CYBERPSYCHOLOGIST WARNS YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS MAY BE CHANGING YOUR BRAIN

Newsweek Exclusive Feature

Think that your disappearing TikTok stories do not impact your worldview? A cyberpsychologist invites you to think again.

The selfie you thought was candid that you shared to your Instagram story this morning will vanish in 24 hours. Even if you do save it to your highlights, it's less visible, but according to one cyberpsychologist, despite that selfie fading from public view, the version of you it created will not.

Ruth Guest, a 33-year-old cyberpsychologist from Dublin, Ireland, argues that the disappearing nature of social media features like Instagram and TikTok's stories causes lasting damage to how people see themselves, a phenomenon she calls the "mass drift." Her theory, laid out in a video that has since gone viral, has struck a nerve, particularly among younger social media users, prompting a fierce debate online about whether social media is quietly reshaping identities.

"I started out as a fashion photographer, but then I moved into cyberpsychology," Guest, who has a first-class MSc in the field and created a startup in the space, told Newsweek. "Eventually, I found my way back to photography, analog this time, and started writing about how I actually see the world, which is where concepts like 'mass drift' came from."

Though her argument might sound embedded in critical theory and high-level thought, it is deceptively simple. At its core, Guest feels that platforms sell disappearing content as "low-stakes," but the psychological residue sticks around long after the post does, without many people knowing.

In fact, Instagram recently debuted a new "disappearing" feature called Instants, gambling on how much of a success its stories feature

became.

From left: Ruth Guest in photobooth images; and in a YouTube video. Credit: @RUTHGUEST1

"When we post stories for example they are there for 24 hours, it disappears within a day, but it doesn't disappear from you," Guest said.

"This is a loop some people get really caught up in and it's something I call the mass drift. The mass drift is when we lose our authentic voice and our vision because we are consumed by everyone else's stories we see online. This is from the society of the endless image."

Guest describes a feedback loop that begins the moment someone opens the app.

"You post online but it's already shaped by everything that you've seen from other people, so you share it and then people respond to that version of you, and you get this validation and this positive feedback loop starts," she said. "Over time, that version that you've shared on your story actually starts to feel like the real you, and you continue to scroll, you continue to consume and you see that everyone else is doing the exact same thing.

"You're comparing yourself to their curated lives, and it pulls you even further from your authentic vision and truth."

She points to a 2021 study that found content people expect to vanish, such as stories, can still reshape self-perception well after it disappears.

"There's a version of you that felt lower stakes, that might be actually shaping who you become," she said. "I think with the mass drift, people will realize that the photos they take, the people they have become, it doesn't actually feel like them."

Guest's warning lands amid a broader reckoning online, as critics increasingly complain that social media has flattened individuality into a kind of aesthetic monoculture. Feeds once prized for personality now trend toward the same filtered lighting, the same poses, the same captioned ambitions, prompting many users to ask whether their goals and self-image are truly their own, or whether they have been quietly outsourced to whatever performs well in an algorithm. The mass drift, in Guest's framing, gives that concern a name, and a mechanism.

Guest first laid out the concept in the video posted to her TikTok account, @ruthguest1. The response, including over 377,000 views, has left her cautiously encouraged rather than alarmed.

"The content I make isn't particularly trendy—it's slow, observational, and [not] particularly built for the algorithm," she said. "But what was lovely to see was the debate underneath it. People bringing genuinely original thoughts, disagreeing with each other, and so many recognizing something of themselves in it. It's genuinely reassuring to see that kind of critical thinking still alive in the age of social media."

Still, her conclusion is blunt. "I think that people are genuinely losing themselves because of social media and the content they are consuming," she said.

Guest is now developing "Screentime," a YouTube docuseries blending street photography, cyberpsychology and interviews, which she describes as an attempt to help viewers relearn "how to see past the screens again."

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