what is Social Media doing to us?

From 2002-2006, social media companies emerged with the explicit mission of "connecting the world," but the introduction of the feed and the like, plus the switch from friends to " followers " indicated a different pitch: "now, even you can a star."

Yet, the hidden machinations behind everyone’s favorite social media and search platforms are engineered to exploit our primal instincts for validation, status, and mimetic desires (adopting or pursuing preferences and aspirations based on the influence of others rather than our intrinsic motivations), morphing into a manipulative force that feeds... See more

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.