How Social Media Controls You
Who Serves Whom?
I go online. This is already a mistake.
Here, there exists the natural world; there, opinions and agendas. It looks like the natural world, perhaps jazzed up by human creations, but still the world as we know it, though we cannot smell it, feel it, nor taste it. A façade.
So if it’s an illusion, what does exist there and what does it cover?
What exists are personas and reactions; what it covers is often the truth.
The natural world, experienced as-is, has strict and simple rules that apply to most living things: eat and drink to survive; don’t get eaten yourself; fight to live; stay in the present moment; if you do get eaten, don’t take it personally.
Yet we are consumed by this digital behemoth everyday — much of which feasts on our emotions and attention by doing everything it can to get us to take things personally. How many times have you watch a heated argument that spans 30+ comments on Facebook from a single post? And how many of those posts began by assertively stating an option?
The digital world sucks us in, trying to entice us to engage; the natural world watches to see what we will do.
I have been going on canoe trips for over nine years and every time I return after having spent extended time in the natural world feeling refreshed, grounded, happy, and with a clear mind — dirty on the outside, cleansed on the inside. And while I don’t actively participate in social media or online media (save for posting the odd photo of my trips on Instagram or writing stories here), the first encounter with it after a trip is always jarring.
But this is a good thing, for it reminds me of the sheer damage that it can cause — and is causing — especially today.
Here are a number of reasons why the world not only could do with less social media, but why, in fact, we need to actively push it away to survive.
It gives voice to the unskilled and uninformed.
How many times have you opened your Facebook feed and started scrolling to find that it is peppered with assertive statements about politics, jobs, civil rights, or the world at large and how unfair it is? How many of those are linked to direct sources that unequivocally prove that statement to be true? I’m not talking about a link to a news story, I mean a published article professionally researched with data based on unbiased findings or experiences? Also, how many of these assertive statements come from friends?
I’m willing to bet pretty much all on both counts. Because Facebook doesn’t thrive on facts or verifying the authenticity of its content, it thrives on getting as much content and engagement as possible. So it actually encourages the spread of opinions over facts because opinions stir the pot. This is a quantitative, not qualitative, world.
And so the microphone is handed to everyone who feels they have something worth saying (i.e. most of us as we search for meaning in our own lives) and the person who talks the loudest and raises the largest storm is the one that is most amplified.
Never mind that they haven’t thoroughly researched and crafted their statement, or that they haven’t trained to take on the responsibility of the role they are undertaking.
In ancient Rome, there were professional orators¹ made up primarily of politicians, lawyers, and leaders. In order to obtain this title, they they had to go through extensive training to articulate clearly and effectively precisely what there were trying to communicated; it was a job that required skill and it was a privilege. Julius Caesar was sent to the Greeks for this exact training as a young boy.
In order for society to function in a way that best served everyone, it was structured so that the people who could speak to larger issues actually could speak to them. How much would the stonemason know about conquering and governing new territory, or expanding the empire? How much of a voice on that topic should he have been given?
Today: as much as he wants, for the senate as it was has been exploded out to encompass all voices — including the vast majority of uninformed, unskilled “everyday orators” that make up most of the noise in our online world. Pursuit of the truth and common good has fallen in pursuit of more clicks, comments, likes, and retorts. The waters are muddied and social media profits on it.
It encourages self-importance.
There is a human desire for significance that exists in all of us, and how could there not be? We see the world through our eyes, from our perspective — we are the heroes of our own story. We want to know that we make a difference, that we matter, that we will not simply be forgotten when we leave this earth. Yet the difference that we make inevitably comes from our actions, what we do. Not from showing as many people as possible what we’re doing, which is exactly what social media perpetuates.
Rather than focusing the attention on the action being achieved, social media encourages the focus to shift to the person achieving that action. Influencers; social media celebrities — the temptation for fame and significance draws us in and turns us into attention-seeking addicts with the promise of stardom.
But this promise comes at a price, for you are forever a slave to the great machine, driven to pump out post after post of interesting content every opportunity you get.
“I look cute today:” photo, post.
“I’m going to show the world that looking cute and perfect isn’t everything:” photo, post.
“Look at this wonderful meal I cooked today:” photo, post.
“look at this wonderful meal I had no hand in preparing and merely ordered:” photo, post.
What does what we look like on any given day or what we eat contribute to society? How does it help others? What does it matter? Look the way you want to look and be happy; eat what you would like to eat and be filled. Live your actual life and share it with actual people that you are actually sharing a moment with in-person — this is how you create significance and will be remembered long after you are gone.
