An Absurdist Analysis of Social Media Addiction
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Alfred Hitchcock, the great creator of movies from the sphere of the psychopathic thriller and the discoverer of absurdism in cinematography, would likely perceive what we now encounter as the plague of social networks as a kind of black humor and hopeless nihilism. If Hitchcock were to depict the movie by lensing social media addiction, he would unveil the sad truth of real society through his unique problematic perspective of portraying a society’s absurdity and purposeless actions. His mode of making movies that focused on the expectation and the funny bone of the human mind gives a solid basis for dissecting this new social ailment that has reinvented how humans communicate and would have interested Hitchcock.
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Hitchcock's approach to revealing human psychological complexities often centered on three key characteristics of the absurdist film: pointless human activity, absence of criticism regarding characters’ activity, and the absence of ethical motive in the narrative. These elements dovetail most symbolically when it comes to studying social media addiction – millions spend their time aimlessly scrolling their feed while society disregards this new, almost normalized mass behavior. Thus, the social media epidemic can be viewed through a postmodernist and absurdist ethos.
The first characteristic of an absurdist film that Hitchcock would likely apply to social media addiction is the focus on purposeless human behavior. Just as his characters often performed actions without clear motivation, modern social media users engage in what researchers call "zombie scrolling syndrome." According to a Journal of Behavioral Addictions study, users often cannot explain why they continue scrolling through feeds long after they have ceased finding value or enjoyment in the content (Aladwani et al. 577). Hitchcock would likely frame this behavior through the lens he used in "Vertigo," where characters are driven by inexplicable compulsions that defy rational explanation. The director's fascination with repetitive, seemingly meaningless actions would find perfect expression in the endless scroll of social media feeds, where users repeat the same gestures countless times without any clear purpose or reward. This compulsive behavior mirrors the circular narratives often found in Hitchcock's works, where characters find themselves trapped in patterns they neither understand nor can escape.
The second characteristic of the absurdist feature of Hitchcock’s work is the negativity of judgment. This complements today’s rather strange attitude toward accepting social media addiction. Cohesively, even in the face of various negative impacts, including those persistently demonstrated on the academic and professional front, society has aggravated social media use as the new acceptable norm. This is similar to Hitchcock, who loves to portray protagonists as acting irrationally with no moralization of the act. Failure to judge or evaluate the situations and our reactions to them has compounded our social media abuse, which would have interested Hitchcock depending on what is normal and what is not in today’s society.
The third area of the absurdist film that Hitchcock used – the absence of a clear moral message presents the most convincing interpretation of social network dependency. According to Coe (P20), users claim to be unsatisfied and feel like something is always missing after using social media but cannot stop. This circularity would probably interest Hitchcock in that among his films. The focus was on the futile repetition of job routines with no higher moral or functional purpose. His films’ lack of moral resolution corresponds to how using social media does not lead to any consequential result or gratification. However, it remains one of the most persistent behaviors in the contemporary world. Like the characters in the movies that Anderson creates and who keep enacting the self-destructive cycle without attaining any spiritual awakening, Twitter and Reddit users also perform clerical tasks. At the same time, there is all the evidence that such activities do not lead anywhere.
Through an absurdist lens, social media addiction takes on new dimensions of meaning - meaninglessness. The endless scroll becomes a modern version of Sisyphus's boulder, with users trapped in a cycle of repetitive behavior that yields no lasting satisfaction. As Donald (P212) observes, seeking meaning through social media often leads to a more profound sense of meaninglessness. Hitchcock would likely appreciate this ironic paradox, which echoes the existential themes he explored throughout his filmography. The director's penchant for revealing the futility of human attempts to find meaning in meaningless actions would find rich territory in the social media landscape, where the promise of connection often leads to more profound isolation.
This analysis reveals that Hitchcock's absurdist perspective provides a uniquely insightful framework for understanding social media addiction. By viewing this modern epidemic through the lens of purposeless behavior, suspended judgment, and lack of moral purpose, we better understand how social media has created what communication theorist Marshall McLuhan might call a "global theater of the absurd" (Georgiadou). The director's artistic vision, which often highlights the irrational elements of human behavior, is a powerful tool for understanding our collective addiction to social media platforms and how it reflects deeper truths about human nature and society.
Hitchcock's treatment of technology in his films provides another fascinating parallel to our current social media epidemic. In works like "Rear Window," he explored how technology mediates human experience and creates artificial barriers between people while paradoxically promising to bring them closer together. This theme resonates powerfully with social media's promise of connection, often resulting in "the illusion of intimacy" (Alves). Just as Hitchcock's characters often found themselves trapped behind lenses and screens, modern social media users experience life through the artificial frame of their devices, creating what might be termed a "digital rear window" through which they observe but rarely genuinely engage with the world around them.
The psychological toll of this mediated existence would particularly interest Hitchcock, whose films often explored themes of identity and performance. Social media platforms encourage what performance theorist Dr. Michael Wei terms "continuous self-curation," where users engage in "endless cycles of identity construction and reconstruction without ever arriving at an authentic sense of self" (Li 30). This mirrors the identity crises often faced by Hitchcock's protagonists, who frequently lost themselves in elaborate performances until the line between authentic and artificial behavior became hopelessly blurred. The director would likely view the carefully curated social media persona as a modern manifestation of this same psychological fragmentation, where the performance of living gradually replaces the experience of life itself.
The implications of this analysis suggest that addressing social media addiction may require acknowledging its fundamentally absurd nature rather than trying to rationalize or moralize the behavior. Just as Hitchcock's films often left viewers to grapple with uncomfortable truths about human nature, perhaps the first step in addressing social media addiction is accepting its inherent irrationality. This perspective might offer new approaches to addressing the epidemic, focusing less on logical intervention and more on recognizing the absurdist patterns that drive our digital behavior. In doing so, people might finally break free from the meaningless cycles that characterize social media addiction and find more authentic ways of connecting with others and ourselves.
Reference page
Aladwani, Adel M., and Mohammad Almarzouq. "Understanding compulsive social media use: The premise of complementing self-conceptions mismatch with technology." Computers in Human Behavior 60 (2016: 575-581.
Alves, Artur Matos. "It Takes a Global Village: Distributed Cognition and the Digital-Age Classroom."
Coe, Peter. "The social media paradox: an intersection with freedom of expression and the criminal law." Information & Communications Technology Law 24.1 (2015): 16-40.
Donald, Merlin. "The Digital Era: Challenges for the Modern Mind." Cadmus 2.2 (2014).
Georgiadou, Elissavet. "McLuhan’s global village and the internet." 1st International Conference on Typography & Visual Communication. 2002.
Li, Jiaxin. "The Practice of Social Media in Relation to Identity and Online Self-Curation." Journal of Linguistics and Communication Studies 2.4 (2023): 28-33.
