There is so much money at stake for so many people and technology is evolving so fast and yet our brains are not even close to being able to handle this. Our lizard brain is so powerful and so dominating. When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s we talked with each other on the phone all the time. Probably wasted a ton of time. But as Tristan Harris states in his TED Talk we didn’t have engineers peering into our conversations calculating more and more ways to get our attention. As Tristan shares in his TED Talk, the competition for our attention is so fearce. He also shares that Netflix competition is Facebook, YouTube and Sleep. That’s actually really depressing from a fathers’ perspective. Plus considering the fact that there are 2.4 million users worldwide, that’s a lot of people being influenced by the engineers at Facebook. And with billions of dollars at stake, why wouldn’t they?
That all being said, about 5 months ago, I deleted my Facebook app on my phone and now rarely use my Instagram (owned by Facebook) account. I’m super thankful that I did and I have definitely wasted less time on social media over these past months. I also was really having a hard time hearing about how Facebook was using my data to rack up gazzillions of dollars and peer into my life.
I chose this quote from the Lowenthal article with the lens of being a dad. We try and be very intentional with my kids (17 and 18 years old). There’s no doubt they’re creating a footprint that my kids are creating that potential employers or, God willing, their spouses will be viewing. Bottom line is, it all matters.
“A digital footprint, according to Hewson (2013), Boutlines a
person’s online activities, including their use of social networking platforms^ (p. 14). A digital footprint is therefore
created whenever we use networked technology. However,
when left unattended, a digital footprint may fail to reflect
what we want it to reflect about ourselves professionally, emphasizing only our personal interactions and activities” (Lowenthal, p 321).
Lowenthal, P. R., Dunlap, J. C., & Stitson, P. (2016). Creating an Intentional Web Presence: Strategies for Every Educational Technology Professional. TechTrends, 60(4), 320–329. doi: 10.1007/s11528-016-0056-1
What’s your perspective? How have your social media habits changed in light of many of the new scandals that Facebook has gone through in terms of how the company has used your data?