Social Media – Social Media and Digital Cultures

Shanghaied by Social Media: Your Attention Is a Commodity & App Designers Are Using Addictive Design to Hijack It

Tristan Harris wants you to know that your attention is a commodity. In fact, it’s such a commodity that app designers are crossing ethical lines to grab as much of it as they can.

In his 2016 TED Talk, Harris describes the root of the situation:

“[E]very news site, TED, elections, politicians, games, even meditation apps have to compete for only one thing, which is our attention, and there’s only so much of it. And the best way to get people’s attention is to know how someone’s mind works. And there’s a whole bunch of persuasive techniques that I learned in college at a lab called the Persuasive Technology Lab to get people’s attention.”

The lab he’s referring to here is infamous. If there’s an origin story about how addictive design and social media became so intertwined, its setting would be there – at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

Motivation + Prompt + Ability = Addiction

Back in the mid-to-late 2000s, the Persuasive Technology Lab and its instructor (BJ Fogg) introduced Silicon Valley to the formula at the heart of technology addiction: Fogg’s Behavior Model.

According to Fogg’s Behavior Model, there are three forces – motivation, prompt, and ability – that work together to drive user activity.

Motivation: A reason for users to act. Fogg categorizes them as:
- Sensation (pleasure/pain)
- Anticipation (hope/fear), and
- Belonging (acceptance/rejection)
Prompt (or Trigger): An external or internal “call to action” that reminds users to do a certain behavior.
Ability: Designing in a way that makes a behavior easier to do.

Take, for example, Facebook’s app.

Motivation: Receiving “likes” on something you posted acts as a form of validation and thus motivation to use the app
Prompt: Push notifications telling you that you’ve received a “like” act as a trigger to pull you back into the app.
Ability: The moment you open the app, you can easily and mindlessly peruse material in your feed’s “infinite scroll” will keep your attention with minimal effort on your part.

Think of any popular app (Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) and the ways they use these three forces to keep users’ attention hooked become prolifically apparent.

Even Creators Get Hooked

Hooked By Social Media, Like a Fish — Photo by Bruce Warrington on Unsplash

Even Silicone Valley designers have found themselves hooked.

Leah Pearlman, co-inventor of Facebook’s “like” button, realized she had become addicted to Facebook after she caught herself using the number of “likes” she received as a stand-in for self-worth.

Describing her mindset at the time, Leah recalls:

“When I need validation – I go to check Facebook. “I’m feeling lonely, ‘Let me check my phone.’ I’m feeling insecure, ‘Let me check my phone.'” – BBC interview

And while many designers of this addictive tech did not set out to do an ethically dubious thing, they feel responsible:

In 2006 Mr Raskin, a leading technology engineer himself, designed infinite scroll, one of the features of many apps that is now seen as highly habit forming. At the time, he was working for Humanized – a computer user-interface consultancy.

Infinite scroll allows users to endlessly swipe down through content without clicking.

“If you don’t give your brain time to catch up with your impulses,” Mr Raskin said, “you just keep scrolling.”

He said the innovation kept users looking at their phones far longer than necessary.

Mr Raskin said he had not set out to addict people and now felt guilty about it.

– BBC interview

Harris’ Call to Arms

Tristan Harris has been fighting against tech’s manipulative design practices since he was working for Google back in 2012, when his 144-slide presentation “A Call to Minimize Distraction and Respect Users’ Attention” went viral across thousands of Google employees. Since then, Harris became Google’s first “design ethicist” before breaking ties and founding his own nonprofit, the Center for Humane Technology.

Harris thinks three changes need to take place before addictive technological design loses its hold.

First, technology users need to become aware that their attention is being deliberately cultivated by tech. He argues that this does not have to be an all-or-nothing approach: users can make simple changes (such as turning off all push notifications) to regain control over their tech habits.

Second, the business model of tech and the accountability systems around it needs to become more transparent and ethical – something that will only happen once the people in the locus of control become more accountable and transparent. This could potentially change with some of the legal challenges to tech giants we’ve seen developing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, among others.

Third, app design needs to go through a second birth – “design renaissance” – in which design choices like Fogg’s Behavior Model are used to encourage beneficial instead of addictive user behavior.

