Social Media; Vaccinating or Intoxicating?
An opinion piece on ‘The Social Dilemma’; A Netflix Docu-drama centered around the haunting power of social media and its attention-grabbing algorithms.
The effects of social media usage on young adults has been an escalating topic of discussion. There can be no doubt that apps like facebook, twitter and instagram can bring immense freedom to one’s life; From democratising communication from opposite ends of the world, to a life-time of information becoming as simple as a type and search. However, it has also brought immense pain and suffering, where children and young adults become increasingly engaged with a visual reality of perfection, idealism and inequality. Many also view social media as a gateway to a new world of increasingly extremist and polarising sentiment, found among those disenfranchised with the status-quo of ‘the system’, yet accessed by those not knowledgable enough to realise their inherent wrongs. There have been wide spread links to increasing recruitment among Islamic extremist groups, or white supremacist and other racial views given a platform to spread hate speech. It is a very real problem, one which is growing in both scale and effect.
Like many, at the beginning of September I was told at every waking hour of the day “You must watch The Social Dilemma!” and “It’ll make you want to throw your phone into the bin”. Obliging, I recently sat down to gaze upon the visually stunning documentary-piece and was amazed at both the power of it’s information and the disruption that massive conglomerates like Facebook and Google have caused to daily lives. Jeff Orlowski’s piece conveys an important message of the dangerous world of digital freedom by trying to boil down causality to that of social media companies and the advertisement incentives, which powers them in revenue and in functionality. They do this through data-mining tactics which grab hold of a users attention through intelligently recommended media output, in return trying to sell pushed advertisements. In the documentary, we witness confessions of grass-root developers from major social media platforms, telling us of an almost super-natural power controlling our minds. A particular quote which stuck out; “While you think you buy and use the product, in fact you are the product”, which is a product of information, bought by advertisers, in the hope of attracting greater interest and demand to their products. The phones we think of as entertainment are actually tools used to mine our attention and opinions and where, through pushed posts and media, they can manipulate small changes in opinion to result in large sways in behaviour and belief-systems across the globe. The basic principle of the movie is that through trying to fuel advertising revenue, social media companies have become a subjector to our opinions.
“While you think you buy and use the product, in fact you are the product”
There has been a general air of discontent at the damaging effects of social media, particularly on the minds of the younger generation who, for the most part seem much more influenceable and influenced by platforms. Reports of people becoming more shy, timid, isolated and less comfortable holding a simple conversation, and others becoming more violent and oppressive as individuals due to violent war games, is becoming increasingly common and blamed on the monopolistic social media giants. Renee DiResta goes one step further; calling it a “global assault on democracy”.
The really dangerous thing I pulled from my first viewing was how AI-programs use emotions as a driving force to keep our attention glued onto our screens and on their platforms. They do this by recycling our own sentiments, views and opinions, both from a general overview of viewing histories and current emotionally-charged searches, back at us to evoke stronger affectionate pulls, making targeted advertisements and longer attention-pulls even easier than before. As Edward Tufte puts it; “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software”. This powerful, strange world of machine learnt behaviour is a scary and often untouched world for those not technologically adept and a subject this documentary tries to convey.
“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software”
But do we really carry such a deadly disease around in our pockets?
It is undeniably true that social media is an addictive drug, creating dopamine hits and emotional reactions powerful enough to keep us scrolling past the midnight hour. But the documentary appears to forget the autonomy and freedom a human being has. Although the pull of recommendations and personalised feeds are a deliberate attempt to keep our attention centralised, it is not exactly uncommon for people to put their phone down due to self-control.Through a simple element of discipline, control and proactive editing of settings, one can alleviate these pulls to make social media work on their own terms and rules.
When our grandparents and parents were faced with the prospect of television, companies now had access to a massive proportion of the population , who they could now reach through television to promote and advertise their new ‘innovative’ products. Yet, it does not seem to have hampered the large majority of our daily lives — further, it is almost seen as the welcome break from many of our hectic and busy lifestyles through the day. To know you can switch off when the lights dim in the evening.
The point I felt particularly difficult to grapple with, possible due to ignorance and naivety on my part I can admit, is how social media companies have the ability to control our very thoughts and opinions, having complete autonomy on our attention, or influencing country wide voting decisions. The visual of three sociopaths, for instance, controlling our minds to drive profit is in my opinion, farfetched. It seems almost revolutionary and conspiracist to ascertain executives and programmers of these large conglomerates are meddling with our minds so they can buy that next new house in Malibu; Purposefully influencing consumers towards greater societal ills and extremist sentiments to add a few extra dollars into their wallets.
Facebook raised an important rebuttal to the docu-drama in the form of a 7-point article drawing the ‘real picture’ of decisions impacting the younger generation and beyond. They say that although there is room for an important discussion over the tangible negative effects of social media, they too see it as ‘sensationalism’. Within this post, they raise an interesting and quite heavy point on populist vs. polarising posts; Dangerous and negative viewpoints have not been born through the creation of the internet, nor is it normal for people to see this type of behaviour online. Facebook also showcases how it actively removes these types of posts, with teams and algorithms alike working to take down anything believed to be inflammatory, whilst trying to be as unbiased as possible.
Everyone knows how social media habits are ‘unhealthy’ and how it has become not uncommon to see daily screen usage sore into the 6 hours and beyond, however this is not the point I am trying to elaborate on. It is more that a documentary which serves as a ground-breakingly important information piece instead falls slightly too heavily into sensationalist waters of fear-mongering and conspiracy theorising. In my few viewings of the Social Dilemma, I found myself falling further and further away from a reality where social media platforms maliciously control our minds and bend our attention to their open will. There is no doubt at all in my mind that social media is a dangerous landscape for younger audiences, where exposure to such a wide array of information can become both daunting and heady, as audiences become obsessed with particular ‘influencers’ and the pillar of perfection becomes a distant, but sought after reality. However, we cannot problem-solve towards a world where humanities greatest ill was the creation of a friend-finding search engine designed to spread connectivity and positivity.
With so much happiness and interconnectedness that social media has brought us in the hands of the everyday user, it seems false to pin the blame on such a beneficial tool. There is a very definite possibility that indeed I have failed to realise both the significance and power of algorithm led technology, and the impacts social media has upon us even when we do not realise it. However, I am confident in the fact that in such times as these where connecting face-to-face with a human outside of our immediate periphery seems alien, social media has been one of the pillars of sanity and fighting off loneliness and depression.
Social media is here to stay, of that there is no doubt. So it is surely up to the autonomous individual to fight the dopamine lands of facebook and instagram through self-control and discipline, than to condemn search engines for bringing the down fall of the human race as we know it.
