Trapped in the Feed by Raunak Mukherjee explores the “doomscrolling” pheonomenon and how social-media algorithms are designed to keep you engaged

At 2 a. m. in a hostel room , a 22-year-old media student scrolls through Instagram Reels rather than study for his exam. The videos merge together; fitness influencers flaunting sculpted bodies, productivity gurus advocating “hustle culture,” and travel vloggers living lives very different from his. “I don’t even recall launching the app,” he remarked. “I simply wanted to respond to a message. “Two hours vanished. “

The student’s story is not unique. Across India, college students and young content producers find themselves caught in an infinite loop of swipes, likes, and comparisons. This phenomenon is driven by a strong but mostly invisible force: algorithmic curation, which determines what appears on our screens and what disappears silently.

As social media networks become vital to how young Indians communicate, study, and express themselves, researchers and mental health specialists are posing an important question: What does this continuous algorithmic filtering do to young minds?

The Science Behind the Scroll

Social media algorithms are basically recommendation engines. Platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook utilize data such as watch time, likes, comments, shares, and even pauses while scrolling to forecast which material will keep consumers interested the longest.

According to Meta’s openly published study on Instagram, content that promotes consistent engagement, notably emotional responses, is prioritised in users’ feeds. This implies that posts that elicit joy, envy, indignation, or aspiration are more likely to spread than neutral or informative content.

“The algorithm does not think in terms of well-being; it thinks in terms of engagement,” says Dr. Shubhangi Parkar, a psychiatrist and former director of mental health services at KEM Hospital in Mumbai. “And human psychology is especially susceptible to emotional ups and downs. “

Neuroscience research has discovered that unpredictable rewards, such as viral videos or sudden likes, increase dopamine release in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is linked to pleasure and motivation. This can lead to dopamine loops, in which people scroll continuously in anticipation of the next gratifying update.

Comparison Culture in the Age of Algorithms

Algorithm-based feeds may accentuate social comparison for Indian university students trying to negotiate identity, ambition, and relationships.

According to a 2023 research published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, there is a significant link between heavy social media use and higher rates of anxiety, low self-esteem, and body dissatisfaction among urban youngsters. The impact was especially noticeable among young women and would-be influencers.

Algorithms exacerbate this comparison culture by constantly presenting users with content that is similar to what they already engage with, resulting in echo chambers of aspiration and inadequacy.

The psychological health costs of anxiety, burnout, and silence are significant.

While social media has fostered connection and creativity, the mental health implications are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Meta’s own internal research, some of which was presented during US congressional hearings, admitted that Instagram might aggravate body image concerns in adolescent females. Mental health specialists in India describe comparable trends.

“We notice kids who have anxiety stemming from internet validation,” says Dr. Samir Parikh, Director of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences at Fortis Healthcare. “Likes and views become measures of self-worth. “

The pressure extends beyond the users. Content makers experience algorithmic uncertainty, never fully understanding why a post succeeds or fails. This lack of openness can cause burnout, sleep difficulties, and chronic stress.

“Creators are working for an unseen employer,” Dr. Parikh explains. “And that manager keeps changing the rules. “

Local context: Why young Indians are especially vulnerable.

India’s young population, over 65% are under the age of 35, together with inexpensive data and smartphone connectivity makes algorithm-driven platforms extremely powerful.

For many students in small towns, social media exposes them to worldwide cultures and possibilities. While inspiring, this exposure can also exacerbate feelings of inadequacy when personal circumstances do not align with algorithmic ideals.

According to sociologist Dr. Shilpa Phadke, “platforms frequently amplify dominant beauty standards, urban privilege, and consumer success. ” Marginalized voices find it difficult to compete unless they match algorithm choices. “

Can Technology Be Accountable as Well?

In response to increasing criticism, platforms have implemented tools such as “Take a Break” reminders, hidden like counts, and content warnings. However, professionals believe that these methods place responsibility on individuals rather than systems.

“Digital literacy must include algorithmic literacy,” according to Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy, a Media Studies professor at IIIT-Bangalore. “Young people need to realize that what they see is curated, not unbiased reality. “

Some Indian institutions have started including digital well-being workshops into orientation programs, instructing students how to regulate screen time and critically assess internet information.

Towards Healthier Feeds.

As awareness grows, younger users are also fighting back. Many students report curating their own feeds by unfollowing stressful accounts, establishing screen-time restrictions, and seeking offline support.