Reflecting on Addictive Design

What are your thoughts on addictive app design? Do you think Harris’ suggestions are viable?

Mind Control: Sci Fi or Cell Phones?

This week I am reflecting on a Ted Talk given by Tristan Harris entitled, “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day.” He knows what he is talking about: he was “a design ethicist at Google where he studied how to ethically steer peoples’ thoughts” (Harris, 2017). All of the large technology companies have similar labs and positions, although maybe they are not so ethical. So why do these positions exist? Because cell phone technology has created a competition for our attention.

You are experiencing it every day, maybe without even realizing it. You end up binge-watching a show instead of going to bed because the next episode auto-plays and you get sucked in. A teenager you know asks a friend to continue snapchatting for him while he’s on vacation because he doesn’t want to lose his streak. Videos on Facebook or YouTube start playing automatically so you start watching even though you weren’t that interested. Notifications pop up on your cell phone and send you off thinking about or acting on something you had not planned on thinking about or acting on at that moment. A headline pops up at the bottom of an article you read, and you are off reading another. All of these are examples of a few large technology companies swaying our thoughts and actions to do what they want us to do. They have studied the mind, how to get our attention, and the things that motivate us, like fear of losing something (a Snapchat streak) and outrage. Yes,outrage. This is why you see so many inflammatory posts on Facebook and Twitter. What better way to get our attention?

I admit that I’ve been sucked in. My husband and I don’t watch much television, but when Stranger Things is released all at once and the episodes automatically play one after another, it’s difficult to turn it off. I’ve also seen my teenage kids keep their friends’ Snapchat streaks going in their absence. As Tristan Harris states, “It affects everyone because a billion people have one of these [cell phones] in their pocket.”

He prefaces that statement with the following: “The costs are so obvious…It’s not just taking away our agency to spend our attention and live the lives that we want. It’s changing the way that we have our conversations, it’s changing our democracy, and it’s changing our ability to have the conversations and relationships we want with each other” (Harris, 2017).

That may seem like an extreme viewpoint at first, but let’s look at it a little closer. These technology companies have control rooms full of people trying to decide what will grab our attention, and they are all competing with each other. And as the Netflix CEO flippantly said, they are also competing with things like sleep (Hern, 2017). Seriously, though, what one company does, the other will do also, whether as simple as using auto-play or as disturbing as posting controversial items or telling lies to outrage people and perpetuate conversations online that we might not even want to have.

So what can we do about it? The first step is simply to understand that you can be persuaded and that you might want to protect against being persuaded. Harris goes on to discuss two more steps: a new accountability system for those aforementioned control rooms and a “Design Renaissance.” In a perfect world, wouldn’t it be great if these technology companies were aligned with the goals of those they are trying to influence? He uses the example of a lonely person at home getting on Facebook. Instead of Facebook encouraging him to spend more time onscreen alone, it could encourage him to go out and socialize with friends. However, when the bottom line for these companies is profitability, is that realistic? Perhaps, not. But, I do agree that in order for us to take back some control, the first steps are awareness that we are being persuaded and action to protect ourselves.

So what are your thoughts on the topic? Were you aware of this practice by technology companies? How do you feel about it? Now that you know this is happening, will you change the way you use your cell phone? One small step might be turning off notifications. I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Harris, T. (2017, July 26). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en

Hern, A. (2017, April 18). Netflix’s Biggest Competitor? Sleep. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/netflix-competitor-sleep-uber-facebook

Above the Din

In a July 2017 TED Talk, former Google “design ethicist” Tristan Harris pulled back the curtain on an aspect of social media (SM) that we suspect is there, but seem to dismiss. Social media companies have control rooms where dedicated experts work day and night to keep us online, clicking, liking, responding and interacting. Instead of material goods or cash, media giants compete for our attention. They invest heavily into stimulating our use of social media to keep us engaged with them. Like casinos with free drinks and no clocks or windows, social media spaces are psychologically engineered to keep us from pushing away from the table and walking away. They can be similarly unhealthy.

Since much of the content on SM is user-generated, Twitter and the like need us to feel inspired to respond via posts. It is possible to be a passive user of social media, viewing others’ Facebook posts and Instagram pages, but these sites are incentivized to spur us into action. Kitten videos are nice, but they don’t necessarily incite the level of emotion that causes one to voice a public response that will keep the user-to-user ping pong ball in play. Eliciting a heightened emotional state is effective in keeping users actively engaged. Not all of those emotions are positive, but they work.

