Is Social Media Evil?
The other day, I found myself scrolling through my Facebook news feed mindlessly when I came across a post from the popular account, Humans of New York. It was a photo of a young man, and the first line of the quote accompanying his photo read “Social media isn’t evil.”
That statement alone is likely enough to start debates amongst many people in various circles. It seems to be a topic that is being talked about widely lately, from the rising investigation of cyberbullying and the connections between social media and mental illness, to the privacy concerns connected to Facebook. As someone who works in marketing and someone who considers social media to play a large role in both my personal and professional lives, I too find myself rolling the question “Is social media evil?” around in my mind a lot.
So I was immediately drawn into reading the rest of this man’s statement, which read:
“There are neuroscientists in some of these companies, but for the most part I don’t think it was done maliciously. But advertising is the business model. And if advertising is the business model — our attention becomes the product. Two variables matter to the bottom line: the amount of users and the amount of time they spend on platform. And what gets measured gets optimized. So our phones have become slot machines. We scroll and scroll and scroll, and eventually we hit something that gives us a dopamine reward. It’s by design. Because slot machines make more money in the US than theme parks, baseball, and movies combined. Both Vegas and Silicon Valley know that our brains can be manipulated if presented with a certain set of choices. Obviously addictiveness isn’t the only feature of these platforms. They’ve empowered so many voices. I’d just love to live in a world where our most influential technology didn’t measure its success by the time it took from us.”
The idea that social media platforms and apps are actually designed to be addictive is not really a new idea, and at this point, it is not even really up for debate- several Silicon Valley higher ups and insiders have acquiesced to this truth. In November 2017, Sean Parker, an early investor in Facebook stated that the earliest mission of Facebook was in fact “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” He goes on to claim that executives like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Kevin Systrom of Instagram knew exactly what they were doing when they designed these platforms.
What they were doing, whether knowingly or not, was tapping into human vulnerabilities- the craving for social validation and the need to have instant feedback. As Parker explained, the experience of social media creates a social feedback loop, where users are delivered bursts of pleasure in the form of likes and engagements from family members, friends, and beyond. This burst, however, is brief. Because it is so brief, users become encouraged to visit social media platforms more and more frequently to continue to get that fix, or scratch that itch. Social media quickly becomes an addiction for many.
There are countless articles that unpack the negative effects and increasing prevalence of social media addiction. What is important to note, in my opinion, is that while social media addiction is becoming a problem for many people in modern society, the companies behind it are thriving, because the more time we spend on social media, the better off they are.
This is because many social media platforms are monetized through advertising. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram make their money by charging advertisers for space, and the more attention and engagement a platform is garnering, the more they can charge for that space. Though many people view themselves as solely the users of platforms like Facebook and Instagram, the truth is that the users, and their attention, is actually the product being sold.
That’s right, our attention is a limited resource, and it is being commodified. As the man from the Humans of New York post stated, “If advertising is the business model, our attention becomes the product.” This concept is now sometimes being referred to as the “attention economy”. A Vice article defines it by saying “It describes the supply and demand of a person’s attention, which is the commodity traded on the internet. The business model is simple: The more attention a platform can pull, the more effective its advertising space becomes, allowing it to charge advertisers more.”
Because of the nature of this business model, it is not realistic to expect positive change to come from inside the companies. While it could be true that the addictive nature of social media platforms and apps was not something intentionally embedded into them by their creators, the fact of the matter is that these things are addictive, and the people on the inside are benefitting too much now to really go back. And sure, these platforms have created wonderful communities for people that may not have had access to them before, and amplified powerful voices and ideas. There are many positive benefits that we could discuss. But the fact of the matter is that a metric of success for the companies behind these platforms and apps is how much time they can take from us. As Max from the HONY post said, “I’d just love to live in a world where our most influential technology didn’t measure its success by the time it took from us.”
It seems that many people are taking this to heart, and adopting a “take back your time” approach to addictive social media and apps. People are abandoning Facebook, doing “social media cleanses” and “digital detoxes” and trying to adapt more mindful social media practices. A simple Google search of “social media detox” will likely yield an endless array of articles with titles like “18 Things I Learned After 18 Days Without Facebook”.
I think this is all good and well. I am a strong proponent of each person taking steps to embody habits and practices that lead them to happier, more fulfilled, lives. I know that I certainly could benefit from some more mindfulness around my social media practices as well.
But I am also really hoping that (sometime soon), the pendulum swings the other way.
I hope that sometime in the near future, social media companies can find a way to survive while also having the best interests of society at heart. I hope that the people that have shunned social media might actually decide to come back to the fold, but only because social media has become something that more fully contributes positively to people’s lives, and to solving societal issues. I hope that social media companies can adopt a deep belief that it is not ethical to prey on people’s vulnerabilities, attention spans, and time, to garner a profit. I hope that these companies make a dedicated effort to find ways to infuse more responsibility into their practices and to hold themselves accountable.
I am not totally sure what this future looks like, or how we will get there. But in doing some research on these topics, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that a group of people are already taking the lead. This group is called The Center for Humane Tech, which has the goal of “realigning technology with human’s best interests”.
As the website states, “Our world-class team of deeply concerned former tech insiders and CEOs intimately understands the culture, business incentives, design techniques, and organizational structures driving how technology hijacks our minds. Since 2013, we’ve raised awareness of the problem within tech companies and for millions of people through broad media attention, convened top industry executives, and advised political leaders. Building on this start, we are advancing thoughtful solutions to change the system.”
This website does a phenomenal job of explaining exactly what the problem is, and why it is thriving and growing to be even more pressing in this day and age. It describes how “the race for attention is eroding the pillars of our society”, and explains why this point in time is different and more critical than other times in the past when people have had to come to grips with adjusting to technological changes.
It then goes on to present a well thought out system of solutions, all centered around what it calls “humane design”, which involves “creating humane design standards, policy, and business models that more deeply align with our humanity and how we want to live”. The Way Forward, as presented on the website, has four levers: inspiring human design, applying political pressure, creating a cultural awakening, and engaging employees.
Of course, this is a big vision, so I was happy to see that the website also includes short-term tactics for people to take back control of their time right now. Although I have read many of the aforementioned articles on digital detox, I found the concrete steps presented on this page to be the most helpful collection of tips I’ve encountered thus far. I have already implemented some changes, and I feel that more people implementing some of these short-term changes could put increasing pressure on social media companies to eventually begin the process of moving towards the long-term changes that The Center For Humane Tech is championing.
(Oh, and one last thing: in exploring the Team page of the website, I found that the man that catalyzed this whole post, Max Stossel, is one of the “Founding Allies”, with the title of “Head of Content and Storytelling.” So thank you to Max for inspiring me to formulate some of my thoughts on the topic you brought up, and for impressing me by already leading the pack in affecting positive social change in response.)