“I still use Instagram,” Ayaan confesses, “but I mute accounts that make me feel awful about myself. It’s not ideal, but it helps. “

Experts emphasize that real change necessitates collaboration among tech companies, lawmakers, educators, and consumers.

“Algorithms influence behavior, but they are designed by humans,” Dr. Parkar points out. “Ethical design is no longer optional; it’s a public health concern. “

Conclusion: reclaiming agency in the feed.

Algorithms for social networking are not intrinsically harmful. They can link people, promote voices, and disseminate information. However, when participation becomes the sole measure of success, mental health hazards rise, particularly for young Indians negotiating important years.

Understanding how algorithms function is the first step toward gaining control. As consumers learn to question their feeds and demand accountability from platforms, the scroll may finally become a choice rather than a trap.

Writes: Raunak Mukherjee. He is a compelting his B A in Media and Journalism from Christ University, Bengaluru.

Sources and attribution.

• Meta (Instagram). Research Reports on Youth Engagement and Well-being.
• Indian Journal of Psychiatry (2023): Anxiety and Social Media Use in Indian Youth
• Interviews and expert opinion from Dr. Shubhangi Parkar, Dr. Samir Parikh, and Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy.

The post Trapped in the Feed: How Social Media Algorithms Influence Young Indians’ Thoughts and Feelings appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

The question may look strange but it does provide a meaningful space for introspection.

From the point of inception of TheDC was formed out of desperation and frustration among some individuals about the lack of authenticity and transparency of news coverage information concerning Gorkhaland. What was being projected in the national media was absolute misinformation and carried the narrative of the oppressors than the oppressed.

TheDC was established to provide people’s account of the reality – unvarnished ground level truth.

Of course, over the course of its years of operation, social media has undergone a lot of change. From the point, where only a few educated lot ventured into social media and relied on it for information, to this day where almost every other person has accounts across all possible platforms, the structure of media and its relevance has drastically changed. We have travelled from the days of reliance on articles and written reports, to massive scale video journalism.

Despite all these changes, one thing still has remained constant – TheDC and its mode of news and information dissemination. It still gives everyone all the relevant news, information from the region, interesting facts and articles, political commentary and opinion, pieces of art and music by our regional artists, stories and poems, and most important of all, it gives us something that today most media houses, journalists and leaders have given up on – the realisation that the idea of Gorkhaland still endures. And it is perhaps a sad reflection of how unscrupulous some people have been, that despite profusion of social media pages, TheDC is where it began 7-years ago – the only news site still providing unvarnished ground level truth concerning Gorkhaland. Majority today report what they are paid to by the ruling party or politicians in power.

TheDC was formed to be a platform that belonged to the region and the community, and so has it been – for the people, of the people and by the people.

TheDC over the years has chronicled news and information sourced through its thousands of readers spread across and beyond the region, the opinions of the people and their thoughts, their talents and their requests. While sometimes you would see someone singing a fabulous song, you would some other times see someone’s request for blood. Sometimes someone asking help trace their lost bags and some other times someone trying to return a wallet they had found. The achievements of our daughters and sons were shared, while we also together grieved the loss of our own people. The years have gone by within these moments that remained embedded between some intriguing editorials, some nostalgic articles with colloquial language and of course with all the news that has mattered to us.

To say the least, TheDC has gone to become a dining table member to many people. Many have loved us and many have equally differed to us. And TheDC has grown with all its readers amongst agreements, denial, arguments and compliments. While there have been times of “Khusi le Gazakkai huney”, there have also been episodes of “Thuska Thuski” – all in good time, all with good people. So I would like to congratulate each and every reader of TheDC, the contributors, the core team that has relentlessly put its effort in putting together the bits and pieces, and every single person whose life TheDC has touched even remotely.

7-years is a very long time if one would see and such long period of time cannot just tell you a happy story. Being a volunteer run independent media site in this age and this place itself becomes a story of struggle and TheDC has seen more struggle than it has ever seen any happiness. People have had the liberty to name TheDC affiliates of falana, chilana and dhiskana and those falana, chilana and dhiskana too have on their part made their displeasure against TheDC evident because of its habit of telling the truth. TheDC on its part has moved ahead fearlessly and unbothered on the knife edge between them. The true haunting however began post 2017 Andolan as the portal on its side decided to have a spine and kept on reporting the truth while the others had clearly decided to keep a mum.

It is important to note that TheDC is a completely non-commercial website with 0 income generation of any kind. The team members work on a completely voluntary basis with no incentive or expectation. They are driven only by their passion and love for the people and for Gorkhaland.

