It sounds easy enough, but given the abundance of crisis managers and image consultants, as well as the financial gains from influence and virality, how do you know if someone is authentic? And given the effectiveness of emotional content online, how does this affect our ability to interact with each other in person?
The era of “McVulnerability”
These days, it’s hard to find true vulnerability, said Maytal Eyal, a psychologist and writer.
Experiences of vulnerability, or lack of vulnerability, also lead to rapid growth in parasocial relationships. Anyone with a phone can turn to social media for a quick fix to synthetic, performative vulnerability, a phenomenon Eyal calls “McVulnerability.”
It’s “comfortable, easy and cheap, but ultimately, like fast food, (McVulnerability is) not necessarily good for your health,” Eyal continued, especially in these times of increasing loneliness. “Social media platforms have presented us with something really insidious and really great, where people no longer need to access real vulnerability in person,” she said.
Additionally, teenagers are spending more and more time online. And while it’s difficult to pin down the exact effects of social media on teens, studies show that their mental health is deteriorating and their in-person socializing has declined significantly in recent decades.
So what happens to teens when they watch McVulnerability?
Ultimately, the more hours spent online — and therefore potential time spent watching McVulnerability — the more teens are disengaged from social activities that build their relational intimacy skills, Eyal said. “The consequences are dire because vulnerability and the discomfort it creates are inherent in establishing intimate relationships with others…without vulnerability we have no intimacy,” she added.
Instead of going to parties and looking for a romantic relationship, teens are spending more of their free time on their phones, said Eyal, who works with teens and their families in his private practice. This behavior is not unique to adolescents – adults do it too – but the adolescent period is essential for the development of social skills, vulnerability and empathy.
Adolescents undergo enormous neurological changes during adolescence and are extremely sensitive to how they fit into their social environment, compared to younger children and older adults, said Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist at USC’s Rossier School of Education and author of “Emotions, Learning, and the Brain.” Teenagers also tend to be reactive, and when they don’t feel safe, it’s very difficult for them to be vulnerable, Immordino-Yang continued.
When schools aren’t safe places and don’t work to give students enough time to develop empathy and social skills, teens may respond to serious solicitations in unserious ways, Immordino-Yang said.
Take, for example, a classroom lesson about a civil rights march, in which participants fight for change they care about, she continued. A teenager who is not yet familiar with the civil rights movement may not be very impressed by what meets the eye, such as voter registration.
Immordino-Yang’s research team found that adolescents took longer to think about complex stories and ideas.
But with a safe space and enough time, this teen would be more likely to let go of their fear of judgment and social status and ask for more information, revealing their inherent curiosity.
When adolescents are interested in learning more, they learn valuable skills for adulthood, such as expanding their contextual knowledge. This deeper, more complex type of thinking is called transcendent thinking, and according to Immordino-Yang, teens want to get there, but it takes work.
Immordino-Yang also recommends setting a calm tone in the classroom to provide a space where teens can explore big ideas. When adolescents are allowed to think deeply about an issue they care about and then go back and learn more about how to solve that issue, they are more likely to abandon performative responses and exploit their newly developed vulnerability. According to Immordino-Yang, transcendent thinking – such as 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 literally exercise their brain like a muscle when they think about these bigger, more complex, hidden ethical ideas,” Immordino-Yang continued.
A retreat from discomfort
According to Eyal, teens are no longer learning to express vulnerability with their peers like they used to, and instead, they are “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 to some extent synthetic. The bigger problem is that teens may hide behind their parasocial relationships and ignore the discomfort of in-person vulnerability and IRL confrontation, she said. “It’s almost like a retreat from discomfort,” Eyal continued.
Of course, teens don’t just browse social media, they post there, too. Eyal has found that many of her teenage clients are deeply afraid of exposing their own vulnerabilities to their peers in person, but find it much easier to do so online. According to Eyal, this is a different form of McVulnerability that also results in a lack of reciprocity, but is not as powerful as a tearful apology from an influencer might be. She said vulnerable posts by teens online remove the “tender and awkward waiting experience that happens in person during a real exchange of vulnerability.”
J’Nyah is quite confident in her ability to navigate online spaces, but it can still be difficult for her to decipher her friends’ social media posts, especially when they don’t reflect their behavior or mood at school. With abbreviations like KMS (kill myself) thrown around casually, J’Nyah makes sure to check in with her friends in person when she sees them posting 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 relational identities. When online behavior goes too far, there is often a waiting period for J’Nyah, and it is only days or weeks later, when her suspicions about questionable content are confirmed, that she can be sure of the information presented to her. Other online content is more obviously harmful to J’Nyah, such as someone recording and posting themselves being rude to customers and store employees.
J’Nyah also pointed out that social media users tend to act more extreme because they feel protected behind a screen. And there are negative consequences, J’Nyah said. Trends such as the “sneak licking” trend have 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 go too far sometimes” and “I feel like I’m desensitized to a lot of things,” J’Nyah added.
To avoid feeling too comfortable behind a screen, Eyal encourages her teen clients to seek healthy discomfort away from their devices, such as becoming a camp counselor for the summer where they might be responsible for young children, spend a lot of time outdoors, and be required to do some form of physical labor.
“Put them in situations where they might feel nervous, shy and out of their element socially, or put them in a situation where they maybe need to be among a group of other kids,” and away from their phones, she said.
Although teens may think it’s 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 environments and social activities.
Empathy issues
Teachers may question their students’ capacity for empathy when they laugh during a lesson on the Holocaust, or when they crack an inappropriate joke while learning about what is happening in the Jim Crow South. And these adult concerns may be rooted in concerns about adolescents’ increased use of social media. But to Eyal, these reactions “seem so developmentally normal” because adolescents experience and learn how to express their emotions. Teenagers experience immense self-consciousness about how they are perceived by their peers, and reacting to a serious topic in an emotionally incongruous way is a way to avoid discomfort and vulnerability, she said.
In these cases, the neurological immaturity of adolescents is highlighted. According to Immordino-Yang, adolescents sometimes express an emotion before considering it appropriate for the context, but this is also a social response. “I don’t think they would laugh if they were alone,” Immordino-Yang said.
Teenagers also learn how and when to apply transcendent thinking, and sometimes get it wrong, Immordino-Yang said. “They often think about very deep things in a superficial way…or they think about superficial things in a pretty deep way.” When thought patterns are practiced over and over again, such as hours spent scrolling through social media, those patterns persist, Immordino-Yang continued. So watching McVulnerability online very often “is likely to change the way you look at things at school as well; I mean, your mind goes 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, Immordino-Yang suggested watching these videos with them and talking to them about it. Ask questions such as: Why do you think this person is acting this way? Or what is their motivation for publishing this content for millions of people online?
“Help them begin to question what you, as an adult, are able to notice about the bigger picture,” Immordino-Yang 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 look at rather than letting those things capture your attention and future decisions.
“Interacting 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,” Immordino-Yang added.
