Review of documentary: The Social Dilemma
Review of The Minimalists Patreon podcast: Social Media Minimalism with Jess Williams
Review of #296 How to Use Social Media without Losing Your Mind interview with Randy Fernando on the 10% Happier podcast with Dan Harris
The documentary film The Social Dilemma explores “the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations” according to the IMDb description. It has quite a following these days as it describes the behind the scenes manipulation of social media. Many find it quite disconcerting and feel they have no control over the impact that social media has on them or their children.
The information presented by the designers, many of whom had left that industry, about how people are manipulated is good to know, but I didn’t care for the “dramatizations” done to hammer the points home to the audience (talk about manipulation…). There were some good points raised about how the design of social media like Facebook and Twitter was to enhance reactions that would be done unconsciously by the “user”. One of the early “points” was that only two “industries” have “users” – social media and drugs. I’m not sure I agree entirely with that, although I’m not interested in going down that rabbit hole right now.
The documentary explains how “algorithms” work. Every time a user clicks, the algorithm looks for similar content to “feed” to the user, causing that point of view to be the majority for that user. This means that the user doesn’t have any balance in the information they are viewing and are more likely to believe that their sources represent the truth and contradictory points of view are, well, “fake news”.
As the film ends, it’s hard to conclude what the average “user” of social media is supposed to do, since abandoning it altogether is unlikely to be a course of action the can be followed, especially in an age of on line learning. While the credits are running, however, some of the participants are suggesting ideas, which I will summarize along with suggestions from The Minimalists and 10% Happier.
After watching the film, I listened to The Minimalists Patreon podcast entitled Social Media Minimalism with Jess Williams, who handles their social media. They thought the documentary was good but felt the ending wasn’t necessarily as strong as it could have been and could have been made stronger by having interviews with people who still worked for the various social media companies, explaining what their intentions were, to create more balance. Also, they felt that the film should have presented some suggestions on steps to take to disengage from the behavior that was programmed into the social media apps.
I also listened to an interview between Dan Harris and Randy Fernando, who was in The Social Dilemma. Randy was born and raised in Sri Lanka to a Buddhist family, so he grew up with meditation. He worked in the tech industry and returned to meditation. He co-founded the Centre for Humane Technology. Technology needs to reduce human suffering, but it tends to promote greed and hatred, rather than reducing it. Technology is not neutral – it is a reflection of the creator’s values. Technology tends to divide us. Humane technology has to account for unintended consequences. In what Tristan Harris calls a “race to the bottom of the brain stem,” media companies and advertisers will do almost anything to keep your eyes locked where they want them. Tristan co-founded the Centre for Humane Technology.
A particularly important observation is that people tend to not change their minds once they’ve heard something. People are loyal to what they’ve heard – this is the idea of “first impressions”. It’s very difficult to reverse that impression. Interestingly, “fake” news travels 6 times faster. Moral outrage travels further and faster. https://www.humanetech.com/podcast (Your Undivided Attention)
Is it possible to use technology wisely? Use technology with intention.
Here is a combined list of suggestions made by people interviewed in the film, by Randy Fernando and Dan Harris, and by The Minimalists:
- Before you share, fact check and consider the source. The thing you’re about to share is probably something that’s meant to trigger your emotions. Take a minute before sharing. Give yourself a little space to think about the content.
- Share the source along with the content you’re sharing. It’s likely that your desire to share something is because “This matches with my world view.”
- Be mindful about your use of social media.
- You “vote” with your “clicks”, so don’t click on clickbait because that will be how you’re voting.
- Uninstall apps that seem like time wasters
- Choose your own You Tube videos, don’t choose those recommended for you. Don’t continue to watch those videos that are displayed after you’ve looked at the one you sought out.
- All devices out of the bedroom at a fixed time every night.
- No social media till high school. (They didn’t say the suggestions were easy.)
- Work out a time budget with your kids. (Again, not necessarily easy, but these are their recommendations).
- Use a program called Quant (https://www.qwant.com/?l=en) as your search engine because it doesn’t store data on what you have searched.
- Don’t take your phone into the bedroom (or put it on airplane mode if you need it for other purposes, like alarm clock or sleep apps).
- Put your phone away when you are around other people.