How to Talk to Your Mom About the Social Dilemma
TL;DR — We need a new definition of the word “advertising.” Social media represents the opinions of only a very small and very loud group of people. Get your news from at least three sources. Reduce social media usage and read more books. Social media perpetuates “othering”, which is the root cause of many of the greatest human atrocities.
Social media is eroding the fabric of our society, and we should all chuck our phones into the ocean, escape to the mountains, and live out our remaining days in yurts. Am I right? Well, not exactly. If you’re like me, and many other Netflix subscribers, you may have recently watched The Social Dilemma and were left with a knot in the pit of your stomach I’d describe as a cocktail of panic, existential dread, powerlessness, and, of course, apathy. Like Neo waking up, you begin to understand the enormity of the world’s problems, as well as your inability to do anything about it. But I believe there is something (albeit small) you can do about it, and it begins with talking to your mom/teen/grampa/uncle about social media.
Here are five takeaways from the film that I believe would make great talking (or discussion) points with your family and friends:
1. We need a new definition of advertising
People like me who work in digital marketing and adjacent fields have come to understand social media advertising as a series of auctions and levers we can manipulate to get the desired business outcome. Toss money at the machine, and it spits out results. Never before in the history of humanity has a pizza shop been able to spend $200 on ads to target their exact customer within a one-mile radius between the weekday hours of 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm with an enticing 20% off discount, and make a killer return on that investment. But what you need to explain to your mom is that “advertising” is more than Dunkin Donuts and Chevy Trucks and Geico geckos. Advertising on social media means someone is paying money to put information in front of your face, and it does not always mean they are selling you something. The type of information could vary widely. Yes, it could be a Winter boot collection with free shipping over $50, or it could be political lies, skewed statistics, inaccurate and dangerous scientific claims, conspiracy theories, or any combination of images and words to get you to have a strong emotional reaction. Your mom needs to understand that some companies pay Facebook millions (billions?) of dollars to show her an image with the singular objective of making her mad… and clicking that share button to tell all her friends just how terrible something is.
2. Social networks are not a magical window to the entire world
Only 21% of adults in the U.S. use Twitter, and of that group, only about 10% actually tweet anything. That means in a classroom of 100 students, 2 idiots with polar opposite viewpoints are standing and have a screaming argument. Would you trust their opinions to be a good representation of everyone in the room? I’d think not. Now, 69% of adults in the U.S. use Facebook. That’s a bigger number, but the reality is that you never see all of the information from your friends, family, and pages you follow. On any given day, you are only shown a small percentage of what has been posted, and Facebook decides what to show you and what to hide from you. The result? Over time, you’re shown only points of view that are similar to your own, and that creates echo chambers–like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, they only see the shadows and think it’s the whole world.
3. Regularly check 3 sources of news
Truth bomb: There is no unbiased news source. Yes, that includes your beloved [insert any company here]. Whenever breaking news hits the screen, go ahead and skim your headlines and read your articles, but pay attention to who wrote the article. Then, take thirty seconds to think deeper. Who wrote the article? For what company? Who owns that company? What are that person’s values, priorities, and morals? Whether you get your news from CNN, Fox News, Vox, or TMZ… fine. But, have at least 2 other sources of information that you check regularly to see what they said about a particular news event. Great places to start include BBC, Reuters, and the Associated Press, and there are many more. Check multiple sources and make it a regular part of your day. The most important takeaway is to accept the reality that all information has a bias, and the best way to get as close to the truth as possible is to read multiple news sources.
4. Limit screen time and read a dang book
In The Social Dilemma, social media was described as having similarities to addictive substances. And, that’s very true. If you wanted to quit smoking, the best approach would be to slowly cut back, introduce substitute products, and to surround yourself with supportive people. The worst strategy is to puff your last pack in a blaze of celebratory smoke and go cold turkey vowing to never light up again. Social media is no different. Is it realistic to try to convince our friends and family members to delete their Facebook and Twitter accounts? Probably not. You’ll be fighting against a deeply primitive need for social connection, and that will be an uphill battle. Instead, we should encourage others to learn to live in a world with these technologies and make informed, responsible choices about how they spend their time. A great place to start is regulating our screen time. Don’t just become aware, passively, of how much time you’re spending on Facebook, but take active control and ask yourself: how much time of my precious days on this Earth do I want to be spending on social media? Once you’ve made a plan to cut back, a truly excellent way to spend all of that newly discovered free time is to read more books! But here’s the thing: Do you have a book that has been sitting on your nightstand since last year, that you got six chapters into but lost interest, but you can’t allow yourself to move on until you finish it? That’s a stupid irrational fear-based behavior we learn from many years of reading books in school, and you now officially can give yourself permission to dog-ear that page, place it lovingly onto the shelf and go hunt for a new, exciting, thrilling, compelling book to read. Get a membership at your local public library and download Libby for access to a gazillion free digital books and audiobooks! If you need a place to start for inspiration, check out Obama’s list, Oprah’s list, Bill Gates’ list, and Ryan Holiday’s list.
5. Imagine the world in the year 2040
It pains me to admit it, but despite its many, many positives, social media is a net negative for our society. In 2006, Twitter was born and Facebook opened to the world. As Jonathan Haidt (NYU Stern) explained, self-harm is up 189% and suicide is up 151% among girls ages 10–14 since 2009. Many things have changed in the past fourteen years–changes that we weren’t ready for and we still are struggling to understand. The problem is that social media reminds us daily how different we are from our neighbor, and programmatically deemphasizes what we have in common. Emotionally charged conversations rise to the top. The distance between us and our fellow human beings grows wider. It is a simple cause and effect equation: every time you log into Facebook and like your co-worker’s photos [CAUSE], unbeknownst to you, money dumps into Mark Zuckerberg’s $93 billion dollar pocket, and fuel pumps into this grand machine that keeps us fighting amongst ourselves instead of working towards building a more abundant world [EFFECT]. The result: we are forgetting how to have collegial conversations. Perhaps most dangerously, we are losing the ability to agree on a single source of truth and fact. While we “like” and “follow” people, causes, and organizations we support, we are being trained to categorize people who look, think and behave differently from ourselves as the “other”. And it only takes a glance at the not so recent past to see that “othering” has been and still is a root cause of many of the greatest human atrocities. When asked what he’s most worried about, Tim Kendall (Facebook, Pinterest) answered plainly and bluntly: “civil war.” Imagine what our world might look like in twenty years? Or fifty years? Only time–and our actions–will tell.
