Fixing Social Media
Dealing with the new 'digital cigarettes'
After enormous pressure, Instagram is finally changing its user experience for teens and kids, according to the Journal. This comes barely a week after Australia plans to ban it altogether for kids. This is likely the start of a new trend.
Frankly I think this is good news, which I never thought I’d be saying. As a teen I would have hated this, and think it totally unfair. But we now know social media like instagram is uniquely dangerous, even lethal, for young kids. And more broadly, the more you use social media the more harmful it is, for anyone.
This is at first kind of surprising. It seems harmless, and initially it ‘feels good’. And that’s why it’s so pernicious, and why comparisons to cigarettes are so apt. They both deceptively cause you harm in the long run.
But even despite this knowledge, and anti-social media evangelists like Cal Newport and Jonathan Haidt criticizing it publicly nonstop, I still use stuff like Instagram. And I don’t think we’re ever going to completely ban it - instead we should change it.
Control The Feed
One of the things that’s not talked about enough is how little control you have over your own news feed.
There’s a number of problems with that. First of all, it’s currently engineered to illicit angry, depressing, and other negative emotions - because scientifically that’s what increases engagement and therefore ad revenue over time. Big tech companies hire teams of PhD’s to make the content more addictive than a slot machine, and rile you up.
Second, you have virtually no control over what kind of content you’re getting. Maybe you’re energized and want to see political news. Or maybe you’re exhausted after work and just want some silly memes. Doesn’t matter - once you start scrolling the algorithm will do whatever it takes to keep you there.
Isn’t this bizarre? When I’m watching TV, I simply change channels whenever and to whatever I want. My rewatch of The Office isn’t suddenly interrupted with news in Syria (or vice versa). But that’s basically every news feed.
This wouldn’t be too hard to change, since we encourage tech reform all the time. There are already some solid ‘right to repair’ laws, copyright laws, GDPR privacy laws, etc that have been popular and successful. So it’s not hard to imagine some more user rights regarding personalized control over news feeds.
Imagine being able to tap a button to temporarily turn off political or depressing content. Or show only funny memes for a bit. Or even dial your feed to be less addictive for a day, so you can do the productive things you actually want to get done. That sounds a lot better to me.