“Outrage works really well at getting attention.”

Anger causes us to block out other emotions and stimuli. It dominates our consciousness until it is resolved. When it is directed at social media content, the emotion and the content can form a positive feedback loop of ever more consumption. The accessibility and availability of vast volumes of outrageous content have changed our relationship with social media.

I mentioned that Mr. Harris is an “ethicist.” His dire report on how we are being guided down a path of outrage was not delivered without a way out. His call to action boils down to media giants being better stewards of the world-wide conversation. Being the skeptic that I am, listening to Harris’ presentation, I put on my billionaire CEO hat.”Where do my advertising dollars come from if I dial down the outrage,” I asked.

I’m learning how to leverage the massive social media landscape in order to establish learning modes for my 21st century learners. Coming from a traditional teaching role, I’ve noted the transformative effect Sanpchat, et c. have had on attention spans and social lives. I’m concerned that learners will struggle to switch contexts from casual socializing to study or work. My lessons will not be “click bait” or shallow headlines, and I don’t want them to be treated as such just because they arrive via channels that deliver that sort of thing. Blogger Christopher Pappas agrees, and adds that frequent SM users risk “cognitive overload.” Will I need to have a control-room full of engineers helping me to compete for my learners’ attention amid a world full of chatter? Will they be hopelessly distracted by notifications on their phone if that is where my next learning module is accessed?

Mr. Harris asserts that to pull ourselves out of the outrage-loop and return to healthy levels of screen time a few changes are needed:
1. We users need to recognize how vulnerable we are to marketing and persuasion by manipulation-experts who don’t have our best interests at heart.
2. Media companies should be more transparent about how they manipulate the dialogues they host, and
3. A ‘design renaissance’ should occur in which social media spur us to a healthier kind of action, both online and off.

Can it be done?

The Center for Human Technology has some ideas to help us design ‘healthier’ online consumables, for lack of a better word. Check out their Humane Design Guide here.
What do you think? Pick one of Mr. Harris’ three changes above and make a realistic suggestion about how it can be achieved. We’d love to hear from you.

Our Divided Attention

At the end of our lives, all we have is our attention and our time. What will be time well spent for ours? – Tristan Harris

Everything happened inadvertently in front of our eyes. Suddenly we had the possibility of connecting with people we had not seen in years. We could see each other, know what they were doing, share our stories through photos, videos, texts. What could be wrong about it?

I am still surprised to think that everything beautiful about social media has been transformed into danger, distrust, bullying, lack of ethics and a waste of our time … and everything has happened so quickly and so subtly that we did not even realize what was happening.

Harris’s talk is a wakeup call to become aware of what are we wasting our time, our attention and our effort on. On worthwhile things?

via GIPHY

In the last weeks, we have reflected on the dangers that have arisen along with the evolution of technology and especially social media. Harris argues that we must recognize the fact that we are being manipulated and persuaded; that new models of responsibility and transparency must be created for those who are doing that (or will do); and, finally, that we design a new renaissance.

This last argument drew my attention the most. The “renaissance” design that Harris speaks of would help us focus our attention on things that are worth the effort. If we don’t refocus on transcendentally important issues, in whose hands will we be?

Collectively, we must redefine our priorities and act accordingly. Problems such as poverty, hunger, quality of education, gender equity, climate action, peace, and justice, etc. will not fix themselves. They also require our attention and more importantly, our actions.

How should we start? Please, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Social Media as Community Organizing

I work in a small city of just under 30,000 people. In a lot of senses, it’s a bedroom community, as most people that live there commute to work in one of the much larger cities nearby. The city and residents pride themselves on a very strong sense of community, a vibrant downtown and excellent engagement in causes both local and global. As an example, within my workplace, we have nearly 300 active volunteers per year, which calculates out to an equivalent of approximately 1% of the city’s residents being active in the library, a rather impressive quantity, given that many other causes in town are also well-supported.

