Monsters, Dinosaurs, and Social Media
The Social Dilemma
I’m thinking of a story about an inspired genius whose creation was made with the best intentions but evolved into a disaster. Do you know what it is? Frankenstein and Jurassic Park are good guesses, but I am reflecting about social media. If any of the social media platform creators knew then what they know now, would it still exist in the same form? Last weekend I watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix. This is a documentary (with some mixed in acting/dramatizations) that focuses on negative impacts of social media. The Social Dilemma was a very interesting watch with an enormous amount of relevancy due to recent events happening around the world. I was intrigued with the points brought up during the program and it gave me a lot to think about. Here are some thoughts I want to share from The Social Dilemma and the impact of social media in our lives.
It Hits Home
The Social Dilemma is very effective at illustrating how its message applies to our current reality. Obviously looking through my own social media accounts, advertisements are very common. Whether it was to an account I followed or due to the cookies saved on my computer I knew the advertising power that exists in various services. In my mind I felt I was the customer, and these advertisements were trying to sell a product to me. This is true to an extent, but only at surface level. Social media applications are able to keep track of what ads we are interested in. Social media accounts record the times we are most active. Data is stored based on our political beliefs, our religion, and who we socialize with. Our online habits are stored as data online. If you combine this information with gender, age, occupation, and income, that provides a lot of information available for acquiring the attention of those who fall into specific buyer personas.
If everything mentioned holds true, I am not the customer in this relationship. You are not the customer in this relationship. How much money do you pay per month for social media use? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and every other major platform is free for us to use. Jaron Lainer in The Social Dilemma tells us that if we aren’t paying for a product, then we are not the customer (Orlowski, 2020). We are the product (Orlowski, 2020). This quote really stuck with me throughout the whole video. Parties who take an interest in changing our behaviors are the real customer that social media services are catering to. This means our attention and behaviors are the product being sold.
If this was just companies or organizations trying to send us meaningful advertisements that are relevant based on our interests, I would personally be okay with that. Not everyone else agrees. This blurred line of ethics gets even harder to interpret when you hear The Social Dilemma’s panel of insiders explain how else social media data is being used. This includes political parties and promotion of “fake news.” The same fake news that spreads six times faster through Twitter than any other media (Orlowski, 2020). Governments can cause unrest in democracies during election years. Do any of these things sound familiar to you? It sounds a lot like living in America this past year. Hacking US elections, destruction during protests, false information about vaccines. These examples all could easily be fueled by propaganda showing up on social media pages based on interests and beliefs. The mob culture that exists in today’s society further amplifies the drama. As the documentary went on, each example helped paint in greater detail the grim picture of the world we experienced the past twelve months.
Man in the Mirror
I can say that social media hasn’t distorted my view on myself, or change the way I perceive my life. I use social media to keep in touch with friends and family who I don’t get to see very often. I also use social media to follow my favorite sports teams, and use it with my job. I’m not a very active photo-poster, nor do I post looking for attention. I understand that my narrower use of social media is different than others. A benefit of social media is its versatility. Everyone can use social media in a way that works best with their beliefs and lifestyles. The Social Dilemma breaks down how social media impacts the way we see ourselves and our lives.
In many cases, social media posts are similar to sports highlight videos. People are posting the fun things they have done, success in their lives, and pictures that are the most flattering. Even though a majority of people do this, many seem to forget when looking at others’ profiles. This can lead to levels of depression as people may feel like they aren’t as successful as others. The Social Dilemma gives statistics of increased rates of suicides of young people as the popularity of social media has increased. Justin Rosenstein in The Social Dilemma explains that when he helped create the “like” button for Facebook, it was to make the internet a more positive place, and had he known that it might be a contributing factor to people killing themselves, he never would’ve created it (Orlowski, 2020).
From my earliest experiences of creating web pages and social media profiles, I was taught to not post anything online that I wouldn’t want Grandma to see. We have also heard the caution of anything we post should be assumed the whole world can see it. Because I take this advice to heart and my personal profiles are already kept to friends and family, watching The Social Dilemma did not influence me to change my privacy settings, but others feel differently. Generation Z is most likely to stop using social media over privacy concerns (Blitch, 2021, slide 9).
Willpower
The Social Dilemma makes the case that human willpower cannot compete with advancing AI that is designed to keep us engaged with social media. Sadly, I think this is true for most people. Kids have had exposure to this technology their whole lives. Young people are more comfortable having conversations through a screen than they are in person. Adults who spent their lives adapting to these technologies as they became available didn’t do a good job of teaching etiquette with technology. By the time people thought better of it, social media became portable and advanced so rapidly, parents didn’t effectively react to teach or caution better use. When we go on trips, I will often “unplug” myself from social media, so being away for a day or two doesn’t cause me anxiety. I don’t believe any notification would get me to sign back in and see what all I have missed.
As a technology teacher, one of my favorite philosophers is Marshall McLuhan. Marshall once said “We have become like the most primitive paleolithic man, once more global wanderers, but information gatherers rather than food gatherers. From now on the source of food, wealth and life itself will be information” (Pearce, 2019). Marshall died at the end of 1980 (Wikipedia, 2021), quite a time before social media, but I feel this quote helps further explain why we are so drawn to social media. By nature, people are problem solvers and information gatherers, and social media gives us instant up-to-date information. I know I am in a minority with my willpower and relationship with social media because data scientists and algorithm creators are spending tremendous resources and time that tell us otherwise.
Conclusion
The documentary’s purpose is to influence change to social media. Where the impact and influence are so great, there is validity to the problems that it can cause. I’m not sure what this looks like. Do we want the government to regulate social media? The only way to truly flip the script would be to change who the customers are. Social media platforms would have to charge a large amount of money to users in order to make up for the revenue lost from not being able to sell data based on our profiles and usage. If we can’t trust everyone to use social media in an ethical way, I’m a little leery of allowing any entity to have the power to regulate it.
While I hate the idea that any of the negative outcomes discussed in the video may happen, I do know that a lot of good comes from social media. Chris Anderson explains in a TED Talk how online video drives a worldwide movement of “Crowd Accelerated Innovation” (Anderson, 2020). Social media has been a great way for people to communicate, network, connect, share creativity, and learn from each other over great distances. Social media is like so many other things in today’s society. It has all the potential in the world for good when used by people for the right reasons. Whether social media turns out to be a monster or a masterpiece is dependent on the users being intelligent, thoughtful, and having noble intentions.
References
Anderson, C. (2010, July). How web video powers global innovation [Video file]. Retrieved April 07, 2021, from https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_how_web_video_powers_global_innovation?language=en
Blitch, Kristin. (2021). Social Privacy & Anonymity [Lecture presentation].
Orlowski, J. (Director). (2020). The Social Dilemma [Video file]. Retrieved April 07, 2021, from https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
Pearce, K. (2019, November 4). New media wizard: The fascinating ideas of Marshall McLuhan. Retrieved April 07, 2021, from https://www.diygenius.com/marshall-mcluhan/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20have%20become%20like%20the,life%20itself%20will%20be%20information.%E2%80%9D
Wikipedia. (2021, March 29). Marshall McLuhan. Retrieved April 07, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
