Despite All Our Rage: Social Dislocation in the 21st Century
We tend to understand addiction as a simple matter– substances hook your body, hijack the brain, and overwhelm the nerves. It’s a humbling thought, to imagine our bodies so susceptible to a tiny chemical imbalance. We think of drugs as so powerful that they’ll take you captive no matter who you are. All it would take is the slightest push in the wrong direction to set yourself down an inescapable path of suffering and dependence. This remains the common framework, though some have challenged it. Canadian Psychologist and retired professor Bruce K. Alexander stands among them. Known for his controversial ‘Rat Park’ experiment conducted in the late 1970s, which entailed the observation of rats living in two stark environments: the park and the cage. Both groups were given access to water laced with morphine; surprisingly though, only the caged rats displayed repeated, severe dependence on the liquid concoction. These striking findings suggest that the difference between developing an addiction and leading a clean life lies not in the drug itself, but in one’s environment. The principles of this experiment reverberate today, as young generations struggle to lead balanced lives thanks to the dominance of social media, which acts as not only the object of addiction, but also creates isolation, reinforcing dependence.
The crux of Bruce K. Alexander’s experiment was simple. He sought to determine the impact of one’s environment on their likelihood to develop an addiction, which he tested using rat subjects. Two distinct groups were formed, then separated. Group A lived in a small, barren cage, while Group B was raised in the titular ‘Rat Park’, a warmer environment full of toys, private spaces, and stimulation. Both test groups were provided (in addition to food and pure water) with a water solution of morphine, an opioid used to treat severe pain. Morphine is considered highly addictive and only prescribed in extreme cases, because of the risk of developing a dependence. The caged rats drank the solution compulsively, numbing themselves, while the Rat Park residents largely ignored it. Even when the morphine solution was sweetened with additives known to be irresistible to rats, the Rat Park residents continued to drink only the clean water and lead happy rodent lives, while their caged counterparts slowly starved in a drugged-out haze.
Alexander concluded that the results proved inherently addictive substances do not exist. According to Alexander, “addiction is a way of adapting to dislocation” Addiction would not exist in a perfect world in which everyone receives stimulation and care. Bruce Alexander’s research hardly made waves in the scientific community, let alone any further. Those who were familiar with Alexander’s work dismissed it as invalid, suggesting that several methodical errors were present in the experiment and that the conclusions he drew were too broad based on the limited evidence. Regardless of the validity of Alexander’s experiment, the ideas he presented bring forth a new perspective on the digital reality of our time. A perspective which could lead those who adopt it to break free from their proverbial ‘cage’ and in turn, live fuller lives.
Half a century has passed since Rat Park, and our ‘cages’ so to speak, have become more sophisticated. Rather than confining the body with iron bars, the virtual cages of our time restrict the mind. Social media platforms have perfected what Alexander theorized– an environment that fosters dependency on artificial stimuli through deprivation of natural conditions. Apps like Twitter and Instagram are designed to feed users content that keeps them engaged, often by manufacturing outrage, which provokes behavior known as doomscrolling, the compulsive consumption of negative information. Doomscrolling aside, social media platforms foster insecurity and desire, creating a cycle of stimulation and withdrawal remarkably similar to chemical addiction. Each scroll, each tap, provides a tiny surge of dopamine– momentary pleasure followed by emptiness that compels us to seek the next hit.
Being raised in this age, one develops a selective blindness to their own habits. Upon waking in the morning, my first instinct is to open my phone. A quick check for notifications, a glimpse at unread texts, and a few minutes of scrolling. I regularly repeat this routine without thinking about it, as many of us do. It can be incredibly difficult to break this habit, since the modern “feed” functions as both the drug and the cage, in Alexander’s terms. It offers just enough to keep users hooked while ensuring they never feel satisfied. The digital landscape is engineered around this imbalance; endless scrolling leaves no clear stopping point and content is algorithmically tuned to the user’s impulses. These addictive mechanisms are the business model. Our time and attention are being ransomed right before our eyes. The longer we linger in our feeds, the more data is harvested and sold, the more ads can be tailored and served, the more profit is extracted from every moment of boredom or loneliness.
In this way, loneliness is a commodity, the economy depends on it. Like Alexander’s caged rats, the more confined people feel – socially, emotionally, economically– the more they turn to the very tool that deepens confinement. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more we scroll, the emptier we feel; the emptier we feel, the more we scroll. Addiction flourishes not because the object is inherently irresistible, but because one’s social world is stripped of alternatives. In this sense, Alexander’s hypothesis illuminates a contemporary problem: how does one resist an object of addiction which also shapes the reality we live in?
Perhaps the paramount question is: why are so many of us drawn to social media in the first place? When reality offers little stimulation, people naturally turn to what’s available– and in the modern world, that means screens. A compulsive habit intended to fill the gaps left by a lack of connection with reality. In this sense, addiction becomes a way to simulate meaning when genuine sources of gratification are scarce. Withdrawal, then, should be mild, but it feels catastrophic because the one stepping away fails to find anything substantial in its place. Without communities or spaces for unfiltered interaction, the modern world seems to leave few alternatives.
If addiction flourishes in isolation, then the only real cure would be to rebuild the world that reinforces isolation– but can socially rooted habits be undone? Alexander imagined that with enough care and stimulation, the compulsion to escape reality would disappear. Yet half a century later, we carry the ‘cages’ that confine us in our pockets and the compulsion is stronger than ever. While the digital age may appear to foster connection, this is far from the lived reality of young people. Social media companies have learned that there’s profit in emptiness. So long as people feel disconnected, they’ll keep reaching for the small, convenient comforts which drive them further from being content.
Sure, one can delete apps or silence notifications, but this behavior does little to impact the systems it resists. It may seem that all we can do is notice the pattern, try to adapt in our own ways– digital detoxes, seek alternatives, small rebellions. But maybe resistance is more than just escape. Perhaps the most productive form of resistance is just to talk. Share your struggles with one another, acknowledge the hold that these systems have on us. The first step towards change can be recognition that something is wrong. Deeply wrong, in this case. Awareness won’t free us, but it reminds us what freedom should look like, that it is only possible if we stop drinking the morphine.
