We live in an environment where we’re constantly switching between screens, between stimulants, between instantaneous gratification and mindless entertainment. It’s commonplace to have your screen-time report hours of your daily life dedicated to various apps and endless Netflix scrolling. In fact, we construct online personas that embody the person we want to be — a falsified reality that we curate into existence with every like, comment, and post. When we’re not fueling this parallel life, we’re consuming other’s or we purposefully lose ourselves in film and television. With this understanding, I wanted to delve deeper into the widespread usage of stories as a societal go-to for coping with one’s problems. It’s a topic not thoroughly discussed enough and yet it widely affects everyone within this digital age. Particularly, this strongly affects younger generations that are susceptible to developing detrimental habits early on. Whether the entertainment form is immersive or observational, it has a multitude of consequences ranging from being emotionally isolated from others, unable to cope and live in the present moment, to the development of related anxiety disorders. This is something I personally resonate with, considering I attribute many of my own faults to this exact experience. Because, if we live in a parallel world so gratifying and intentionally always giving, then what motivation is there to be in and deal with reality when doing so is promoted as unnecessary?
This is the dilemma that shadows the decision-making and mental health of our society — whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. It’s a fact of life that I’ve always been fascinated about because of how much I personally resonate with it. Like many others, I was never taught how to properly cope and deal with the negativity of my current surroundings. I grew up in an unstable household where I developed debilitating shyness and anxiety throughout my elementary and middle school years. I was afraid to speak, to voice my opinions, to communicate with my peers out of fear of social judgment and subsequent rejection. This negative state of being, in turn, led me to become an avid reader. Beginning from the moment I first picked up The Hunger Games in fifth grade and onwards, I became so engrossed in the stories of these characters that I started living for them. I started to dread the moment when it was the last page to turn and I’d have to go back into the real world where I didn’t have a special purpose, a devoted love interest, and meaning in life. My bullies in middle school were too commonplace for the villains in my other worlds to bother dealing with. It put a bandaid on all my problems and essentially allowed me to coast through that misery because I knew that once the clock reached its eventual destination, I’d be able to lose myself in a character enough to escape.
While books can illustrate the power that becoming absorbed into a story provides, this is also capitalized on in other forms of the entertainment industry as well — a fact of which is detrimental to deal with life’s hard truths and tribulations. That’s why this industry is as powerful and big as it is — it transports us out of our own world into a place of no blame or judgment. We desire this to such an extent because of fear, avoidance, and struggle. It’s easy and accessible, takes the guesswork out of any potential decisions, and allows us to live the lives we want vicariously through others. It’s something that has always been present in some form throughout history and has recently expanded into additional mediums that are arguably more influential and addictive. Companies have recognized the influence of escapism through parallel lives and have formulated technology to not only emulate this but to play off the brain’s reaction to it.
It’s known that dopamine is the brain’s pleasure and motivation transmitter. It’s what motivates people to engage in pleasurable experiences and nevertheless becomes addictive. Screen content, as well as the physical object itself, is formulated to increase dopamine levels in a vicious cycle that makes people more susceptible to consumption. There’s a multi-billion dollar industry that caters to this desire for more. They have company positions dedicated to ‘consumer experience’ because they use psychological strategies to cater towards feelings of instant reward and satisfaction. It is this sense of winning that allows us to easily and quickly distract ourselves from the problems we’re personally facing or of those around us. Along these lines, when people are faced with stressful situations, they implement a series of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional responses. These depend on the subjective evaluation of the event and the perception of control one has over it. However, because we grow up without proper education on this topic and with a general dismissal towards expressing emotions, the outcomes of this process often lean more towards ignoring the problem through seeking entertainment rather than addressing what’s going on. Due to this, when the creation of alternate realities is paired alongside technology that is carefully crafted to heighten the pleasure you receive from it, we end up in the detrimental state that we’re currently residing in.
The subsequent harmful effect of this is that it depletes energy, lowers brain waves with increased suggestibility, and lowers feelings of guilt and empathy when exposed to repeated simulated violence. All these consequences combined lead us to be detached from our emotions without the proper ability to deal with them. When we reference the term “coping”, we’re typically referring to an adaptive coping mechanism — a way in which we can reduce our stress levels. However, maladaptive coping can then lead to anxiety disorders and can form a reliance on these outlets. While distracting ourselves through stories acts as temporary fixes, they consequently lead to these dysfunctional behavioral patterns. It’s become a psychological response that’s preyed upon by entertainment companies that utilize human behavior as a business template.
Particularly regarding virtual stories in entertainment (i.e. movies and shows), plots are naturally formed around emotional experiences and the fast-paced drama surrounding heightened human emotion. While this is what makes it entertaining and desirable in the first place, such immersive experiences create a sense of being controlled by something beyond ourselves. We lose ourselves in the ideas and practices that are prominent in these alternate worlds. It gives us purpose through identified and quickly achievable meaning while taking the guesswork out of life for a short period of time. This is a subsequent example of emotion-focused coping, whereas we attempt to regulate our emotions in a manner that is less adaptive. It’s referenced as ‘the escape motive’ and relates to the immersion into fantasy and/ or the virtual world for the purpose of intentional detachment. On the other hand, what should instead be promoted, is problem-focused coping to deal with our emotions. This is the active search of information, solutions, and behaviors aimed at modifying the circumstances at the root of our stress.
So what’s the solution? How do we deal with this and implement healthier strategies to address our minds’ cognitive processes? While entertainment enjoyment itself is not inherently detrimental, addressing its societal-wide overuse is key to healthy consumption. This message is especially imperative, again, towards youth who are at risk for adopting a dependency on this escapism through stories to deal with life. When this reprieve becomes automatic and habituated, it quickly becomes a dysfunctional coping strategy. This emotional avoidance is a recognized predictor of risky behaviors among adolescents and plays a role in their relationship between stressful life events and the etiology of psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression. Instead of turning on the tv, opening a fictional book, or binging another movie to alleviate the focus on your thoughts, instead try to make a conscious recognition of that impulse. Rather than acting on it, acknowledge your worries by writing them down and/or saying them out loud. This act makes it tangible and therefore addressable. If you instead choose to band-aid the problem by losing yourself in passive consumption, in technology that brings these alternate worlds to life but are geared towards capturing and keeping your attention, it opens Pandora’s box for coasting through reality. It prevents you from living in the present with full awareness and intention. It takes the control out of your choices and the power out of self-reflection.
Work Cited
- Bryant, Jennings., and Peter. Vorderer. Psychology of Entertainment . Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006.
- Steven Gaydos. “The Hollywood Effect.” Variety, vol. 396, no. 6, Penske Business Corporation, 2004, p. B14–.
- McKee, Alan, et al. Entertainment Industries: Entertainment As a Cultural System. Taylor & Francis Group, 2011.