Social Media’s Weaponization of Social Contagion

BY MICHAEL BERNSTEIN & GRAYSON BAIRD

It is Tuesday, November 5th, 2024. Everyone is on the edge of their seat. Millions of Americans believe that a crisis is inevitable if Trump wins, and millions of others believe that a crisis is inevitable if Harris wins. It’s 5:30 p.m. EST, so the after-work voting rush has just begun on the East Coast.

Then something strange starts to happen. TikTok videos begin emerging of people who felt fine all day but, as soon as they leave their polling place, experience a nasty headache and disorientation. It starts with just a handful of people in one precinct but quickly spreads—first to nearby precincts and then to neighboring cities. Before long, there are reports from all over the country.

The public is desperate to determine the cause, and conspiracies circulate at lightning speed. Some journalists report speculation of a biological weapon. Left-wing social media influencers say MAGA is behind an attack; right-wing influencers blame progressive Democrats.

After the election, the social fabric of the U.S. weakens considerably. The incident resulted in record-low voter turnout, and half of the country is unwilling to accept the result. Even some members of Congress scoff at the election, referring to the commander-in-chief as our “fake president.” Meanwhile, some of the sick start to infect family members. Hospitals and doctors’ offices struggle to keep up as frustrated patients wait months for a visit. Many people return to COVID-like precautions, avoiding large crowds and wearing masks.

It will take months to sort out what happened. Eventually, a bipartisan investigation finds evidence that the U.S. was the target of a social media attack. Most of the initial 200 TikTok videos were ultimately linked to a foreign government that is a U.S. adversary. Intelligence operatives find credible communication between high-level officials of this country that confirm their goal was to disrupt our election and breed chaos. They believed they could create a large-scale social panic simply by using fake accounts to spread disinformation about a strange illness.

Unfortunately, they were right.

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Sounds like science fiction? Well, an incident like this could very well occur. It would be consistent with what we know about social contagions. In fact, it’s consistent with what we think our foreign adversaries have actually done in the past.

The details will fall shortly. But first, let’s begin with a general discussion of mass hysteria—what it is, how it works, and some historical and contemporary examples.

Mass Hysteria: From Dancing Manias in the Middle Ages to Bed Bugs in the 21Centuryst

Last fall, Paris seemed to suffer from a bed bug infestation. A Guardian article1 at the time called it a “crisis” and noted that “A wave of panic and disgust has spread across the country.” In a previous issue of Skeptic, Robert Bartholomew discussed how social media became flooded with stories of these nasty insects in public places like the metro.2 Over the course of a month, Google searches for bed bugs increased approximately fivefold in France,3 with less dramatic increases in nearby countries such as Spain and Italy.

But here’s the interesting point, which Bartholomew and the first author of this article4 (along with co-author Walter Brown) have discussed independently. There was no good evidence for a sizable increase in bed bugs! Certainly, there were bed bugs in Paris, just as there are bed bugs in every major city. However, it appears as though there were roughly the same number of bedbugs in the summer of 2023 as in the summer of prior years. Despite dozens of reports of bedbugs on the Paris metro, there were no proven cases.5 The New York Times quoted an entomologist as saying, “this is the first time people have [asked me] to check for bedbugs when they haven’t been bitten [or traveled], but they are afraid they have them since they saw things on the internet.” Even the deputy mayor of Paris seemed to have fallen for the frenzy, saying, “No one is safe.”6

LARGE, DECENTRALIZED NETWORKS PROVIDE THE PERFECT BREEDING GROUND FOR SOCIAL CONTAGION TO BE USED BY OPPORTUNISTIC ADVERSARIES.

What should we make of the Paris bed bug situation? Could a large group of people actually get symptoms of bed bugs—such as itchy skin—without having really been bitten? If we turn to history, the answer is an unequivocal yes. For centuries, historians have documented cases of a phenomenon formerly called mass hysteria and now termed mass psychogenic illness (MPI), which refers to a group of people who have physical symptoms that are similar to one another but without an underlying organic cause. MPI is a form of social contagion that is especially likely to spread when people are stressed or anxious. Social contagion works similarly to contagion from biologically based illnesses. Just as someone infected with the COVID-19 virus can spread it when they are near someone else, so too can a person “infected” with MPI spread their symptoms.