There are many conflicting claims in the media about the role that technology has in our thinking. On the one hand, there is a lot of research that seems to indicate that we are easily manipulated by technology - including what we see on our Facebook feed.  This research has been gobbled up by marketing companies looking to take advantage of our System 1 thinking to sell us things that we don't need.

Another set of research seems to show that engaging with technology may improve our problem solving, spatial reasoning and creativity.  So which one is it?  Is technology limiting our ability to make good decisions?  Improving that skill?  As you can probably guess, it appears to be a bit of both.

As we have seen, dependence on heuristics in System 1 thinking can result in cognitive biases - consistent but mistaken beliefs about how the world works. This process could be influenced by our immersion in a digital world such as our engagement with social media.

Frequent use of social media could reinforce cognitive biases such as confirmation bias as we can select the information which confirms our view. Algorithms used by social media networks may further amplify this effect as information that is in line with our status updates or browsing history is ‘pushed’ to us through social media feeds. Even in our online shopping, we are exposed to advertisements that fit our past purchasing behaviour.

Frequent use of social media may also intensify negative cognitive biases based on comparisons between ourselves and the apparent experience of our online friends. Research indicates that social media may have an effect on both our self-concept and our self-esteem.

Social Comparison Theory and social media

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954) postulates that there is a drive within individuals to have accurate self-evaluations. We determine our own social and personal worth based on how we compare to others.  People compare their experiences to that of those around them as a way to work out what kind of person they are (self-concept) and how they should judge themselves (self-esteem). We might compare our feelings, experiences, abilities, and situation with those of our friends as a way to judge our own value and place in the world.

Many social media networks provide an increased opportunity for social comparison as they allow users to maintain a very clear idea of ‘what everyone else is doing’ (for example, through status updates) and compare this to their own daily routine. Although we all engage in this kind of social comparison to some extent, it seems clear that some people are more interested in doing so and may be more influenced by any negative comparison. These individuals may be more vulnerable to a negative cognitive bias - a tendency to compare themselves negatively to others, thereby reducing their self-esteem and potentially impacting their mood.

This risk of negative comparison may be further intensified due to the likelihood that comparisons based on information from social media are upward comparisons – comparisons where we deem the experience, behaviour, and characteristics of others to be preferable to or better than our own. This is because most people present a ‘best case scenario’ of themselves online. People are strongly motivated to post a status update describing something they are doing with friends which seems exciting and enjoyable rather than an update stating that they are currently not doing much and feeling a bit bored on their own!

Evidence from Chou and Edge (2014) suggests that the availability heuristic is also a factor in the way our use of social media influences our thinking. We are likely to base our self-esteem on those examples we can most easily remember (the most available) and that are likely to be the most different from our own experience. In simple terms, we are most likely to remember the posts describing people having the most fun and excitement and compare our own experience against that benchmark.

Like a lot of research on the impact of the digital world, this study relies on self-reported survey data from younger people. This could be seen as appropriate as this age group may be more engaged with social media and therefore more vulnerable to any negative consequences. However, this assumption may disregard the potential impact on a wider population of users.

A growing body of research seems to confirm the idea that more intense use of social media can have negative effects. For example, a large, longitudinal study by Shakya and Christakis, (2017) demonstrated a negative correlation between ‘liking’ other people’s content and mental health. In simple terms, Facebook users who clicked ‘like’ more often were likely to have less positive mental health. Although interesting, this evidence may suffer from bidirectional ambiguity; does more use of Facebook reduce mental well-being or do those people already suffering from poor mental health make greater use of Facebook?

Positive influences of technology on thinking

Contrary to what many of the headlines out there tell you, there is research that indicates that technology may actually be improving thinking and decision-making skills - especially in the study of the effects of moderate video gaming.

A recently published meta-analysis (Uttal et al., 2013) concluded that the spatial skills improvements that result from playing shooter video games are comparable to the effects of high school and university-level courses aimed at enhancing these same skills. Further, this recent meta-analysis showed that spatial skills can be trained with video games in a relatively brief period, that these training benefits last over an extended period of time, and crucially, that these skills transfer to other spatial tasks outside the video game context. In addition to spatial skills, researchers have also found evidence that video games are an excellent means of developing problem-solving skills.

According to Glass, Maddox, and Love (2013), playing a fast-paced video game can improve strategic thinking. In their study, they used a sample of 72 female undergraduate volunteers.  In order to be in the sample, the participants had to regularly play video games for less than two hours a week on average.

At the beginning of the study, the researchers measured the volunteers’ cognitive flexibility - that is, their ability to switch between cognitive tasks and to "think on their feet" when solving problems. The participants were then asked to play video games for 40 hours over an eight-week period - either a fast-paced game that required strategic thinking (StarCraft) or a simulation game (The Sims).  At the end of the eight weeks, the results showed that those who had played StarCraft had shown greater improvement in cognitive flexibility. A limitation of the study, however, is that the study was not longitudinal.  The participants' level of cognitive flexibility was measured at the end of the study, but not after a later period.  We do not know if the effects were long-term.

Daphne Bavelier argues that the effects are long-term and that they transfer to solving a large range of problems.

It appears that gaming may actually change our brains. Kühn et al (2013) carried out a study to determine the effects of prolonged video game playing on the brains of young adults.  In this study, the researchers had participants play Super Mario 64 for 30 minutes every day for two months. The experiment used a pre-test / post-test design. The researchers carried out MRI scans on the participants both before and after the two-month period of game playing.  In addition, the MRIs were compared to a control group that did not play video games.

The MRIs showed that the volume of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum had increased and was on average larger in the gaming group than in the controls.

Remember the roles of the different parts of the brain:

The prefrontal cortex is involved in strategic planning, decision making, and cognitive control.

The hippocampus is involved in memory formation, with the right hippocampus being particularly involved in spatial navigation.

The cerebellum is involved with fine motor function.

These findings seem to lend biological support to some of the studies above.  However, we should use a bit of caution.  First, the sample size was small. In order to trust these findings, the study would need to be replicated and obtain similar results.

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