6 billion addicts?
On scrollage and clickage. On dissociating from problems that seem too big. On looking in the mirror.
It all started sometime last spring. Amidst the house reno. An insidious message from my Mom. With a link to instagram and her enthusiastic “super cool laundry room design”. Not that I was obsessed with renovating our laundry room. I wasn’t. Still I clicked. First time in years back in the IG quicksand. On my mobile browser no less. And 45 min later finding myself scrolling through the n-th layer of all those sexy, aspirational homes that always look clean, never messy, even if children live there. You can literally smell the expensive hotel lobby scent from just looking at them.
I deleted the app from my phone sometime in early 2019. My second kid was born and I realized that while posting ridiculous “new mom moments” with my firstborn was fun and funny, with two kids under two… shit got way more real. I didn’t have time to post. No matter how much my life deserved to be shared, if only to normalize the insanity of caring for two small maniacs. Instead Instagram became a place of mindlessness. Consuming scrolls of content from friends slash influencers (I mean - is there a distinction between the two? At the end of the day we are the product…) was the opposite of satisfying. It was gross. I felt gross. So, like with many other things in my life (moving continents, smoking, eating meat, etc.) I pulled the plug. Went cold turkey. Didn’t give it a second thought.
As time went on, I proceeded to feel maybe smug. Friends would share how they were struggling with social media. I would empathize but then challenge them. “Why don’t you just get off of it? If I did it, then you can definitely do it.”
put it so well:“Here’s a lil riddle: what’s the one thing that we all hate but can’t stop doing?
No not taxes or brushing our teeth or using a random tub of chapstick we found on the floor of an airbnb in the mountains.
Social media.
No one I know likes it and yet everyone I know is on it.”
My not being on social media was and continues to be a conversation topic at dinner tables with friends and strangers. People inevitably ask something to the effect of: “So what’s it like?” And up until this spring, I would inevitably say: “It’s fantastic. I don’t miss it. Because - well - is there something to miss?” Except, now that I’ve crossed over to the dark side again, I’m getting sucked back in.
My Mom’s links have recently changed. The renovation is done. But now we have kittens. So she sends me links to ridiculous videos of cats. The cat links - as hard as it is to admit for someone definitely not that into cats - are in fact proving to be difficult to resist from clickage. Clickage occurs. Scrolling proceeds. Still on the mobile browser, no less. I refuse to download the app. I hold boundaries.
But I also keep negotiating with myself. I won’t click on whatever next link I get served. I will tell my Mom to stop sending them to me in the first place. I will log out of the browser experience so that it’s extra painful to log back. I will never ever click on the continuous video feature because it’s a legit black hole and friends I haven’t told I’m “using” will know I am “using”.
I will lose the broadly established respect from some of my good pals. I will no longer be the person they thought I am. (To be fair, this essay may have the same effect, so I guess… whatever?)
Critically, I am no longer the person I thought I am.
And yet, I don’t think I’m entirely to blame. Sure, I definitely lack self-control. But I also think the platforms themselves have gotten more decoy-ish. One thing I’ve noticed, over the ~5 year span in which I haven’t used social media, is how much better at capturing our attention the platform design has gotten. The algorithms, the engagement features, the content creators and the type of the content they put out - all of them have refined and optimized and A/B tested and perfected sucking very ounce of our attention juice.
So me not resisting the initial click is only part of the problem. It’s very apparent that:
It is much easier for my Mom to share links with me (too easy one might say…)
The content itself is crafted to perfection to capture my attention at a level previously unknown to me
Most everything is a video now and my monkey brain gets hooked on that shit faster, and
The feed magically knows what to serve up next to keep me sucked in, making it harder to resist “the scroll”.
Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus outlines a compelling case for why we as users are not at fault here. We’re stuck in a tug of war between wanting to be connected to and inspired by the others, and feeling: judged, deficient, envious, creepy, violated, disgusted. That polarized relationship is fueled by how the technology is designed and the underlining business models. We’re the freakin’ product. These platform’s sole mission is to keep us coming back and keep us scrolling for as long as possible, so that they can sell more ads. Meta / X / TikTok / et al. only make money when we are hooked. Not to mention that the competition between each of those apps means we’re constantly pulled in a different direction. And then, there’s the sheer volume of platforms that we are dealing with as users. Which is creating an overwhelming experience - the notifications, alerts, sounds, vibrations, all pulling at our attention. We’re in a hell of distraction.
There are 6.8 billion smartphones in the world today. (Reminder: about 8 billion people in the world.) Given how addictive those devices and apps are - is it possible we have 6.8 billion addicts in the world? I get goose bumps thinking about that.
Sure - TikTok won’t give you liver failure, technically you can’t overdose on Snap, X can’t physically kill you. I hear that side of the argument. But isn’t an addiction that is so subtle we don’t even call it an addition, all the more terrifying? In a “benign tumor that turns out malignant, only when they cut you open” sort of way…
In his recent installment of “Implications”
explains how the new era of AI powered social media feeds will fuel only our basest human instincts.The first wave of algorithms driving our feeds were driven by our social graphs and interests we’d tell anyone about ourselves – “I love soccer, I’m a hiker, I play piano” – and would serve up content about those interests (as well as updates about our friends’ dogs, etc.). In contrast, this new generation of algorithms seem to burrow deep within our ancestral lizard brain to the raw emotions – hate, fear, anger, lust, envy – that don’t make us proud but are hard to resist. And then these algorithms expand on these ultimately destructive emotions – “If you’re afraid of this, maybe you should also be afraid of this” or “If you hate those people, maybe you should also hate these people.”
The way I read this… We’re going to be experiencing an echo chamber unlike anything we’ve known before. Our kids might grow up thinking that their point of view is the only point of view out there. What will this do to our ability to problem solve, work collaboratively, understand issues from multiple vantage points? If this future takes hold, how are we going to nurture empathy, understanding, and critical thinking in our future generations? And what role should policymakers and regulators play in mitigating the impact all of this will have on society?
I know these are abstract questions. It’s easy to gloss over them. Even though I’m asking these questions, I still find myself dissociating. Throwing my hands up: “Well, I can’t personally solve this so why should I even pay attention…” And yet, something about these problems really riles me up. Especially the kids part. I live my life through a rectangular screen. I don’t want that for my kids.
January 31 saw the “annual flogging of tech CEOs” as Scott Galloway put it. Also known as the Judiciary Committee on Protecting Children Online. I watched the whole thing. Riveting TV.
A bunch of congress people from both sides of the aisle berating a bunch of tech CEOs for the big, fat nothing they do to protect children and teens from the adverse effects of social media.
A bunch of disembodied big tech CEOs (most of them subpoenaed, by the way) sat at a long table, side by side. Their answers felt like witnessing a bunch of sociopaths. Devoid of any semblance of raw emotion, empathy, and most importantly accountability. "Oh I'm a parent too and so sorry for your loss”; “No - I won't support this legislation."
Perhaps like me, you might we wondering why on earth would the regulators need these companies’ support for legislation that will protect children?
And perhaps like me you’ll be curious to learn that Meta holds no. 9 on the list of top spenders in terms of dollars spent on trying to influence government policy - per Open Secrets round up. They spent close to $20 million dollars just in 2023. (And we call this country a democracy… Anywhere else in the world, this would be considered an oligarchy, albeit a transparent one.)
What I mostly took away from witnessing all the performative finger wagging and tail tucking, was that seemingly - at least in recent political era - this is the only bi-partisan issue everyone can agree on. Which gave me this wild thought: perhaps there’s a presidential candidate that could run on this problem as their platform and actually get votes from both sides of the political spectrum?
And yet, the fact that this has been a recurring topic for over a decade and no concrete legislative action has been taken yet… is incredulous.
