How is social media destroying society?
The Design
Social Media is used by over half the population on planet earth. Now as for what purpose, that is what can be confusing. Some people use social media as an addictive drug, some people use social media for their businesses, some people use social media to build genuine connections with people, some people use social media to spread their messages and ideas, and some people use social media to get more informed about the world. Social media is a tool and just like any tool, in some ways that tool can be used in a way to harm society and harm people and in other ways it can be used to benefit society and benefit people. The problem lies in assessing which ways are harming and which ways are helping.
Using tools correctly in ways they are actually designed for is important. And a tool might be very good in one area but not so good in another area. For instance, apps that might be very good for business might not be so good for discussions, relationships, and even talking about ourselves.
Social media is generally used to share information. But if you want to make money, you can either make it non-profit or you have to manipulate people. You have to design it in a way to manipulate users to make money.
The thing is when we use these applications in ways they are not designed that is when we're harming society and that is when we are harming ourselves. You wouldn't have a political discussion at a drunk party... At the same time if someone criticized you at a drunk party - would you take any of it seriously?
Remember our ability to critically think about things is influenced by how well we can talk about it and have a discussion about it. So when we do not have good places to talk and have discussions we can't critically think and when we can not critically think we can not make decisions that will make society better and people better.
It's not that social media is bad or good; it's just in the way that you use them.
If you want to know if an application is good or bad instead of doing all this research - just ask: What is it designed for? And then ask yourself: What will I use it for? And then filter it with accordance to your value system (Things you believe are harming/benefiting yourself and society)
I do not believe in attacking people. I believe in long forms of constructive discussions and healthy arguments. Problem is, of course, how, and where do we have those long forms of constructive discussions and healthy arguments?
None of these applications are really designed to have deep discussions about complex issues. We're using these applications in ways they were not made to be used. The creators didn't build their application with the intention of a billion people trying to converse over important issues.
The solution to these problems is using places that are built for them. So if you are using a place built for business, it might not be good for public discourse. If you are using a place built for extreme privacy, it might also not be good at connecting you with a large amount of people. I have come up with four areas:
- Business
- Discussions
- Relationships
- Ourselves
These apps are incredibly new: Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, 4chan, Twitter, etc. The problem is we don't know the exact effects this is having on the generation. Using tools in ways they are designed for and understanding which ways it benefits society and which ways it does not is really important. You can't just make a tool illegal because some aspect of it might be harming society. The war on drugs essentially did this. We essentially threw people in prison for using certain drugs and just now we are discovering that they might have incredible therapeutic use.
And these apps are always in flux. Tiktok could be banned by the U.S. or a University/Organization. Twitter was bought by a billionaire and who essentially removed most of the functionality. Facebook and Instagram have had large data breaches where large accounts and personal data have been leaked. Reddit deleted all 3rd party apps causing a mass amount of people to protest and leave. Discord, and Snapchat have been taking large amounts of personal data and depending on new privacy laws their futures are very uncertain. Adding AI onto the mix and its potential to generate any text, video, or image post it could potentially kill off all of social media. We live in very uncertain times.
I have come up with four potential ways social media has affected people:
- Mental Health
- Privacy
- Public Discourse
- Disconnection
Now I do not want to shy away for the business and subjective value that social media offers. It's incredible for sharing new things and offering new experiences and learning about the world. But just like any addictive drug it can be good in moderation, but you have to be very careful. And it can be easy to look at people who abuse drugs and then place blame all on the drug and the person for using it. But also it's important to understand whether things are authentic or inauthentic, fake and manipulative or real and genuine.
Founder of Virtual Reality Talking About The Manipulation Algorithm
The manipulation algorithm is built to make money. A consequence of it is the more polarizing you're, the more irritating you're, the more you will get attention. The less polarizing (the less you get people angry and upset) the less you will get attention. Because of the way the behavioral manipulation algorithms are designed we get worse mental health, worse public discourse, concerns about privacy, and increases in loneliness and disconnection from the human social experience. All of that is what is really harming society and harming yourself.
