.
Sharing another instance of speaking, Stewart remarked, “What we do is we communicate and we sometimes use hyperbole, and we sometimes use puns, and satire, and like, and all and parody to convey something,” the host noted. He added that this helps make the speech and conversation even more pleasant or impactful. And that’s how social media works, too. He mentioned how social media “is ultra-processed speech in the same way that Doritos are food.” The algorithms are designed to make it seem like it's a feel-good connecting platform, but it is constantly filling your brain with manipulated information and creating an overload. These systems are built to, as in the case of food, bypass your brain's signals and keep you hooked on something unhealthy.
Stewart also said, “It's designed to bypass the parts of your brain that keep you off it, that keep you from diving into those holes, from radicalizing yourself. That's what you're up against. They are designing these things in the lab to bypass our ability to collaborate and cooperate,” he noted. According to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the risks of social media on a person’s brain and development are many. Academic co-director of the Winston Center, Mitch Prinstein, noted that apart from health and safety, there are many other risks the exposure poses. “Technology is here to stay. Our goal is to understand how people can get the most benefit from these new tools and avoid whatever risks there may be to academic, psychological, biological, and social development,” he said.
Social media was created with the purpose of uniting people and helping with networking, but Stewart asks us to be mindful about one important truth: “Everything that we have that's great can be weaponized against us.” Sharing on his own show, a video captured some even more powerful statements from the host. He mentioned how speech is not as free as it is believed to be on social media. Even that is derived from algorithms. Think trends, you’re following something subconsciously while trying to put something of your own out there. “It’s like you're getting impressed by free food at the casino. It’s not free. Social media is not an open forum; it has a plan,” he noted.
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