Your Peer Group is Mad at You…

#TransparentTuesdays

Hi friend,

Does your time on social media help support your moral identity, or help destroy it?

Quick note: If you’re new here, I recommend reading the last couple of posts I’ve written about “moral identity” in my new substack! I’ve been exploring what moral identity is, how it’s influenced by gender and social conditioning, how it’s being damaged by the current sociopolitical climate, and what we need to do to fight back.

Ok. 

So you’ve probably noticed that social media has become morally performative, rigid, and punishing over the last decade or so, with people enthusiastically virtue-signaling on various topics, and disparaging anyone who doesn’t meet their specific moral standard for the “right way” to think about or respond to various current events.

If you’re anything like me and my people, then you might have also noticed that this trend toward performative moral policing on social media has made the whole experience feel more stressful and draining than it ever used to. (Ugh.)

But what you might not have noticed is the detrimental impact on your moral identity that comes from spending time in morally rigid and judgmental “peer-group” spaces.

Listen, I know that saying social media has become toxic isn’t exactly a “hot take.”

The research is loud and clear about this. Overall, spending time on social media has a negative impact on our mental health, our sleep habits and stress levels, our body image, and our self-esteem. We know that both because the research says so, and also because we intuitively feel it.

But we don’t often talk about the specific impact that social media has on our moral identities, and I think we need to. 

Interestingly, part of the issue here comes from the fact that we perceive our social media feed to be a representation of our peers; a place where “our people” gather.

Thanks to the way our algorithms curate our feeds, social media generally gives us the impression that when we’re there, we’re surrounded by like-minded people who share our values and views.

In some way, this is a good thing, both because most of us wouldn’t enjoy being exposed to an endless parade of people whose views and values oppose everything we hold dear, and also because it affirms and validates our identities, helps us connect with “our people,” and can give us a pleasant feeling of belonging.

But there are downsides to this perception, too.

The most commonly cited downside to our feeds being curated this way is that it puts people in a sort of “echo chamber,” which can discourage critical thinking, limit exposure to alternative perspectives, and give us a false feeling of security that “everyone” agrees with us, or sees things the same way we do. 

Trump’s first presidential win was a powerful wake-up call around this for me personally, because based on what I was seeing online, I was 100% certain that Hillary was going to win, and I was absolutely gobsmacked to find out how many people were having completely different conversations.

But a lesser-discussed downside to thinking of our social media feeds as an accurate representation of our peer group is that this feeling tends to hijack and distort a specific bit of our evolutionary wiring: the natural inclination we have to sort other people into “in groups” and “out groups.” 

In the fields of sociology and psychology, an “in group” is the social group that an individual feels connected to, identifies with, and feels like they “belong” to.

Our perceived  “in groups” have a significant impact on defining and affirming our individual identities, and they tend to foster strong feelings of trust, loyalty, and attachment. 

An “out group,” on the other hand, are the social groups that an individual sees as different or separate from themselves, and don’t identify with. It’s common to develop an “us versus them” mentality around our perceived “out groups,” sometimes viewing ourselves as being in opposition to that group, or as being superior to that group.

The psychology of “in grouping” and “out grouping” is important to understand, because we tend to automatically feel more empathy, approval, respect, and other positive biases toward people we perceive to be a part of our “in group.” 

We tend to see people in our “in groups” as complex and nuanced individuals with distinct traits and behaviors, and we’re a lot more likely to take moral influence from them, subtly conforming our views and behavior to what we perceive as “normal” within that group. 

Conversely, we tend to perceive people in our “out group” as threatening or inferior, often flattening them into a monolith (rather than viewing them as distinct individuals) and assuming that the individuals in this group are more similar to each other than the individuals in our “in group” are… which makes us more likely to assign negative biases and stereotypes to everyone in that group. 

Because we generally feel no loyalty or attachment to (and less empathy and respect toward) people in our “out group,” we’re more likely to automatically reject their moral influence and social norms, which continues to reinforce our sense of being “different,” strengthen our feeling of difference, and affirm our identity as “not them.”