If you think about how important public discourse is in an election. How important it is in a social relationship. If you can not build trust then you can not build a relationship and society will fall apart. The REFUSAL to admit that these algorithms are doing this IS WHAT IS DESTROYING SOCIETY!!!
We are being very stupid in two ways:
- We are refusing to admit that we are using these applications in ways they were not made to be used.
- We are refusing to admit that there is this manipulating behavioral algorithm that is terrible for us in the variety of ways we're going to talk about
Mental Health
"American Economic and Culture Systems that work very well in terms of selling people products and keeping the economy thriving DO NOT WORK AS WELL when it comes to educating children or helping us help each know how to live and to be happy" - David Foster Wallace
If an application increased the rates of Anxiety, Depression, Self-Harm, Suicide Rates for the general population - if that application manipulated people to get them more addicted which further accelerated those mental illnesses you would hope that society would be intelligent enough to understand that something is seriously wrong here.
People that are addicted to drugs - you're not going to stop them from using the drug, but you can have them at least admit the drug (for this case cigarettes) is causing cancer to stop other people from using those drugs and getting cancer and dying. We don't want to attack people particular because people use these systems because they are not confident, and they lack self-esteem. There is a lot of false confidence on social media (external validation). The reason why is that people feel like crap, and they want to be validated, so we all do practice this false confidence to a certain extent, you just want your internal validation to be greater than your external validation (true confidence > false confidence).
To medicate these feelings of useless and meaningless, there is this huge surge to go on social media to be valuable and to feel valued by other people.
I got these graphs from the CDC, and samhsa.gov among others. There are many organizations researching this area and many papers are being published and soon to be published... It's an ongoing process, but even the engineers and the people behind the design of this technology have come out and raised the alarm bells, so I think we should take this very seriously.
Jonathan Haidt on effects of social media
You can watch the following video (and many other studies done that are similar to it), the point is U.S. teenagers and young adults are struggling mentally and emotionally now than ever before. Why is this happening? In general, I think it has to do with people practicing false confidence more than true confidence due to the general fact that false confident behavior makes businesses more money. Problem is false confidence is short term, and it often leads to more suffering.
Now I've talked about social media generally not being designed for social relationships. It can create very toxic, fake people. Social media can now be used to destroy people. It can damage other people's social relationships.
When you were a teenager think about stupid you were. And you put that brain on a social network, Imagine how that affecting the culture. We are social creatures, we need people to grow. And when all of them are social media and fake it is really hard.
The culture has never been more sexualized than ever before. There is that getting attention aspect. If someone's validation comes from their body and being validated by others. All this like me, like me, like me, like me - all of this is false confidence. It's external validation. And what we know about false confidence is it actually leads to more suffering because you're relying more on external validation rather than internal validation.
Gen Z is the generation known as the Zoomers. It's my generation, and I am very deeply disappointed and disgusted by certain aspects of my generation. It's not like we're the boomers, but still. You know how certain aspects of dogs brains are imprinted from a certain age, and they are never changed again - well I think our generation's brains were imprinted with social media and that altered our brains to think differently than previous generations.
The creators of these applications are going to have to deal with the fact that they altered our brain chemistry permanently in ways we still don't fully understand.
Now there are a lot of people that are going to criticize this and say "How do we know the correlation equals causation?" Well we can ask two questions: Is this affecting the younger generation? How much is this affecting the younger generation?
What are the primary differences between this generation and the other generations? Well this generation has grown up in a world on social media.
What can we conclude from this section? The younger generation has greater rates of depression, anxiety, mental health, and suicide. The linking cause for this are the applications they are using to communicate with each other.
Privacy
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say" - Edward Snowden
Every different country has different privacy laws when it comes to social media. The U.S. does have some privacy laws, and it can vary from state, but they are very flimsy. However, the U.S. does not have a federal privacy that applies to all types of personal information used by all social media companies. Social media companies are generally free to collect and use data as long as they disclose it in their practices, in their terms of service. The problem is nobody reads those things. Don't tell me you've actually done an in-depth analysis of every single sentence on a 15 page deeply worded terms of service/privacy policy paper. Bullshit. Nobody has the time to do that. Just pasting it into chatgpt might actually help though.
