Adam Nieri, Motion Designer at Pinnacle Advertising, offers a short video talk on how to stay focused on what matters in a world that seems to want us to pay attention to a million shape-shifting must-sees at once (a few excerpts from the script follow):

Almost as a footnote to Nieri’s talk, National Geographic is offering an article, “I dream of … trending topics,” that examines the links between frequent social media usage and nightmares: It’s based on an open-access paper in BMC Psychology which concludes,

Social media use intensity predicted frequency of social media-related nightmares. These nightmares were correlated with increased anxiety, lower peace of mind, poor sleep quality, and nightmare distress. Importantly, social media-related nightmares mediated the relationship between social media use intensity and low affective well-being (i.e., anxiety and peace of mind), poor sleeping, and nightmare distress.

Shabahang, R., Kim, S., Aruguete, M.S. et al. Social media-related nightmare — a potential explanation for poor sleep quality and low affective well-being in the social media era?. BMC Psychol 12, 140 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-01605-z

From the Great Unplug script:

The new AI driven social media world manufactures unhappiness:

I couldn’t find one study that found that more digital connection leads to a greater degree of happiness and satisfaction. A 2017 scientific study discussed “phubbing” (phone-snubbing) and how it creates a sense of social exclusion, ironically making individuals more reliant on social media to regain inclusion but ultimately feeling isolated . A 2022 study explored the correlation between loneliness and social network abuse, highlighting how excessive social media use can exacerbate feelings of loneliness, especially among different demographics such as students and the elderly . A 2019 study investigated the association between social media usage and loneliness among university students, finding no significant support for the hypothesis that social media usage mitigates loneliness. Lastly, a study in 2020 looked at older adults and found that while social media can increase social connectedness, it does not significantly reduce loneliness over time.

It’s becoming a rat race for the producers as well:

YouTube, like the podcast world, has become quite saturated. Starting a channel in 2024 doesn’t even remotely guarantee you the same success it would have in, say, 2012. Yes, there are way more people watching YouTube than ever before. However, with more viewers comes more people fighting for their attention. According to Global Media Insight, there are over 113.9 million active YouTube channels. One source estimates the chance of reaching 1 million subscribers to be around 1 in 3,600 channels. Channels have to evolve in order to match the excitement and intensity needed to get a viewer’s attention or else it will fade away into an endless sea of mediocrity. As a result of such intense competition, channels become more like factories pumping out content at an accelerated rate. Videos have become manufactured and primed to take advantage of your brain’s chemistry. AI has quickly become the bread and butter of this Content Industrialization Complex. At the end of the day, YouTube is about the psychology of attention. Whoever can get the most of it wins the greatest following. Or, at least, that’s how it has been for some time….

Tailoring an Unplug to your own needs:

Disconnecting looks different for everyone. For me, it looks like being intentional about spending time with friends in person rather than on the internet. I try not to spend time during the day doom scrolling. I rarely post pictures or videos on social media. In fact, I hardly use social media at all. What does it look like for you? Maybe it’s completely disconnecting for one day of the week or setting aside one part of your digital life each month. Whatever it may be, I really hope The Great Unplug is a beginning movement for all of us.

And if we never unplug… ?

AI can allow us to mistake our picture of the world for reality itself:

In season 3, Episode 6, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise is caught in a trap and it’s up to chief engineer La Forge to find a solution. Using the ship’s computers, La Forge creates a holographic simulation of Leah Brahms, an engineer who helped design the engine used in the Enterprise. Throughout the episode, AI Leah and La Forge grow increasingly close.

It turns out, Leah Brahms was everything La Forge was looking for in a woman. They work well as a team and ultimately save the Enterprise. The episode ends with La Forge and AI Leah Brahms sharing a kiss. And yet, the story continues.

In Season 4, Episode 16 LaForge and Leah meet for real in person aboard the Enterprise. The interaction…is awkward. The real Leah was almost nothing like the AI simulation LaForge worked with earlier. Yet, LaForage was expecting her to be a facsimile of AI Leah. Ultimately, Leah discovers the holographic simulation. She finds it invasive and unsettling; rightly so.

Despite the tension, LaForge and Leah Brahms eventually gain a mutual respect for one another …

These episodes, which aired back in 1989, highlight a fundamental truth about being human. The AI we create will always be an image of what we want it to be. It will always look good, sound good, and deliver good information. Yet, the ability to innately understand the world, make decisions based on intuition, fall in love, raise a family, join a cause, ask questions about life is fundamentally what it means to be human. Just like AI Leah Brahms, generative AI is a simulation. It’s meant to look like what we want it to be and do what we want it to do.

Note: Adam Nieri has also written some relevant articles for Mind Matters News. See, for example,

Is sci fi brain decoding becoming a reality? To what extent can the inner workings of thought and dream be measured through correlation? We seem to be at the beginning of our ability to correlate brain waves and fMRI images with mental states and thoughts. (August 2020)

and

Close Encounters, Fifth Kind, just missed contact. Worth a watch but Stephen Greer and I part company when he makes clear that he believes everything is conscious. In his documentary on UFOs, Stephen Greer certainly gets one thing right: Consciousness doesn’t fit into conventional science inquiry. (May 2020)