I watched this film on Netflix last night and it’s already a topic of conversation amongst many of my peers. If you’ve not seen it, the documentary features testimony from ex-silicon valley engineers, academics, venture capitalists and psychologists describing the business model of social networking sites and their impact on our society. Simply put, as users who do not pay we have become the product of these sites and their algorithms are programmed to ensure our continual engagement and affect our behaviour choices. Whilst offering many benefits, this deep, unconscious interference with our psychology is playing havoc with our social cohesion and mental health, as bad actors are able to harness this technology to their own ends. The conclusion is that we have to work together to demand a change in the way the these sites operate and are regulated. In the meantime, by limiting our screen time, turning off our notifications and keeping our kids from social media before they’re 16, we can limit the individual impact on our private lives.
So much fired off in my head watching this. I am a social media user: I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I am on them too much, I know. But as an introvert, working from home, with family and friends all over the world, these sites have definitely benefitted me: they enable me to keep abreast of professional contacts and developments, they enable me to curate long-distant friendships that would be lost in another way, the enable me to connect with others when I am often isolated working from home. I can really credit my social media accounts for re-connecting me with old, loved friends. I can credit them with helping me to make positive changes in my life – supporting my running ambitions being one of them (being cheered on and accountable has been amazing). I can credit them with enabling me to reach out or be reached out to. I like the connection, the human connection, that I have with them.
And it does feel human when dear, dear, old friends reach out and support me.
When I watched the show yesterday I felt I should delete my facebook account. I should try living naked, without it, much in the same way that I’ve been living naked without alcohol for the last few months. Not only would I no longer be supporting a website with serious ethical flaws, a space that is dangerous even, but I’d also be releasing myself from its hold which I know is too much….
But it’s SO useful too: the communities I’m a part of like Run Mummy, Run or Mummy’s Gin Fund…
And I love being connected to people I just wouldn’t be able to keep up with in another way: knowing how they are.
But the problem here isn’t these things. It’s the addiction. It’s how much. It’s the random, interruptive nature of the phone there, waiting. I’ve been on facebook for less than a quarter of my life and I already can’t imagine what I’d do without it. I have a genuine sense of panic about what life would be like without that connection.
Which of course, is the point in the first place. And it’s not my fault I now realise.
And there’s the ethics….
So what do I do?
I’ve learned from other addictions I’ve beaten (smoking, alcohol in process, snake on my nokia phone…) that the solution to anything like this, isn’t willpower. Willpower runs out, it creates conflict in your mind, you can’t succeed all the time the conflict is there. The solution is properly wanting to change and making positive choices and decisions around it. It’s not saying I’m never going to use social media again, it’s saying “I’m going to experiment with not using it” and finding out what that might look like, I’m curious about what my life might look like if I put these tools into their rightful place in my life.
Some of the questions that throws up is:
How do I keep in touch with friends and family even when I’m super busy?
How do I keep abreast of things that are going on in my industry?
How do I keep abreast of politics/ news/ things people are saying?
How do I link up with the people who inspire me?
How do I access local parents networks?
How can I share to a wide audience?
If my phone isn’t the bedroom, what happens if someone tries to call me in the middle of the night and i don’t hear them?
What could I do with the time I spend on social media now?
How can I keep in touch with friends without social media? What if I spent the same amount of time say… writing this blog? Or emailing people? Or writing letters?
What happens if I’m forgotten? Not seen?
What are the other networks I can access offline and be a part of? I already have many?
How much of my connectivity is actually through social media anyway?
How much power do I have to change things in this world? How do I reach out and harness that power now, without these tools?
How can just me removing myself from a site change its ethical stance? How do I become part of the bigger change needed without losing my presence in the process?
I feel like I need to start a process of uncoupling from what I’ve allowed social media to curate for me. I need to work through these questions and begin to explore different answers.
I’d love to know what other people’s feelings/ experiences/ thoughts are around all this. It feels knotty to me, I feel like I’m being naive, weak, with blindspots. I know there’s an irony perhaps in that I am writing this in a blog… But the act of doing so feels hopeful too…. because it feels like the start of reimagining the relationship and gaining power back again.
There’s another thought, though, that connects to this, which I’d like to think about more before I explore here and that’s the relationship of art to this dilemma. And the link of this to the erosion of our public spaces/ connections (cf Jenny Odell’s work on resisting the attention economy… another blog coming very soon)
First up I’m going to find out more. I’m looking at the Center for Humane Technology, Moment and others in the hunt for the hopeful, future ideas…. more anon. Because we have to have a new narrative for connection.
Handy links below if you’re interested
Sarah Dickenson 