Until our governors and senators can write proper legislation at the federal level we are all in basically a dystopia. There are 6 main types of sensitive data you have:
- Personal Identification Information (PII)
- Communication Data
- Financial Data
- Health Data
- Biometric Data
- Location Data
Depending on what sensitive data I get I can do a lot of horrible things to you. Now with AI it gets even more dangerous. I can use AI to mimic voices, fingerprints, faces - basically I can pretend I am you. How can I get this data? Through security breaches.
- Individual Attack
- Coordinated Attack
- Total Breach
There have been a couple of examples of security breaches in the past decade. Some people for whatever reason will put very sensitive data on social media and expect the social media company to protect them. Everything you put on has the potential to be leaked in a data breach...Yes Everything. Something bad is going to happen before people eventually wake up to this. Privacy should be a fundamental human right. We can all agree that there is some data that companies should just not have.
It's crucial to be careful with whom you trust on the internet. You have the potential to ruin someone's life with the sensitive information you put out on the internet. Why is everyone so fake on social media? Why don't people trust people? Why don't people want to be vulnerable?
I think we get the picture.
Now with Tiktok any person can just randomly film you and post it online where you have no control over what they do with the content and how they spin it. It just feels so morally wrong.
Depending on the purpose of the applications the sensitive data they are going to collect is going to be different. For every app - what do they support - what do they not support? What sensitive data are you giving them? Are you comfortable with the sensitive data you're giving them?
Every Terms of service. Every company is different.
For a while people in the U.S. just had to deal with the fact that their government and certain companies are spying on them. NSA, FBI, and CIA. I mean Edward Snowden PROVED THAT ORGANIZATIONS ARE SPYING ON US AND ARE LYING ABOUT IT TO OUR FACES. And Nobody is really doing anything about it.
And then the Trojan horse comes along: Tiktok. Tiktok is basically Chinese spyware and sends all their data to the CCP. Now in a healthy country that actually has privacy laws and who actually cares about their citizens' data Tiktok would've been looked at and analyzed before being promptly banned for infringing on privacy rights. But since we don't do that for Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. We gave Tiktok a free pass. Actually we really gave Tiktok a free pass due to the fact that the amount of money it could generate from manipulating little kids online.
4 Years too late Trump actually tried to ban Tiktok. He even tried to veto a bill for it. One of the few things he tried to do that I agree with - but, when the rich powerful corporations saw all the more money they could potentially still milk from the app they freaked out. A federal judge blocked the Tiktok ban only for a bill to get pass (Some years later) that basically banned Tiktok on government devices signed by Joe Biden. And because every other country follows what we do countries all over the world just started banning it on government devices. It's even being entirely banned in universities despite not being banned in America.
Countries That Have Banned Tiktok
The thing is, we knew this for years. We knew it was spyware. We knew most social media apps were basically spyware. And the legislation, the ability to act on it and propose bills takes too long. There are still tons of bills sitting in congress that are all about social media that will probably take years to implement because we fight with each other over so much useless crap and get nothing done. I can only imagine the shit-show that will go down trying to get all these AI regulations in. Jesus Christ.
Every time a company or organization supports a company like Tiktok they're basically saying they do not give a rat's ass about your security and privacy. And every time they say they do they are basically spitting in your face. The same is true with supporting organizations like Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Zoom - you get the picture. If organizations came out and said they don't really care about your privacy, and they just support these companies just for money and convenience I would totally understand. But most organizations don't do that. Most organizations say they actually care about your privacy and your security. And it's total bullshit.
Now Tiktok isn't the first app that was spyware from the CCP. The CCP actually has millions of tiny little spyware programs running all over the world. So even if Tiktok gets banned you're not going to stop all the other spyware programs from running. It's a literal mess. Spyware apps are an entirely different essay on their own with Israel services like Pegasus which belong in the security and privacy section.
Public Discourse
"If any two people wish to communicate over the internet, the ONLY way that can happen is through a third party who believes that those two can be manipulated... So we have created an entire global generation of people who were raised within the context with the very MEANING of communication, the very MEANING of culture is Manipulation. We have put deceit and sneakiness at the absolute center of everything we do." - Jaron Lanier
Social media is terrible for public discourse. The difference between good communication and bad communication is the difference between whether a problem gets solved, whether you make friends, whether you get into relationships. It is the difference between life and death.
