Julia Kebuladze
January 28, 2021
Social media has completely taken over the lives of those who live in the 21st century. Even right now, you are staring at a screen, reading something off a virtual platform, and bound to soon close the tab, tempted by a notification from a different social media application. But, is it really your fault that you feel compelled to open the notification, to see what information lies on the other side of the click? This piece discusses the alarming, manipulative tactics social media companies employed to create an addictive and lucrative platform for their users, the tactics being exposed by their inventors themselves in the 2020 documentary, The Social Dilemma. This piece’s purpose is for the reader to assess how far gone they are in the virtual rabbit hole, and whether these malicious tactics are worth the benefits of the explorative virtual world.
More and more, technology seems to consume our lives. It feels impossible to escape, especially with the recent COVID-19 pandemic forcing us deeper into the digital abyss. Whether it be online classes, virtually handing in assignments, or resorting to social media as a reach for a semblance of social interaction, the virtual world has begun to blend with the real one. Of course, there are some benefits to this, and many societal advancements have been made because of the constantly evolving state of technology, however, there are some alarming negatives to which younger generations seem to be turning a blind eye to. For so long, technology and social media were seen as a trademark of millennials and Generation Z, children mainly born in and after the nineties, but now some devastating and permanent side effects are showing. Social media has turned into a sort of addictive drug, and this is no mistake; each company’s design is intended to make the end user unaware that they themselves as individuals, are the product.
I personally was first made aware of this problem after the release of the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma.” The documentary, which came out in early 2020, opens with former employees of major technology companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft. I stress that they are former employees, as they say that they left those companies for ethical reasons, becoming concerned that the tools they created to better the world were being used for selfish reasons. They claim they were making meaningful change with their work—but were naive to the unintended side effects.[1] The documentary switches constantly from this series of interviews to an all too realistic narrative of a mother trying to get her children back from the abyss that is social media. Her young teenage daughter is poisoned by the toxicity of real life intensified by social media, and her son is challenged to not use his phone for a week, as the mother is concerned for his addiction. The tale is one familiar to most parents: technology is conditioning teens to grow up in a new digital era. But aside from familial and personal problems, social media has more widespread impacts as well; these fast and easy to use platforms serve as the perfect petri dish for fake news foment, leading to the collapses of some democracies.
Grudges against social media are not only harbored by disgruntled parents and former employees who experienced firsthand the problems with their own creations; renowned experts are also speaking out against these companies. Jaron Lanier, an accomplished computer scientist often regarded as the founding father of virtual reality, says, “I admire the industry a lot, but there’s no hiding that it’s a demon”.[2] He discusses the fact that tech companies are in the business of selling their users. While companies create the illusion that the users are the customers, it is in fact the advertisers who are the customers. Everywhere you look on social media, whether it is scrolling through Instagram and seeing the occasional ad or watching fifteen seconds of a commercial on Hulu, a personalized advertisement makes it onto your screen incredibly often. In order to strengthen the accuracy of the targeted ads, the company must know its audience, and it does that by collecting data on a large scale to accurately predict which ad will draw you into its service. That is their greatest profit: using our data to make multi-million-dollar gains. It has become a competition for a user’s attention, and the best way to compete is to know everything about the user. Every piece of information you leave on your digital trail makes the algorithms the companies use stronger, allowing them to better predict your future purchases and actions. “Your behavior and perception changes towards the advertisement, and that is the product itself; your reaction and engagement.”[3] To make those predictions regarding your online life, there has to be a mass pool of data, a large input to help the accuracy, and that is where you come in. It has become so accurate, that the AI knows how you feel based off of your actions on social media. It knows what apps you turn to when you are upset, whose posts you reminisce on when you are angry, and it knows what advertisements to show you based on those moods.
An important thing to note is that this large system of data has no human supervision. It is all in the hands of an artificial intelligence, soulless and impartial, although some would argue otherwise. You may be thinking that this is in fact a good thing. A lack of human supervision means a lack of malignant intervention, right? But the fact of the matter is, “these algorithms are just human opinions embedded in code by these companies.”[4] The agenda, whether carried about by the AI or not, is still a human one, and still a selfish one. Their intentions, invisible to the average user, create a crossover between communication and manipulation, a combination that has become almost indiscernible for many young people.
