The Con of Social Media
First published on Kieran Dhunna Halliwell’s ‘ThoughtSpace’ blog 18.10.17
A friend and I were talking about how anti-social the world of social media has become, a conversation instigated by my declaration that I will soon be getting the new Nokia 3310 and only going on the internet if I am on a computer.
The instant reaction from my peers was to tell me I could pay more to get the data needed for the internet (despite the Nokia not having the Smart web function at all) followed by advice on which handsets I could still get cheaply that did. The days when we called each other or as I used to do, make your text inbox a rolling ‘Top Ten’ chart of treasured words, seem a distant memory. The days when I forgot to check my e-mail - or did it weekly at the most - seem a different world. And lastly, the days when we shared our lives in person instead of keeping each other company online, seem lost.
My 2017 began with a lifelong friend travelling across the country to tell myself and another that she was pregnant with her first child. She didn’t want to announce it on social media before telling us; we were chosen to share the privilege of a moment - the one where she got to decide ‘the reveal’ and we all got to see each other’s faces and hear the struggle to speak - we got to create that memory together, which having celebrated our birthdays as ‘twins’ for the past 25yrs, I hope we’ll share at our 60th when her child will be turning 30. Will we be recalling social media posts from memory in 25yrs? I don’t believe so. I don’t believe so because social media is a rolling ball of insignificant moments.
The Con
I actually can’t remember who I was talking with about algorithms and addictions but I remember the brief sense of waste felt when my friend and I hit upon how things like Twitter and Facebook work; how they are manipulated to keep people interested and returning despite giving an appearance of being mostly real-time.
What do platforms like Facebook and Twitter rely on?
Targeted marketing has become part of our everyday fabric and businesses pay money to reach audience. If you are the creator of a social platform, your revenue comes from companies, the associated networks and data sharing, not (directly) the mass of people signing up for free accounts.
How do you ensure that people remain engaged and using your platform throughout the day instead of simply (e.g) signing in at 7.30am, having a nice real time conversation and then signing off by 8am, with the only people knowing they were online being the ones who were there at the time unless users make the effort to go directly to their profile?
Are you with me? That was a wordy sentence. Imagine Person A who signed in at 7.30am has a large network of followers/friends - if Person B is not also online between 7.30 - 8am they won’t know Person A was on without effort. They won’t see that chat because it’s now 10am and social media runs in real time, so the odds are that the time they spend on social media for that occasion will be less. Still with me?
So, how does social media con us in to spending more and more time online?
Quite simply, it now uses similar principles to online gaming platforms - the ones that are often associated with addiction, the ones we worry about children spending too much time on, the ones adults can lose an evening on but it’s fine because if we’re all doing it, it’s social yeh? Wait, has our society just normalised addiction?
Nobody likes to consider that they’ve ‘been had’, wasted their life or fallen for something they shouldn’t have fallen for. I don’t like to think that Twitter - my beloved Twitter, where there’s always a friendly community to join in with, where nobody could be an addict because we see pictures of interesting places, tweet smileys and chink pretend glasses when we realise we’re both drinking - I don’t like to think that people are only talking to me because of a load of algorithms manipulating like some well-oiled party host. But it is.
What good does it do us, as general social media users, to be able to see our tweet data? The impressions and engagements - how do we use that information?
I look at it sometimes to see if my predictions are correct - for example, when I recently posted about my amorous neighbour the click through data was 4 times as much as my average tweets. There was no photo, only words, but I had wondered if because the tweet had a sexual theme it may be quietly popular: it was. Hardly anyone commented on it but it was one of the most read. Fifty Shades didn’t sell for nothing! If I were marketing myself (or a business) I may then tweet more often about sex because the data tells me that’s what my *cough* educational network are interested in. But, doesn’t this take the social out of social media?
I digress; back to algorithms and how social media is the party that never stops. Like a rolling stone, it gains its strength from momentum. Ever considered what happens when you favourite a tweet now? Surely it just gets saved to favourites, right? And the same for Facebook likes etc. Well, yes and no. When any of us ‘like’ something, social media uses a staggering effect to share it in to other people’s feeds; Facebook used to always be giving warnings about how you may or may not see so many posts from those you don’t engage with - to be fair, Facebook was always honest with you that it was ranking your friends, your interactions, your interests and mapping your engagement patterns -it always warned you it was hiding the stuff it had decided you’d find less interesting…but this was to streamline and for your benefit, obviously. How is that friend who hasn’t been online much lately? Maybe they have been. Maybe your friendship has suffered as a result of this.
And Twitter and favourites/likes. Again, these are staggered and show up at different times for us all, did you know that? I didn’t. I was surprised and, well, duped. The same for conversation threads, though like Facebook, Twitter is quite open in its manipulation of us by titling things it thinks you’ll engage with ‘in case you missed it’ or ‘here’s what other people are doing’ or ‘this person follows [name of person in your network]’. By doing this as people sign in throughout the day we end up joining in conversations and clicking on things that are served up to us. The responsibility for our own thinking is absent once we log on to social media.
In essence, we feed a beast that simultaneously feeds us; are we the beast or is social media? Psychology and in particular, the psychology of reciprocity, is fascinating.