I've talked about communication and values in my cognitive bias video. If you truly do not want to commit bias you need good communication and good values.
Social Media is terrible for communication and values generally, and so if you're using a system which are terrible for communication and values, and you are trying to have real discussions with people on there to get somewhere - Good luck. There is no better way to describe their behavior than clear utter stupidity. Everything I have talked about so far, mental health, privacy, no healthy public discourse - but even especially having no self-awareness to any of these issues. Either that or we have somehow made socially unacceptable to say that their something deeply wrong with the way we use these social applications.
There are three main methods of dimensions: Texting, Phone calls, and IRL Conversations. Depending on which one you choose your communication may be getting less and less accurate. We can argue the reason why we have improved so much is that our communication has never been better. So if you want to make society better, and you want to make people better you would want better communication.
Texting really sucks as a method for communicating complex ideas. Depending on the application, Text based discussions can be a bit better than just straight up texting, but you still have to deal with misinterpretations, quick responses, manipulation, distractions, groups, gas-lighting, virtue-signaling, fake news, trolling, ad hominem attacks, echo chambers, and public humiliation. Ugh. There has to be something better. The culture practices crappy forms of criticism, and they deny they have any problems, and then they refuse to be vulnerable.
Now, where do we have the important discussions that matter? Where we need to be able to critically think about things? Twitter? Reddit? Facebook? Instagram?
Because we don't have any real tools for important discussions and because people use these tools as public discourse social media companies are at a scramble. They have to control all of this information because this is where people get educated. This is where people get informed. This is where people converse for some reason.
Social Media is ripping society apart
This is an early senior executive at Facebook who basically lets the hammer down. We're going to connect back to the idea of the manipulation algorithm which is terrible for mental health, which is terrible for public discourse, which is destroying human society and civilization. That is the social issue we have. Which is directly caused by corporations trying to make more money and everyone refusing to admit these are terrible for public discourse and everyone using them for public discourse.
On top of this we have an ego war identity going on, on social media. When you're attached to your ego more than your self you have more biases at play. You're practicing false confidence, and you are looking for attention.
False confidence leads to more suffering, more suffering leads to crappier forms of criticism, crappier forms of criticism leads to worse forms of discussion and communication.
We are in a weird spot. At one point we're manipulating people to be stupid, so we can make more money, but at another point we need productive people to make society better. It's a game of - Do I want more money or a better society?
There are different ways you can have a social cost on a social network to facilitate healthy discussions. But the problem occurs like I alluded to in the beginning - the very place great for subjective value and money and business - is terrible for healthy discussions. And yeah everyone is fake on social media because we all deeply know this. Why would you risk polarizing people and telling your truth when the place is already terrible for even having public discourse to begin with. Of course everyone is just going to be fake and agree with whatever ideology is shoved down their throats by whatever corporate establishment is in power or in control at the time. No one would seriously risk losing their jobs, their friends, or their social status. People are not going to say what they are truly thinking.
My solution is you have an anonymous identity (like a forum), but there are heavily moderated rules that take into account biases which force you to have long deep out discussions where you have to practice good forms of criticism. The problem is you have to be really smart in order to account for bias and most people are not. Most people are not going to go on a social network where they have to think of over million different ways they are potentially being biased and try to be objective as possible. Could you imagine? What a mess.
We are trying to build a system where monkeys do not act like monkeys, and it is really hard. Either way you have to have rules. You can't reward bad behavior, or you will just get a place like 4chan which is essentially totally anarchy. It's like going into the jungle and watching millions of chimpanzees flinging their own crap at each other.
These applications are not designed for discussions. You would not have an important discussion at a drunk party, so why would you want it on these applications? Imagine going to a drunk party and trying to have a discussion about an important issue.