Who you are — what your identity is — is irrelevant; it’s what you do that makes all the difference.
It distorts reality.
Despite the fact that it is a non-existent digital replica of the world, it can, in fact, alter the real world. Take the Instagram grid. The general wisdom is that, if we want to use Instagram effectively to attract more followers, then we need to have consistency in flavour — we must brand ourselves. Because it shows nine “boxes” (i.e. photos) on someone’s profile, it looks more pleasing to the eye if, while the content is varied, the style or look is not.
And before you know it, you’ve branded yourself — it’s the new you! — and ways in which you live your life all begin to stem from that self-created image. You used to let your hair grow, but you’ve set the image of the buzz cut for awhile now, so you feel compelled to maintain it. You used to speak quietly and spend more time listening, but you only have three seconds to grab the attention of the viewer for you video, so now you launch into conversations with gusto every change you get, feeling that you need to make a quick impact or no one will listen to you.
Also, because social media lives for the moment, it does not encourage people to either fact-check when you post something, or to do the same yourself when you’re reading a post. The most successful engagements, from social media’s standpoint, are ones that keep people responding, clicking, and engaging by creating more content.
As Ryan Holiday points out in his eye-opening reveal of social media’s murky backstage, Trust Me, I’m Lying, the two emotions that cause people to react the most violently and immediately are anger and arousal, so if you can craft a post that triggers either of those, you will get far more responses — both good and bad — to your post.
And this vortex sucks you in and pulls others around you in as well. You post about how all lives matter, and people get so outraged that they can’t help but respond to correct you. You see the response, you get angry, you retort back, and now there’s a full-on war blazing in the comments section. Yet if the two of you had been talking face-to-face, I’d be willing to bet that this debate wouldn’t have cost you both the friendship.
Facebook further encourages the quick response instinct with the “Share” function. You read something, it provokes a sympathetic response, and you just have to share it to prove (with your own comment about how you know this is true and that you stand behind it) that you are an upstanding member of society. After all, you helped move the momentum of this good thing forward! Pats on the back all around.
I rarely allowed myself to engage in this way on Facebook (because I knew it was never worth it); however, I’ve had my slip-ups. Before the scandal about Jian Ghomeshi (former radio host of CBC’s Q) came to light, he posted a self-serving short essay on Facebook denouncing any woman who claimed that he had sexually assaulted them, as all his private interactions with women were consented to on both sides. In essence, he was trying to get ahead of the media storm approaching, but he crafted it to sound like he was the victim of slander and the lies could cost him his job. Because I sympathized with digital media’s keen ability to destroy reputations based on false information, I succumbed to the worst response in that moment: I clicked “Share.”
A few weeks later, when his trial loomed and more and more women were stepping out to share their horrific experiences about him, I know I’d made a mistake. Even if what Jian said was true and all the women were collectively lying and filing criminal charges against him simply to destroy an innocent man’s career (exactly how likely does that sound?), the fact remains that I responded in the moment without the facts.
I never did that again.
It’s a murky fabricated world, ever shifting, like tectonic plates on speed. Its volatility can’t be controlled by a single person because billions power its engine with their personal agendas, hopes, and dreams every minute of every day.
However, I’d like to change key and state that it isn’t all bad. Social media can do substantial good if used in the proper way: to serve. A neighbour starts a Facebook group to encourage money-free exchanges of goods in her community; photographers share their singular captures of beauty on Instagram; an established writer retweets an up-and-coming writer’s work.
Each form of social media is a digital tool that can serve or rule us. Like Rumpelstiltskin promising to spin your everyday straw into gold, there is a price: we can easily lose sight of who we are.
Use it to serve others — to create community — or it will take advantage of your self-serving desires and you will become its slave.
A final radical thought; a way to slay this predator with one swift stroke: leave it.
Stop posting, stop filming, stop talking — don’t give it anymore of your data — and close your Facebook account. I just did. I had it for over half of my life now and it hasn’t brought me anything that made me happier. So I permanently deleted it, extricating myself from the machine.
You can too.
But if you choose not to, I implore you to use it to share beauty and joy with the world. I decided to keep my Instagram for this reason as I now focus solely on sharing images of my canoe trips, using it as an online photo album, available to everyone. I like the thought of that — it makes me happy and I don’t have to care about the number of likes or comments. Just share for any who care to look.
Take my hand, my friend, and close the screen; it’s time to live in the natural world.
References
- Orator | Wikipedia