Watching the documentary, The Social Dilemma, I'm learning a lot about how the employees of social media companies feel about the problem of social media. The damage it does to mental health and society overall. It isolates you, it enables cyberbullying and cybercrime, you can see horrible things and it erodes our social structure. The people in the documentary understand the evil that this industry poses, but are unable to define the source of the problem. It seems to me that the issue is more systemic than the fault of one man or group.
Throughout the documentary, one quote stuck out to me:
"If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product."
It's an attention market; the good being sold is our time. It's sold to advertisers to get data on what we like, want to see, how we want it, and how it best manipulates us. Marketers need a lot of data to develop an accurate business model, and this is best obtained through social media algorithmic tracking. They know what you look at, how long you look at it, when you're depressed, when you're excited, all to predict what you're going to do, and who you are. It's evil, without a human mastermind. But if you read my last blog, a computer brain doing harm is just as evil as an animal brain.
I feel this in my own life, lacking the motivation to get ready for the day due to scrolling, deciding on my outfit based on what looks good on other people on my screen. The phone games that take up hundreds of hours of my life in total, the social media algorithms that are designed to take every last second of my life, the productivity apps that are brightly colored and convenient for similar reasons, etc., all are ways that this issue impacts me and others in my generation, I'm sure.
Completely giving up technology seems like a step backwards, but maybe we need more balance in how much we relax and how productive we are. The capitalist desire to be the best competitor in the room causes society to spiral into an overworked, strained population. One that I do not want to be a part of.
Hello! I thought it was so unique watching the Social Dilemma for the same reason, seeing just how employees of those major companies feel about social media. It's kind of scary to think about how much they know. I liked the quote you highlighted from the movie. One of the ones that stuck out to me was how we're all lab rats at the end of the day for these companies. I agree that maybe we need to start limiting how much we're on it, while not giving it up completely.
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