what is Social Media doing to us?
Articles about social media platforms and their effects on society.
Jerod Morris and
what is Social Media doing to us?
Even the guy who invented the infinite scroll later regretted it. These interfaces are not designed to help you—swiping and scrolling are rarely the best ways to do anything. They aren’t designed to solve your problem, but actually aim to prevent closure, and create an illusion that there are still infinite choices available to you.
The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World a book by Max Fisher
Max Fisher • 3 highlights
bookshop.org
Social media gives us addictive routine; constantly checking our phones, mindlessly scrolling, endlessly searching for new stimulation. In this way, it keeps us trapped in profane time. Endless cycles without much substance, a timelessness that isn’t full, but empty. Look up from a social media feed and you may have lost half an hour, but that half... See more
Alexander Beiner • Myth and Metrics: How Social Media Robs Us of Ritual, and How to Revive It
A Society That Lost Focus
ploum.net
But an unbounded information landscape is not an unalloyed good. Because social media does not favor accuracy or balance or diversity. It favors clicks. The more engaging and enraging the content, the more clicks it receives.
Scott Galloway • No Mercy / No Malice
So, I believe we have some personal agency. But I also believe that a 12-year-old’s mind is no match for a giant corporation using the most advanced AI to manipulate her behavior. Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified... See more
Freya India • Algorithms Hijacked My Generation. I Fear For Gen Alpha.
what these continuous streams of content do is prevent you from taking a second to pause, reflect on who you really are, and realize where you are headed.
From Bill Gates’ conversation with Trevor Noah on the What now? podcast, reflecting on social media and the Internet:
... See moreOur industry was very young and just incredibly fast moving, but it didn't have this, oh, this will be a tool for Holocaust denial or weird impacts. And the idea that it would directly be used for political influence, one country
I see two divergent media futures emerging—each based on networks that serve very different groups.
In the first future, our networks serve the technologists who build them, the advertisers that pay for them, and the governments that control them. These networks compete for users in a war for attention by making systems that spit out superficially... See more
In the first future, our networks serve the technologists who build them, the advertisers that pay for them, and the governments that control them. These networks compete for users in a war for attention by making systems that spit out superficially... See more