By Mehak Garg
“There are only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’: illegal drugs and software,” Edward Tufte, a statistician and computer science professor at Yale University, said. The idea that social media can be addictive isn’t novel to the millions of users on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms. However, in the recently released documentary “The Social Dilemma,” the very people that designed social networking platforms come together to shed light on the disastrous effects of social media on modern society.
Former executives at Facebook and Google detail how they coded addiction into each platform, incorporating features such as push notifications and infinite scrolling to maximize the time users spend on social platforms. Personalized content recommendations on YouTube utilize enormous sets of data to predict a user’s actions, recommending videos he or she would spend a larger amount of time on with the ultimate goal of ensuring users fall down a rabbit hole of videos. Companies prey on human psychology to keep users attached to their screens and to make more money through advertising.
A majority of the documentary focuses on what social media companies sell to advertisers. As technology has pervaded into our daily lives, companies are no longer just selling space on their platforms to advertisers, but they’re also offering the people who use it. Selling user information to advertisers on ad performance and the demographics of people engaging with their ads allows Facebook, Instagram, and other social media companies to keep their platforms free, but these insights come at the cost of privacy.
Beyond the addictive nature of social media, the film addresses important issues like the alleged 2016 election hacking of secure government emails and Facebook. Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, debunks one of these myths, explaining that Russia didn’t hack Facebook; it simply used the platform to spread anti-Clinton rhetoric. In a world where posting something online can destabilize international governments and interfere with nationwide elections, social media is becoming increasingly feared by the tech world with more executives and employees pushing for reform. Not only has it affected politics on an international level, but it also has impacted politics at the local level, politically polarizing individuals. Due to content recommendation algorithms, social media deliberately adds opinions that you agree with and content you’d like to see on your feed to maximize ad revenue, resulting in little exposure to differing opinions.
Due to social media being addicting and polarizing, many of those involved in the tech industry have much stricter rules on screen usage for their own children. Those in technology know the harms and dangers screen-time can cause, especially when it starts at an early age. In fact, the documentary mentioned how social media has contributed to higher suicide rates among teens. Because of the unrealistic standards, social media can portray, it’s recommended children don’t use social media before they reach ninth grade. The like button, which was initially designed by Facebook to spread positivity and brighten an individual’s day, has become a metric for youth to measure their self-worth.
Despite the fervent criticism of social media, it’s important to remember all the good social media has accomplished. It has helped increase civic engagement, catalyze awareness of international conflicts, connect thousands of families, and improve disaster relief efforts.
Though the future of social media seems bleak, with some lifestyle changes and technology reform, we can salvage what makes social media beneficial without keeping the bad. Those in “The Social Dilemma” recommend tech companies to strip their services down and rebuild from the ground up. Social media algorithms have user addiction and systematic problems built into them, so the best way to eliminate these problems is to rebuild these very systems with the knowledge we now have.
It can be intimidating and somewhat impossible to cut yourself off from social media completely, especially in a world that relies on social networking sites to connect with your friends and family, but there are steps you can take. You can turn push notifications off ensuring that you don’t fall prey to spending too much time on social media apps. Part of the reason why our phones can be addicting is because of the vivid colors and images, so grey-scaling your screen, portraying the user interface in grey and black, can help limit screen time. Lastly, follow people you don’t necessarily agree with and expose yourself to contrasting perspectives.