The same love has proved to be fatal for TheDC team members on multiple occasions. It has survived the autocratic Govt’s fierce attempt of closing it down, but thanks to Facebook, who fought against the Govt’s order to shut the page down at Kolkata High Court and won. TheDC has survived multiple motivated and baseless FIRs filed against our team members. TheDC has survived against persuasions when a few well known organisations tried to buy it for political promotions. TheDC has survived against political victimisation from various parties, some of whom went to the extent of threatening one of its team member of “ghar gherao”, with only his old parents back at home over a trivial post, along with multiple FIRs filed at multiple police stations.

Imagine not being able to attend your father’s last rites because the police has been hounding you at the behest of the powers that be and choose to arrive at the house looking for you, right after the news of your father’s death went out. Sounds hypothetical maybe, but the story is based on real lived experience of one of our team members.

Irrespective of all the negatives, TheDC has continued to endure and with all of your love and support, it will continue to thrive.

So, for many TheDC might just be a page and a website posting news. But if you look deeper enough, it is a voice – yours, mine and everyone else’s. It represents independence, freedom and truth even when there have been uncountable attempts to shut it down and destroy it. It represents hope to endure, with nothing in hand but a pen, passion, an idea and the truth.

As Andy Dufrane has said – “Hope is a beautiful thing, perhaps the most beautiful of all… And no good thing ever dies.”

The post On the 8th year of being born – What TheDC means to us? appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

• Your Profile

Write your name in sentence case: In written communications, you use ‘caps’ for a full word only if you want to scream at someone, highlight a key point in the middle of a sentence or you accidentally hit the ‘caps lock’ button. None of this is possible when you are writing your name. Once, in a tweet, a very senior journalist wrote, ‘I don’t even want to know a person who writes his/ her own name in caps.’ My guess is, he sensed a megalomaniac!

Use an actual photo: Preferably a professional photo, if not then something that shows a professional side of you, but has to be you and there has to be one. Sometimes I get requests from people who do not have a photo at all or some, where they have used instead of a character from a movie or a cartoon. Why is a picture important? Because it is not a face-to-face meet up and to trust a person, we need to see the person! That is simply the least we can do in terms of online courtesy.

Title/ Headline: This is the space where you tell people who you are or what you do. Also, this is the part that instantly connects you to people therefore, ensure that you write a line that’s exactly you. For examples: I once received a request from, ‘Assistant Manager at X company’ and one that said, ‘Engineer at Stay at Home’. The first one only says where you work but an internal designation alone is not a profile nor does it describe what you do. The second one has chosen a default option, perhaps retired from work and now we cannot figure out whether ‘Stay at home’ is a company or state of mind! 

• Your Bio:

Check, re-check, repeat: Online, the only window of opportunity to know you is through your bio, write it well.

• Use the 3 C’s of communications and keep it Crisp, Clear and Concise
• Use the ‘inverted pyramid’: Keep the ‘stuff’ on top, ‘fluff’ at the bottom
• Spell check, it’s automatic
• Be consistent. The summary of your bio and your experience should complement one another.

Networking on professional social media platforms

When sending a request: 

We can get carried away by numbers in social media. Numbers are the beauty of it, it helps us measure reach with data. However, when we are looking to make a real connect, we have to look at quality over quantity, unless of course, you are a thought leader or an influencer. Recently I sent a request to a very senior professional, living on the other side of the world, with a note that reasoned why I was sending the request. As she accepted the request, she was highly appreciative of ‘intentional networking’ and shared resources on the topic of mutual interest. I must say that connection benefited me like no other on social media. It’s one example of a great connect possible only online. Of course most of the times we connect with people we know or meet at various events. However, should you wish to reach out to someone you don’t know, make that effort to take some time out to write a special note.

When conversing on DM (direct message):

The good thing about social media is to be able to connect via DM when you don’t know the person, personally or offline. However, sometimes the DM is treated much like a chat on messengers! I have received one-liners, even just one word, in several lines! You can use it to make a special request – a job offer, connect on a mutual topic or comment on a post personally.

Social media is a great leveller and can be used to influence and impact lives, by just about anyone. And that’s wonderful.

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Most of the people have their accounts on social networking site and so many other apps to counts. This has made us visible to everyone around the world.

Being fragile, delicate if you become visible to the world, you would be the target of evils in the societies. We hear a lot about the bad things happening around these days.