Whether our world leaders, parents, educators, and citizens recognize this will probably determine the fate of the species. Think about it. Our ability to critically think about things is influenced by how well we can communicate it and talk about it with other people. So when we do not have good places designed for public discourse we can not critically think and when we can not critically think we can not make decisions that will make society and people better. Our problems: Nuclear War, AI, and The Environment require public discourse. I say this because I have seen world leaders name call and bully each other on Twitter for the past 6 years and I have thought to myself that this has to be better. Like seriously!? These are the people who represent us, and they are acting like little kids.
If we are truly the grownups of the world, the leaders of the world, the adults of the world - then why on earth are we using these places for public discourse when they are clearly not designed for that?
But then I thought to myself what is there was a place for public discourse where world leaders can communicate with each other in a mature way? What of instead of "Fuck You" its "Lets understand each other's differences." Kind of like how podcasts got so successful. Just having people on that explain their world view in a long 2-3 hour format. What if we had a place for our politicians, and leaders that was built for public discourse?
Disconnection
"In social networks, the function of 'friends' is primarily to heighten narcissism by granting attention, as consumers, to the ego exhibited as a commodity" - Byung-Chul Han
What do people mean by being more connected? Are you really more connected? Well you're to advertisers, but when it comes to genuine connections it feels more disconnected. Everyone is faking their niceness and positivity. The truth is we're deeply attracted to our vulnerabilities. And to be vulnerable is to be genuine. And in order to connect with people you have to be vulnerable. There are interests, values, goals, but then there are the vulnerabilities. The truth is if you do not connect with someone's vulnerabilities than you can not create a deep emotional connection with someone. So If you're not being vulnerable then you're not being genuine.
So why is everyone fake? Why can't people be real and genuine? Well as it turns out people do not want to be vulnerable on places that are horrible for their mental health. Manipulating and addicting them to places that are increasing their depression, anxiety, stress, self-harm, and suicide rates. That destroy their privacy where it can ruin their entire reputation, lose all their friends, and get them fired from the entire job market. And that are terrible for discourse where they'll practice crappy forms of criticism, arguments and get stuck in tribal ideologies and echo chambers where again it can destroy their life.
You can imagine hundreds of millions of kids and teenagers trying to build their little fake life on these social applications to come off a certain way to people to get them to like them. Everyone. From high school or university. Trying to show a specific version of themselves. For what? Attention? Or genuine connection? Where to make genuine connections? How do we make them?
More and more kids have never been more disconnected than ever before. Most kids in my age range have at most 3 or 4 friends that they call and that's basically it. If that. But the thing is, it's just so hard now to form real genuine connections. Everyone is terrified that they will say the wrong thing.
In my generation, everyone is like - oh look at my social media! Look at pictures and videos! So the idea is you need the photos and videos to get them to like you. I mean that is so toxic because all you are doing is practicing false confidence.
I care about what we can do to make a better society. If we can tackle an issue. If we can solve a problem. If we can talk about a complex issue. If we can build something. If we can have a genuine conversation. But over 99% of the content you see on social media does not contain that.
If it does then never mind. Then there is room for conversation. There is room for growth.
So if you come out, and you are working on a project that is tackling an issue it's much easier to have a genuine conversation than just trying to impress people. If you try to impress people then you will just attract fake people.
When you watch this video and look at how are society is failing people it's really, really sad.
He talks about the identity ego war we've talked about - everyone is just faking a persona rather than just talking and being honest with people because these places are not good for public discourse, and we are supposed to use them for public discourse? Wasn't just built for manipulation and business? What are we doing here?
Going on social media and complaining that everyone is fake and degenerate is like going to McDonald's and complaining everyone is fat and disgusting. I mean you can imagine. Most social media applications are not made for genuine people. It's not made for smart people. It's not even made to make things better, if that happens it just happens. It is made for business, It's made for manipulation, It's made for short-term feelings - and hey if that manipulation is somehow making society and people better it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
If we used McDonald's as our primary source of nutrition and nobody ever worked out, and we all sat on moving chairs all day and nobody ever moved then everyone would look fat and disgusting. We would have all these physical problems and health issues, and it would be really hard and physically painful to start working out again and eating healthy.
