Today's Exercise: Learn The Arguments Against Social Media
On Tuesday, I shared the implicit formula of social media, how we compete for more followers and command more attention so we can influence social, political, and economic decisions. The systems—Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever—have trained us to pull people into their platforms. And once the people find themselves in the feeds, they’re sitting ducks, ready to be mind-hacked.
Trying to understand this sort of mind-hacking, I’ve turned to a variety of thinkers, social media skeptics, and pioneers in the industry. Among those thinkers is Tristan Harris, former Google employee, technological design ethicist, and founder of the Center for Humane Technology. He’s been described as the “closest thing to a conscience in Silicon Valley” by The Atlantic magazine. And Harris is sounding the alarms.
Harris has spoken with great candor on the problems with social media—exploitation of attention, manipulation, and radicalization. And now, he’s speaking even more candidly about the exacerbation of mind-hacking in a post-COVID world. I think it’s past time to pay attention to him.
Today, I’m sharing two videos. One is quite short and I hope you’ll all watch it. If that video grabs your attention, consider watching the next. (Brew a pot of tea before watching the second; it’s the length of a Stranger Things episode.) In both videos, Harris shares some of the problems with the attention-grabbing mechanisms of social media and how it shapes a sort of collectivism and tribalism that influences everything—elections, social action, ways of thinking.
Yes, this is heady stuff. Still, it’s the kind of stuff readers of this blog can more than digest. After all, readers of this site do the hard work of living into the Examined Life.
Video 1 (Link for email subscribers):
Watch the first video, then shoot me an email and let me know what it invoked in you.
And please, share this piece with those who might want to read along (change the email address in the form). Ask them to subscribe. Start a discussion with them about the social media ride America finds itself on, and together, let’s plot a different path forward.