What pushed many of those interviewees into leaving their respective positions was watching their work purposely exploit human psychology to manipulate people. The creation of the notification for the like button, the choice to alert people when they are tagged but not immediately showing the image to bolster engagement, the choice to alert people when a person of interest has made an update, is all a twisted use of human psychology to produce growth on the respective company’s platform. They crafted a way to give us little hits of dopamine without the user noticing how many hours they have innocently drowned into their screens, a purposeful and conscious exploitation of our vulnerability, our need to feel connected to others. We as humans have an innate desire to be surrounded by others, to feel like a part of something as a collective, and with social media, we can feel what we have learned to be that connectedness within a matter of seconds, for however long we want.
This constant access is dangerous, desensitizing, and is molding our brains in ways we were not evolved to be, “we were not evolved to have social approval every few minutes, but we became conditioned and addicted to the feeling.”[5] It can take over an under-developed mind’s sense of worth and identity within a few clicks, and this can be seen in the extreme rise in depression, anxiety, and suicide rates among teenagers in the past ten years. “In several recent studies, teenage and young adult users who spend the most time on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time.”[6] We have learned to use social media as a sort of pacifier, a distraction from any emotion that creeps into our brains, and in turn, “…have become unable to cope with feeling uncomfortable or lonely.”[7]
The story gets worse as the employees reveal that many of these companies were running social experiments, not necessarily to better the platform, but just to make money. They would try giving different google search results to the same question based on your location. The results would not be answers to opinion-type questions, but rather different answers for things that should be regarded as objective truths. For example, if you live in a liberal, richer, more urban part of the northern United States and googled the effects of climate change, you will most likely get well-researched explanations as to the negative effects and what you can do to help lead a greener life. However, if you live in a more rural, conservative, less populated part of the U.S., you may get more results questioning the validity of global warming and bashing many leaders for trying to spend money to solve the issue. This blurring of the lines of truth starts as a difference of opinion and can quickly escalate into a full assault of democracy. Many esteemed authors and leaders have made it clear that a blurring between opinion and fact is enough to sway the opinion of the average citizen and voter, and the popular vote does not know where to gain accurate information, the power they hold to influence elections can be terrifying.
Another important aspect of the documentary, perhaps a more uplifting one, is the introduction of Tristan Harris. Harris was a former design ethicist for google, which essentially means his job entailed outlining ethical goals for the company and keeping the agenda of his higher ups in check. He left Google when he created a presentation about the problem of these companies knowingly manufacturing an addiction to their users, and while many at Google agreed with what he said, no actual action was taken to rectify these issues. He now freelances for companies, asking to bring ethical design to media and tech, and creating a new and necessary agenda for tech. He believes that social media is a tool that affects billions of people, so there is a moral responsibility that companies harbor to create a safe platform. Tristan also believes that there are immense benefits to social media, and the intentions these companies originally had were not selfish, but virtuous intentions got washed away in the selfish money-making scheme these companies are involved in.
It seems like the time has come for there to be some regulations and restrictions on what companies can do when it comes to social media, so what could ethical design look like when put into practice? For Tristan Harris, founder of the Center for Human Technology, it means reimagining the entire digital structure. For him, it means bringing that original presentation he made in google to life, focusing on “A Call to Minimize Distraction and Respect Users’ Attention.”[8] That truly is what seems to be lacking, a respect for the humans using these products. From Harris’ point of view, we have stopped becoming individuals, but just data points to strengthen their algorithms to make more money. He also points out the more macro issues on the world stage that social media brings when he testified earlier this year on a House Hearing on “manipulating and deceiving Americans in the digital age.”[9] He discussed how the discrepancy between news sources and social media on candidates’ facts was immensely influencing elections into more emotion-based voting rather than fact based. He claims this creates a more polarized and divided society, one brainwashing and manipulating the average voter. If the problem is pertinent enough to make its way to congress, why are there no regulations already in place, especially since the last time an official law has been made regarding user protection was 1996, before an immediate boom of technological advancements?[10]
This is not to claim that the tech industry is completely unregulated, but in comparison to others, there are not specific regulations in place for boundaries regarding social media. “For instance Facebook, certainly a social media company, received a record $5 billion fine last year for failure to comply with rules set by the FTC. But not because the company violated its social media regulations — there aren’t any.”[11] The Federal Communications Commission is somewhat overseeing what these companies can do by in some vague sense monitoring internet traffic, but legally, they cannot regulate what is actually being communicated, therefore can do nothing to stop the spread of lies over the internet and cannot control how much people are using.
