This seems easy enough, but given the abundance of crisis managers and image consultants, and the financial gains from influence and virality, how do you know if someone is being sincere? And given how well emotional content performs online, what does that do to our ability to engage with one another in person?
The Age of McVulnerability
These days, authentic vulnerability is hard to find, they said Maital Eyalpsychologist and writer.
People’s experience of vulnerability, or lack thereof, also leads to rapidly developing parasocial relationships. Anyone with a phone can turn to social media for their quick fix to synthetic and executive vulnerability, a phenomenon Eyal calls “McVulnerability.”
It’s “convenient, easy and cheap, but ultimately like fast food, (McVulnerability is) not necessarily good for your health,” Eyal continued, especially in these times of growing loneliness. “Social media platforms have presented us with something that’s both really insidious and really brilliant, where people no longer need to access real vulnerability in person,” she said.
Add to that, the juniors are spend more and more time online. And although it is difficult to determine the exact one effects of social media on teenagers, studies show that teens mental health deteriorates and theirs personal socialization has declined dramatically over the past few decades.
So what happens to teenagers when they watch McVulnerability?
After all, the more hours they spend online — and therefore, the more potential time they watch McVulnerability — the more teens cut themselves off from social activities that build their relationship skills, Eyal said. “The consequences are dire because vulnerability and the discomfort with it are inherent in forming intimate relationships with others … without vulnerability we have no intimacy,” she added.
Instead of going to parties and pursuit of romanceteens spend more of their free time on their phones, said Eyal, who works with teens and their families through her private practice. This behavior is not unique to teenagers – adults do this too – but adolescence is critical for the development of social skills, vulnerability and empathy.
Teens undergo huge neurological changes during adolescence and are extremely sensitive to how they fit into their social environment compared to younger children and adults, said Mary Helen Imordino-Youngneuroscientist at USC’s Rossier School of Education and author of “Emotions, learning and the brain.“Teenagers also tend to react, and when they don’t feel safe, it’s really hard for them to be vulnerable,” Imordino-Young continued.
When schools aren’t safe places and don’t focus on giving students enough time to tap into all their developing empathy and social skills, teens can respond to serious prompts in non-serious ways, Imordino-Young said.
Take, for example, a classroom lesson at a civil rights march in which participants fight for change that is meaningful to them, she continued. A teenager who is not yet familiar with the Civil Rights Movement may not be too impressed by what appears at first glance, such as registering people to vote.
Imordino-Young’s research team found that adolescents take longer to think through complex stories and ideas.
But given a safe space and enough time, this teenager would be more inclined to put aside his adolescent fear of judgment and social status and seek more information, revealing his inherent curiosity.
When teens ask to learn more, they build valuable skills for adulthood, such as expanding their contextual knowledge. This deeper, more complex type of thinking is called transcendental thinkingand according to Imordino-Young, teenagers want to get there, but it takes work.
Immordino-Young also recommends creating a relaxed tone in the classroom to provide a space where teens can explore big ideas. When adolescents are allowed to think deeply about a problem that matters to them, and then back up and learn more about how to solve that problem, they are more likely to let go of performative responses and take advantage of their newly developing vulnerability. According to Imordino-Young, transcendental thinking—like thinking about the values, intentions, and implications of more complex ideas—not only helps young people better understand the world around them, this type of thinking actually develops their brains.
“In other words, they’re literally exercising their brain as a muscle when they’re thinking about these bigger, more complex, hidden ethical ideas,” Imordino-Young continued.
Retreat from discomfort
According to Eyal, teens aren’t learning how to express their vulnerability with their peers like they used to, and are instead “bombarded with vulnerability content” online that doesn’t require a response.
The teenagers Eyal works with are aware that what they see on social media is somewhat synthetic. The bigger problem is that teens have to hide behind their parasocial connections and get past the discomfort of personal vulnerability and IRL confrontation, she said. “It’s almost like a retreat from discomfort,” Eyal continued.
