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?
the GPS/mapping function of the phone is quite useful — but apart from that, our phones really aren’t doing much that our computers don’t do, they’re just portable and thus available to disrupt any potential boredom.
Anne Helen Petersen • Culture Study | Anne Helen Petersen | Substack
via Sam Kriss: A chaser: “Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive.”
Modern ‘Social Apps’ look more and more like consumable fashion vs. enduring networks…. It isn’t just downloads, engagement alone is no longer enough.
as much as the feeds brought me things I never would have seen or heard otherwise, my overdependence on them was also cutting me off from a different realm of experiences that I had forgotten about over the course of the decade: the encounter with scarcity rather than infinity, the process of judging and choosing for myself what I wanted to see in
... See moreKyle Chayka • Filterworld
You Are You. We Live Here. This is Now. - Freddie deBoer You Are You. We Live Here. This is Now.
freddiedeboer.substack.comFor many of us, the pandemic didn’t create new factors that ruined our attention – it supercharged the factors that had already been corroding our attention for years. I saw this when I talked with my godson Adam, who I had taken to Memphis. His attention, which had been deteriorating for some time, was now shattered. He was on his phone almost
... See moreJohann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention
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.