The realities of enforcing and the moral issues that come with placing regulations make the issue all the more complicated. Even if we legally had the ability to regulate social media use, and had the ability to set restrictions on how and when people can start logging on in their youth, would that solve any problems? If we are now somewhat treating social media like a drug, an addictive substance that has altered how we intake serotonin and block other emotions, should it be regulated as a drug as well? Time and time again, though, nations around the world have proved to themselves that outlawing certain drugs does not slow down use, and in turn it makes it more difficult and more detrimental to gain access to safe and beneficial use. “The legalization of drugs would prevent our civil liberties from being threatened any further, it would reduce crime rates, reverse the potency effect, improve the quality of life in the inner cities, prevent the spread of disease, save the taxpayer money, and generally benefit both individuals and the community as a whole. Researchers say the arguments are based on a basic appreciation of the benefits provided by voluntary exchange and the role markets play in coordinating human activities.”[12] So, banning or regulating social media heavily would likely not work either. Instead, I offer a solution closely tied in with the mission of the Center for Humane Technology. The agenda of the tech companies must change. They must be the ones to stop purposefully creating addictions in younger generations without any warning to them or their parents. They have to be the ones pushing to promote more real-life activities rather than giving teenagers solace in a virtual world. They have to stop being pushed by money and go back to their original intentions, to create a service that can allows for an infinite stream of possibilities for the future. Those things are still true, and many company heads say this goal is still achievable, but that message has now been lost to many people. It is not too late for this generation, and a good place to start for young teenagers, is to watch “The Social Dilemma” and rethink how much time you spend on your phone. For companies and employees, they have the option of being more like Tristan Harris, and standing up to the addictive apps they themselves are falling prey to, or, continue to exploit human psychology to make money. Some people will justify the ruthless exploitative tactics of tech companies by saying that it’s just business, but never in history has there been a business that simultaneously affects billions of people’s day to day actions, and that requires a reimagination of the ethics of business itself.
[1] The Social Dilemma, 2020, https://netflix.com.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Caroline Miller, “Does Social Media Cause Depression?,” Child Mind Institute, June 11, 2020, https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/.
[7] The Social Dilemma, 2020, https://netflix.com.
[8] Tristan Harris, “Who We Are,” Center for Humane Technology (Center for Humane Technology, 2020), https://www.humanetech.com/who-we-are.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Legal Shield for Social Media Is Targeted by Lawmakers,” The New York Times (The New York Times, May 28, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/business/section-230-internet-speech.html.
[11] Devin Coldewey, “Who Regulates Social Media?,” TechCrunch (TechCrunch, October 19, 2020), https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/19/who-regulates-social-media/.
[12] Cussen, M. and Block, W. (2000), Legalize Drugs Now!: An Analysis of the Benefits of Legalized Drugs. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 59: 525-536. https://doi.org/10.1111/1536-7150.00041.
Coldewey, Devin. “Who Regulates Social Media?” TechCrunch. TechCrunch, October 19, 2020. https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/19/who-regulates-social-media/.
Cussen, M. and Block, W. (2000), Legalize Drugs Now!: An Analysis of the Benefits of Legalized Drugs. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 59: 525-536. https://doi.org/10.1111/1536-7150.00041.
Harris, Tristan. “Who We Are.” Center for Humane Technology. Center for Humane Technology, 2020. https://www.humanetech.com/who-we-are.
Miller, Caroline. “Does Social Media Cause Depression?” Child Mind Institute, June 11, 2020. https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/.
The Social Dilemma, 2020. https://netflix.com.
Wakabayashi, Daisuke. “Legal Shield for Social Media Is Targeted by Lawmakers.” The New York Times. The New York Times, May 28, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/business/section-230-internet-speech.html.
Policy & Political Review 