Likewise, if we use Social Media Applications as our primary form of communication and nobody never practiced good criticism then everyone would be fake and degenerate. And we would have all these mental health problems and social issues, and it would be really hard and painful to start practicing good forms of criticism and start being vulnerable, honest, and genuine.
That being said being genuine and being vulnerable start with being honest with yourself, taking action, doing what you actually want and having vulnerable tough real conversations about complex issues with other people.
Friendships and Relationships are a lot more than just shared interests. There is a lot underneath the surface. You don't have to pretend to like someone. If someone is using social media in a way you don't like you don't have to talk to them. That person does not share my values - easy-peasy.
Solutions
"I think that right now you first have to solve what is broken inside these social networks and I do not think it's a technical problem. The real problem is a psychological one." - Chamath Palipaitiya
Let's Practice some good criticism.
Identify The Problem.
What is the problem? Social media is harming society and harming people through mental health, privacy, public discourse, and disconnection.
WHY We Should Get To A Solution.
To drive down the mental health (Depression, Anxiety, Suicide, Self-harm) rates of our children.
For privacy so governments can protect themselves from other governments, and citizens can protect themselves from their own government, and governments can protect their citizens
For public discourse so people can discuss sensitive controversial topics without being censored or ridiculed, where they can practice good criticism, and we can arrive at a reasonable solution to a complex problem. And when we do have big problems we have a place where we can talk about it in a mature way. Big problems REQUIRE public discourse they REQUIRE deep conversations. We will not solve them from stupid tribal ideologies.
For disconnection, so people can have someone to talk to and have a genuine conversation with where they are ok with being vulnerable which will bring down the mental health rates of people feeling disconnected.
Identify That Solution.
My solution is this, we have to have separate places where people can be stupid and have fun and get their instincts out and get their subjective value where advertisers can manipulate people and where businesses can make their money.
We have to have separate places to have smart educated discussions where we can get that objective value and solve problems and think of solutions to difficult problems. We don't want to have our world leaders communicating on god-damn twitter. We have already seen where that has lead to.
We have to have separate places where people can make friends and relationships. Where people can build friendships and relationships. So people do not feel lonely. So people have people to talk to where people can have conversations with people where people can get emotional support, where people can talk about difficult topics.
And finally we have to have separate places where we can talk about ourselves and our identities. When people build their identity on a social network it gives a false perceived sense of confidence and that often leads to more suffering. True confidence requires much deeper tougher conversations about life. And it's much easier to do that on your own website than on a social network. When you can write a whole long text blog that thinks about problems and situations much more deeply and nuanced instead of personal Facebook posts.
We have to have separate places for all those things instead of using the whole thing for both trying to manipulate people into being stupid for money and trying to have conversations and discussions with people. I've mentioned the drunk party analogy, I think we get it.
Now for privacy the U.S. desperately needs legislation at a federal level that protects consumers from corporations taking their sensitive data.
HOW We Should Get To A Solution.
It's not entirely clear, but Artificial Intelligence will certainly play a role. First things First, AI will kill social networks. This will happen not too far in the future - it's pretty much already happening. Bots can already produce YouTube videos and if they can find a way to manipulate kids then they will get hundreds of millions of views. You thought Elsa-gate was bad? Just get ready for Bot-gate!!! Bots can produce photos, bots can produce videos, bots can produce text - AI will kill social networks.
AI will pretty much decode human behavior. They already exist on social networks with millions of different bots that exist that just decode different things you say.
The question is whether we stay on social networks or we evolve from them.
How AI will impact these four different places will be interesting (Business) (Relationships) (Discussions) (Ourselves)
We have to be aware of the dangers and potentials that AI has for social networks. Having new places that account for AI and its take over is essential. That is why the Fediverse movement has grown in recent years basically take all of social media and make it more decentralized which will make it harder for bots to take over:
The problem is, if platforms are too decentralized then it makes it impossible for people to find people and connect with people. If places are completely centralized then bots can essentially mimic human behavior and take over, so I feel like having a place in between is where the future of social media is. We need a place where it's not too centralized but also not too decentralized, however building that place for: business, discussions, relationships, and ourselves, is where the challenge is.