Social Media Ills and Evolutionary Mismatches: A Conceptual Framework

From the erosion of mental well-being through incessant comparison, unrealistic portrayals, and addiction, the negative effects of social media are well-documented. However, it is necessary to move beyond the simplistic characterizations of social media as inherently either beneficial or detrimental and, instead, underscore the nuanced mechanisms that underlie its adverse outcomes. To this end, this paper delineates a conceptual framework grounded in evolutionary psychology, designed to explain the prevalent negative repercussions often linked to the utilization of social media. Specifically, we argue that these “social media ills” are manifestations of evolutionary mismatches between social media features and our evolved mechanism designed for social living. We start by reviewing how our psychological mechanisms—sociometer, social monitoring system, and social comparison—facilitate living within complex social situations and fulfill our fundamental need to belong. We then identify features of social media that may hijack these processes to produce the consequences we observe today. We have also recommended several evolutionarily informed directions policymakers and social media companies can undertake to treat social media ills at their root cause. This article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications and interventions the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis provides.