Then again, it took 45 years to regulate big tobacco. In 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General released their first report on the health effects of smoking - concluding that smoking causes lung cancer and bronchitis. In 2009, Obama signed a law, which gave the FDA authority to regulate the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products. 45 years to regulate something that undeniably kills people. How long will it take to regulate something much less overt and so much more complex?
For added context - as I’m probably not the only person unaware of this fact - big tech has been protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act since 1996 (!!!!) This particular law “provides immunity to online platforms from civil liability based on third-party content and for the removal of content in certain circumstances”. So a platform isn’t liable for any user generated content (helpful explainer here). In other words - if someone sells your kid drugs on TikTok and then that kid dies, TikTok has immunity and the platform cannot be prosecuted, nor do they necessarily need to help the law enforcement track down the person who sold your kid drugs.
Granted the law was signed into existence in a much simpler internet era. There were noisy modems. Only about 100k websites on the internet, at the time. And no apps in sight. Unless you count the AOL messanger. (Was AOL the OG app?!) Drugs were sold on shady corners. Not in DMs. Nobody could have envisioned where we’d land today.
Perhaps, my favorite part of this enthralling judiciary committee, was feeling deep appreciation and affinity with a Republican senator from Alabama. Someone with whom I probably share no other ideological or political alignment on a vast set of other topics. And a poignant question from that very senator which I am taking with me: “is our technology greater than our humanity?”
So what’s the take away here?
I don’t think there is one.
Maybe - get off your devices? Go bird watching?
This is a complex and nuanced territory, and I am out of my depth. I feel particularly terrified of what the future holds for my kids. What happens when they’re thrown into the vortex of a virtual world that has no bounds, a world that won’t forgive and forget, a world that makes you feel either judged or excluded, rarely anything in between.
With my dear friend
I am kicking off an investigation into the different problem lenses related to the role of social media, AI, and the increasingly invisible technology in our lives. I’ll be spending the rest of 2024 digging into these topics and you can expect amble to evolve in line with that.Right now, I am looking to speak with experts in mental health, social and cognitive development, family systems, neuroscience, addiction, social media and AI, trust and safety, as well as practitioners such as clinicians, educators, policymakers, economists, and ethicists. I am also connecting with fellow parents who are thinking about this topic.
If that is you or you have someone in mind that I should speak to, please reach out - I’m at maria@amble.day and I would love to hear from you.
P.S. As I finish writing this essay at my local library, a couple tables away, sit two young-ish teens. There’s clearly some cute teen chemistry going on there. Just a lil’ library date. When I first came in, they were just chatting, laughing, being “normal”. Soon enough, phones emerged from their backpacks. Now, they're still talking and laughing but with their eyes fixed to their screens. Is this still a date? Is there still a connection here? Is it easier to stomach an awkward pause in conversation with a phone in hand? Will they know how to ever go on a phone-less date? Will they ever tell stories that don’t start with “let me show you this picture” or “this chick on TikTok did this thing…”? Will they ever be comfortable with silence? Will they ever know solitude?
I am so ready to be on this journey with you!
So much resonates here, my friend. I've been off of social for 4-5 years now, and my general rule is that I never go check social (even though I still have accounts), but if friends or family send me an Instagram link/video I look at that. It does sometimes mean I'll flick through a couple other things. I think somehow assuming the identity of someone who's "off social media" helps me stop before it turns into a scroll-fest.
I often think about the person quoted in Stolen Focus who invented infinite scroll. He did some rough math on how much time he's taken from people's lives—of course now it's many thousands of collective years—and is deeply haunted by that. I think of him, and that fact, before I get swept in.
I do sometimes miss hearing big news, so-and-so has moved cities, started a new job, lost a parent, etc. I find, though, that when it's something I need to know, friends will text me things directly, like someone might update grandma who doesn't have the internet.
Like you, I worry about our kids', and how we protect them. It's one thing for me to be off of social, and for them it's how they plan to meet up, as well as place where there's infinite scroll, always-on performative posts, endless comparison, etc. etc. It's an ongoing discussion, which is why I'm so happy you're having these conversations.