Ok, now let’s swing back to social media. 

Our modern algorithms are designed to make it so that any individual’s social media feeds feels like an accurate reflection of their “in group.”

And while this can be a really lovely and affirming thing, it also means that social media has an alarmingly powerful impact on our views, values, and moral identity. 

By giving us the feeling that we are among like-minded peers, our social media feeds can now play on our natural inclination to conform to the norms and ideals of our “in group,” in order to gain (or maintain) their approval, acceptance, validation, and belonging. 

That means we are far less likely to question or challenge the perspectives and opinions of people we see in our social media feed, and far more likely to assume that they are correct and fall in line. 

As a result, our curated social media feeds now post a powerful threat to our moral identity, because the way we view ourselves as part of the group makes us way more vulnerable to being morally influenced. 

Seeing what people in our “in group” post has a way of either subconsciously changing what we actually believe to be right and wrong, or else pressuring us to just pretend to change our beliefs, in order to maintain our status and feeling of belonging with the group. 

The thing is, we humans are designed to care immensely what our “in group” thinks about us, and to want to fit in with and be accepted by that community. 

This makes sense evolutionarily, because throughout history, our very survival has always depended on one thing: our ability to belong to our immediate community. It didn’t matter what other families, communities, tribes, or cultures thought was good or right. Their social norms, ideals, judgments, and opinions weren’t relevant to our lives, because they were outsiders. 

The only thing that mattered for our survival throughout history was what our people thought, what our people thought was good and right, and the social norms, ideals, judgements, and opinions of our people. 

It’s worth acknowledging here that throughout most of human history, encountering the opinions and values of outsiders was a pretty rare occurrence. As hunters and gatherers, our communities were a lot smaller than they are now, and opportunities to learn what people in our “out group” believed would have been few and far between. 

Put another way, we evolved to conform in whatever way was needed to fit in and be accepted with the small number of people in our immediate community. So our moral beliefs and behaviors are incredibly flexible and easy to influence, but only by the people we perceive as “our people.”

The thing is though, we evolved in such a way that “our people” was supposed to refer to the very small number of people inside our immediate family, tribe, or community.

And nowadays— thanks to the digital revolution and the rise of social media— “our people” has come to include millions of people we’ve never even met. 

We’re now exposed to the existence and opinions of thousands of strangers on a daily basis, but we still have the innate desire to understand where (and with whom) we belong. So our brains all end up heavily overburdened with the task of trying to quickly and accurately sort everyone in the world into “in” and “out” groups. 

The world is filled with people who believe all kinds of different things, after all! If we don’t know which of them are “ours,” how can we possibly make sense of which norms, beliefs, and behaviors are acceptable, ideal, or morally correct for our kind of people? And how can we secure the validation and belonging that we crave, if we don’t know whose opinions are relevant to us?

So… we subconsciously sort everyone. 

And on social media, our conclusions about who is “in” and who is “out” gets immediately mined for data. The algorithm, which has been paying attention to our every move with the quiet intensity of a creepy stalker, will instantly translate our likes, follows, comments, and blocks into a feed that forever feels more “relevant” to our identity. 

The algorithm takes what it knows about us, and uses us to feed us more people that it knows we won’t reject. These are “our people” too, after all, and our brains aren’t wired to reject people like that. We’re built to connect, not to discern and refine, and thus our “in group” grows and grows. 

If you’re like me, then your social media “in group” is made up of a massive network of progressives, activists, and other people who are experiencing and expressing a lot of moral outrage right now about the state of the world.

Having an “in group” this big is already overwhelming to a sensitive human nervous system, but in my view it’s not just the size of the group that’s having such a damaging effect on our moral identities. 

It’s not even the exposure to an endless stream of news about moral violations and injustice. (Although we’re certainly not designed to handle that, either.)

Instead, in my experience, the biggest threat social media presents to our moral identities can be found in the increasingly strict, rigid, binary, reactionary, and vitriolic expressions of moral judgment. 