Most importantly, we need to safeguard our children from the evils in our societies. The NGO’s and the schools organise programs and seminars to make the children aware of the delicate issues like the environment, human trafficking, child abuse, drug addiction, etc. In the older days, our parents, relatives, and the elders visiting our home used to share their ideas, experiences to make us aware of lots of things.

Even though the schools have taken a responsibility to safeguard from the social evils,  the parents and guardians need to guide the children gently. Some children are rebels, they only hear soft advice and others can be advised easily.

We know, the world was never a better place for the innocents and adolescents, and it would never ever be. With the emergence of Facebook, video calling apps, Whatsapp, etc., we stay connected to each other regardless of our distance. However, these things are used by the evils of the societies to trap the young and innocent for their benefits, making a life of innocent miserable.

Some of the children might feel good on getting treated well in the beginning, but such people will show their real face later on. Our children should be made aware that the strangers on the social networking site pretend to be good at first.

We need to teach our children that the strangers on the social networking site can do anything to win trust at first – Especially the stranger from places far away. But they will reveal their evil intention at a victim is together.

The social networking site doesn’t have any such security feature to check the characters, morals, intentions of any person by looking at their profile. No one would be able to know about the true nature, characters, and profession of a person in the real world.

The thing which scares us most is the innocent, young people falling in the traps set by the evil minded people in the physical and virtual worlds.

Our sisters, daughters, mothers are the most vulnerable,  but even men or boys could fall in traps set by a person with wrong intentions.

Facebook doesn’t allow a person below 13 years to create an account to ensure the safety of the children. However, all the people above 13 years are not sensible adults. The fraudster, traffickers, and hackers don’t look at the age, but they find out the weakness in the victims.

They are curious about almost everything. They are learning to differentiate between good and bad, but aren’t much capable enough to recognize the people with good and bad intentions.

Our little children are becoming victims of the evil of social media. The first and foremost thing to do by the parents and guardians is to stay alert and keep eyes on the activities of their children. The elders need to educate the children about the pros and cons of the internet, social networking sites, apart from educating about other things.

Social networking is a vast platform. You can find different types of people from different corner of the world belonging to different cultures, races, and countries; most importantly of different age groups and professions.

The first time users are unaware of the darker aspects of the internet and social media. It could be exciting for them to get attention from people around the world.

We need to give time to our children and listen to them, watch their activities and routine. Or else, if they are able to find some strangers online to listen to them, or talk to them about all their sorrows, likes, dislikes, etc., then it could be dangerous.

Traffickers, fraudsters, hackers can fool anyone once they get to know about the weakness in a person. To share our likes, hobbies, or the things close to us with everyone is always dangerous; those things could be used against us anytime.

We may not be able to stop our children from using internet applications to connect with people, definitely not. However, the main thing we need to do is to create awareness to protect them.

The victims are not of any specific category; they could be poor, rich, innocent, or educated. If the human traffickers want to trap the innocent young girls, they will use all the possible means to make a fool of themselves. They may chat for a long time, send gifts from different cites to win the trust of a victim. Nowadays, sending things to someone is not difficult like before.

The schools and the NGO’s organise the seminars on human trafficking to protect our children from the evils. But most importantly – the parents, elders’ should be aware of the misuse of Social Media.

Younger girls are the easy target of criminals. The miscreant could make use of fear, poverty, the child’s desire to learn new things, explore new places, etc., to trap and victimize.

We cannot guarantee the authenticity of the things posted on Facebook, Instagram, etc.  Some people post the picture of their costly car, houses, good look picture to lure the victims.

When our children are in danger in the real world, we may be able to rescue them. But the internet is the darkest place to be in the world right now for the innocent and the young ones. Most of us are not aware of our child activities online, which is really very scary. I don’t mean to say that we should be too strict. I mean to say, we need to create awareness and watch them. Maybe we would be able to save our people from falling in a trap of such dirty minded criminals.

To the conclusion, I am not saying that the internet and social Medias’ are the places for evil to reside. We need to spend some time with our kids and talk about good and bad things, let them know about the good and bad people. Don’t invoke fear, rather create awareness in the heart and mind of the young generations.

The school is the place where we send our kids to learn good things and develop awareness against bad things. However, our responsibility doesn’t stop there. We may become tired and restless after working for the long hours in our farms, offices. We can do anything to save our hard earned money, protect our valuables. It is not easy as said, but I believe we need to protect our children, our coming generations from the evils of the societies based far and near to us.  The new generations are smart, but foolish sometimes because of their age. The matured and experienced people should guide our children to follow the right path safeguarding themselves.

Writes: Atish Subba

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