Of course, teens don’t just scroll through social media, they also post there. Eyal has found that many of her teenage clients are deeply afraid of exposing their own vulnerability to their peers in person, but find it much easier to do so online. According to Eyal, it’s a different form of McVulnerability that also provides a lack of reciprocity, but isn’t as far-reaching as a tearful influencer apology might be. She said vulnerable posts by teens online take away “the tender, uncomfortable experience of waiting that happens in person with a real exchange of vulnerabilities.”
J’Nyah is quite confident in her ability to navigate online spaces, but even so, she can have a hard time deciphering her friends’ social media posts, especially when they don’t reflect their behavior or mood at school. With acronyms like KMS (kill yourself) thrown around nonchalantly, J’Nyah makes sure to personally check in with her friends when she sees them post concerned things on social media.
The line between right and wrong can easily blur online, especially for young people who are expanding their social skills and refining their relationship identities. When online behavior goes too far, there’s often a waiting period for J’Nyah, and it’s only days or weeks later, when her suspicions about questionable content are confirmed, that she can be sure of the information she’s been presented with. Other online content is more blatantly unfair to J’Nyah, such as someone recording and posting being rude to customers and store employees.
J’Nyah also pointed out that people on social media tend to act out in more extreme ways because they feel protected behind a screen. And there are negative consequences, J’Nyah said. Trends like “sneaky lick” tendency. encouraged middle and high school students to steal and vandalize school property, costing some schools across the country thousands of dollars in damages. “I think things just go too far sometimes,” and “I feel like I’ve just been desensitized to a lot of things,” J’Nyah added.
To combat getting too comfortable behind a screen, Eyal encourages her teenage clients to seek healthy discomfort away from their devices, such as being a summer camp counselor where they might be in charge of younger children, spend a lot of time outdoors, and have to do some form of physical labor.
“Put them in situations where they might feel nervous and shy and out of their social element, or put them in a situation where maybe they should be around a group of other kids” and away from their phones, she said.
Although teens may find it more comfortable to escape behind screens, it’s important for parents to show them that they can find meaning and value in the temporary discomfort of unfamiliar social settings and activities.
Empathy issues
Teachers may question their students’ ability to empathy when they laugh during a lesson about the Holocaust or make an inappropriate joke while learning about the Jim Crow South. And these concerns of adults may be rooted in worries about the increased use of social media by teenagers. But to Eyal, these reactions “sound so developmentally normal” because teenagers are experimenting and learning how to express their emotions. Teens feel a tremendous amount of self-consciousness about how they are perceived by their peers, and responding to a serious topic in an emotionally inappropriate way is a way to avoid discomfort and vulnerability, she said.
In these cases, the neurological immaturity of teenagers is manifested. According to Imordino-Young, teenagers sometimes express an emotion before processing the appropriateness given the context, but it’s also a social reaction. “I don’t think they would laugh if they were alone,” Imordino-Young said.
Teens are also learning how and when to apply transcendental thinking, and sometimes they get it wrong, Imordino-Young said. “They often think about very deep things in superficial ways … or they think about superficial things in quite deep ways.” When thought patterns are practiced over and over again, like hours of scrolling through social media, those patterns stick, Imordino-Young continued. So watching McVulnerability online very often “will probably change the way you see things in school as well; I mean, your mind comes with you wherever you go and it’s built by how you use it,” she added.
For parents concerned about their teens watching McVulnerability online, Imordino-Young suggested watching these videos with them and talking to them about it. Asking questions like: Why do you think this person behaves like this? Or what is their motive for publishing this content to millions of people online?
“Help them start to question what you, as an adult, are able to notice about the bigger picture,” Imordino-Young said. Remember, your teen doesn’t have to agree with what you say, she continued; It’s important to learn to unpack the things you’re looking at instead of letting those things drive your attention and future decisions.
“Engaging with (online) media is a great way to learn things. It’s a great way to be exposed to things that are outside of your immediate sphere of influence,” Imordino-Young added.