It’s the ever-expanding feeling that we can’t keep up with—let alone conform to—the endlessly evolving messages we get from our “in group” about what we need to think, feel, believe, and do in order to be deemed “good,” be accepted, and belong.

It’s the mounting sense of anxiety we feel as our “in group” expresses increasingly detailed, complex, contrasting, and confusing moral norms and standards, alongside increasing threats of ostracization if you get it wrong. 

For many of us, social media has gone from a fun place we would go to connect with our peers to a terrifying place where our peers are already mad at us for a moral infraction that we didn’t even know existed until this very moment. 

Given our wiring, it is very damaging to our mental health and moral identity to feel like we’re constantly being judged, criticized, and condemned by our “in group.” 

These are the people we’ve chosen to identify and empathize with; the people we’ve decided to trust when it comes to what is right and what is wrong, and whose opinions we intrinsically respect and value. 

So it’s all the more painful when they seem to be judging us, blaming us, berating us, or condemning us.

How else are we to interpret it, when we see intensely emotional posts morally lambasting people for doing (or not doing) something relatively minor and inconsequential? How are we supposed to feel when we encounter a barrage of moral outrage about whether or not a specific influencer posted the specifically “correct” stance on a specific topic, only to discover in real time that we ourselves have also not done this thing correctly? How are we supposed to take it when a respected peer posts an impassioned rant about how they’re fucking done with people who engage in this one specific behavior, because it’s so disgusting or disrespectful, and you suddenly realize that she doesn’t know it but she’s also talking about you?

Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand wanting to hold people accountable, and having strong moral boundaries about what you will and won’t tolerate in your own individual social community. Everyone is fully entitled to their opinions and boundaries, and I’m certainly not trying to suggest that people should temper their moral outrage to make other people feel comfortable.

But I am suggesting that when it feels like people in your perceived “in group” view you as part of their “out group,” or like your peers condemn you (or your behavior) as morally disgusting, shameful, or inferior… that’s going to really hurt. 

When it feels like your standing within your peer group is constantly in danger, and you could be kicked out for a small or accidental infraction at any time… that’s going to make you feel incredibly anxious.

And if you’re exposed to these kinds of messages over and over, by a bunch of different people in your community, around an endless variety of complex and contradictory topics, and about increasingly specific actions… it’s going to wreak havoc on your moral identity.

I am also suggesting that while moral outrage is completely understandable right now, automatically recategorizing anyone who sees things differently from you, makes a mistake, or is unaware of something you feel strongly about, from your “in group” to your “out group” might be a mistake. 

• Did you post the right take about the right topic in the right timeframe, or are you a bad person? 

• Did you wait too long to speak up about the newest moral violation, or are you a good person? 

• Are you boycotting this brand, or are you a part of the problem? 

• Are you as outraged as I am about this, or are you one of “them”? 

This trend toward treating morality as a fixed, objective, inflexible, and prescriptive thing that requires a strict and unwavering adherence to whatever “we” think is right—especially on social media, which is different from real life—doesn’t actually foster positive change, or benefit our cause. 

At best, people will start feeling so afraid of messing up or being judged that they’ll stop taking the time and space needed to actually allow themselves to be morally influenced in the right direction. Instead, they’ll either slowly shut down and withdraw, or start frantically virtue-signaling, desperately trying to protect their place in the community by making people think they know, feel, believe, and do all the morally correct things. 

At worst, people who feel rejected by their progressive “in group” will start seeking validation and belonging elsewhere, making them vulnerable to the well-organized radicalisation pipelines of the communities they once opposed, which means our community and our causes will slowly lose the power, stability, and cohesion we need to make meaningful change. 

Unfortunately, this is already happening, both in our political institutions and among the masses. We can already see how moral in-fighting and divisiveness is weakening our ability to fight for what’s right and get things done, and that scares me. 

But what else can we expect, when our moral identities are central to our sense of self, and our need to belong is central to our sense of survival and safety in the world?

So again, I want to ask you: what impact is social media having on your moral identity and feeling of belonging? Are those spaces supportive, or damaging? And if they’re damaging, what do you need to do to protect yourself?

Big hug,

Jessi