What is the problem with social media?

The second primary risk associated with social media is that they serve to change the conditions under which we form and maintain human relationships in a fashion that leads to a meaningful reduction in the number and type of “strong-community” connections and a substantial shift of time and attention towards “weak-affinity” connections.

To select one of six emoticons to “like” the post;

To share the post;

To comment on the post;

Moreover, we witness the same dynamic on the other side of the UI. If and when I encounter something (say a post on my News Feed) that motivates me to some action, the only actions that are available to me within the FB UI are:

In the context of “attention exploiting media” where there is a premium placed on getting as many eyeballs as possible — this new potential for weak affinity becomes an operational mandate. A social platform that lacks the ability to filter or block unpleasant participants will quickly be outcompeted by one that has that capacity.

Again, the deep problem here lies less in the specific actions that are possible within the Facebook UI, but in the basic fact of presenting an environment of radically simple (or complicated) choices rather than complex ones. Of replacing choice with selection.

When you combine high skillfulness at getting along with a lot of time in relationship with heterogenous perspectives, you get the kinds of “strong” links out of which we can fabricate real community.

as we spend more and more time in virtual social spaces and (by necessity) less and less time in physical social spaces, we observe the continual movement of virtual social space towards asymptotically superficial echo chambers and the participants in these echo chambers trained for skills like emotional fragility, virtue signaling, conformity poli... See more