I’ve been interested in this topic a while now. How does social media really influence our behaviour and to what extent does/can it? I just listened to the Waking up with Sam Harris podcast episode #71 with Tristan Harris which inspired me to finally write on this.
I became especially excited when I saw this episode in my feed because I had actually been noticing some very interesting things on Facebook. I’ve been feeling like I’m being manipulated to use it more.
Before continuing, I’m going to try not to become an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect and say that I cannot be persuaded, manipulated, coerced or whatever synonym you wish to use. I can and do get persuaded subconsciously and consciously I’m sure. This is the thing, no one is immune, whether you think so or not.
Facebook and all other social media sites make their money from advertisements. The only way they can make this money is if people see more ads and therefore click more ads. This would mean it is in the company’s best interests to keep you on their platform, scrolling your feed as long possible.
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“Good” you’re thinking. If they are doing this it must mean they provide me with more value, with things I want so I keep coming back for the satisfaction and fulfilment. There is a fundamental problem with this line of thought. You do not know what you want.
You said you wanted ice-cream every night last week but now you look at the scales and have gained weight; instead you regret the ice cream. You say you want to watch cute cat videos, but when you realise you have just spent an hour watching cat videos and that you actually want to do well on your exams, well what did you want? What makes matters worse is that the algorithms that put the cat videos on top of your feed if you’re a cat person or the dog videos if you’re a dog person does not know what you want either. It does not know what you want nor what you need.
Capturing attention, however, is not inherently bad. It is bad when the content being presented as the focus of attention is bad. If you are to gamify language learning, like Duolingo has successfully done, you could say that is a good use of persuasive power. If engagement algorithms were used to engage us with things that are not only useful, but things that we need, the web landscape would be radically different.
As a concrete example of the attention economy’s devaluation of our time is that the Facebook algorithms have noted the most shared things on Facebook are those which cause outrage. Now, I doubt you wake up and the morning and say “I want to feel outraged” yet you consistently spend time sharing, commenting liking and, ultimately, looking at ads because you’re outraged.
Outrage is only one emotion of the wide array of the psycho-emotional dishes social media can serve up. Probably the most conscious of which is your experience post profile picture update. You hang on every like that comes through, gaining more confidence with every like, and less with every second that goes by when someone new hasn’t liked it. It is not just the number you obsess over though. This is too easy to avoid, it’s very consciously visible.
Less visible is the fact that you are notified of these likes based on another algorithm. Facebook controls the nervousness you feel when you are unsure if your picture will reach the magical “100 likes”, or whatever the number may be. The algorithm can show your update to certain friends it thinks will like it, and then notifies you. Though, it might deliberately withhold both the ability to like from your friends, and the notification of the like from you, in order to maximise your emotional relief which puts you back into this addiction loop of social validation.
The delayed gratification manipulation strategy is in fact the strategy I had observed and had semi-confirmed in the Sam Harris podcast episode. I noticed that when I opened the Facebook app, the article or post that I saw was one I was genuinely interested in. However, the page needed to “reload”. Upon reloading there was a bunch of other stuff, and yes, you guessed it, an ad before I had successfully navigated myself back to the post I was looking for. Though I haven’t actually counted (it doesn’t happen every time, I just tried) it has occurred enough for me to notice. Now when it happens I just close the app and realise there are better ways to spend my time. There needs to be a lot more thought put into the ethics of the attention economy. This applies especially to the big 3 of Facebook, Apple and Google because it is these three that set the trends of the industry. Your thoughts really are your reality and if your attention can be turned away or towards things, your thoughts and opinions can be changed.
Your reality can be changed.