I have frequently observed the impact of social media on various causes and information-sharing in the city. I am aware of a minimum of three Facebook groups moderated by local citizens used to disseminate information, share opinions, publicize events, and elicit support for various causes. Various colleagues have joined them as an additional avenue to spread information about library offerings and have an eye on topics of local interest. I subscribe to one of the groups and can think of many times that I have seen its role in shaping public sentiment or garnering attendance for rallies, vigils, or City Council meetings. It can be a dumping ground for people’s negative attitudes, complaints about traffic, bad manners, or local policies. However, it has also been used to get word out about local candidates and why they’re running, as well as campaign events for folks to learn more about them. I’ve seen organizers use it to get carpool arrangements started for more distant marches and rallies, and to share suggestions on how people can comment on upcoming legislation or potential City policies before they are voted on or enacted. Local hot topics include fracking, intergovernmental relations, and some of the local festivals. All of these have plenty of posts by people sharing their opinions with various levels of civility, and also give like-minded folks a place to hear about meetings or other gatherings where they can learn more about or further advance their causes.

We frequently think of social media being used to organize people that are geographically spread, and that is clearly a major impact it can have to unite people that may never meet. It’s interesting to see it also used to streamline communication for people that live in the same place and want to connect in person but may not know about their joint interests or local manifestations of those causes without the medium of these community stream-of-consciousness style conversations.

Drink Responsibly Online

This is not a teetotaler response, rather it is closer to teaching internet users to “drink responsibly.”

Within the “problems with social media” shared in the 30-Day Writing Challenge on Facebook, there were a variety of what one might call truths and others that could be categorized more as exaggerations. Take, for example, that the internet “destroys relationships.” I would counter that it might have just as much potential to build them up. In fact, social media might be where you find those relationships in the first place.

To Paul Miller, reflecting back on his year offline in his article in The Verge [May 1, 2013), I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet, the have or have not of the internet became a relational issue, and that it still is. The internet is simultaneously the hero and the villain. Paul felt a degree of freedom without his “Twitter interactions”; although I wonder what he really means by “interactions.” Scrolling through tweet after tweet, hashtag after hashtag, can be overwhelming, overstimulating, mind-blowing (in a not-so-good way). On the other hand, having a Twitter Chat with close friends and followers can be rejuvenating, connecting, even community-building. Hopefully Paul’s return to Twitter a year later was with a more relational and conversational perspective, rather than as “passive consumption,” as he described his downfall into people-less pastimes.

On a potentially important sidenote, as Paul’s internet-less year continued, it was quite telling when he confessed how he began spending his time on “offline vices.” It is well documented that a main cause of isolation in young people (or older people, for that matter), is video game “use”; and my reference to addictive behavior, as in “drug use,” is intentional. Video games need not be on the internet to be distracting, all-consuming, and isolating. In addition, Paul referenced his switch from paper book reading to audio book listening. Certainly book reading is considered positive brain ‘exercise’; but I haven’t heard that book listening provides the same benefits. Furthermore, multi-tasking these activities can be downright exhausting – even when done on the couch. How ironic. It might very well be that Paul’s choices of offline vices were just as detrimental to his relationships as his online ones.

The good and evil debate about the internet continues. It reduces our in-person engagement, the see-hear-feel of human connection. Yet it also allows for networking that could otherwise never take place – across thousands of miles and time zones. For example, FaceTime includes real live tone and expression that the snail mail written word could never provide. My family members are more connected than they have ever been; with dozens of communications a day, rather than a phone call every week…or month.

And in this battle against the internet, I wonder if there aren’t those who are fighting a fight that they can’t win, when they could be victorious if they were to change their perspective on what the fight really is. “Get people off the internet!”, they cry, restrict their phone time, remove that SnapChat app. But let’s rethink this. As Paul put it, the internet is where the people are, where they can be connected. The internet natives are “people who need people” and social media is a place they can find them.

So possibly the role to have is not one of mighty wrestler against the internet enemy, but rather of active mentor, guide, and social media navigator. This is not a teetotaler response, rather it is closer to teaching internet users how to “drink responsibly.” Possibly the conversation to have is about who the online connections are with, and what are the conversations they are having? Maybe a more effective discussion would be about how to branch out beyond snaps of what was served for breakfast (although there is something fun and whimsical about this too). Let’s explore together how we can pose (or post) a question, or make a thoughtful statement, that might just result in an answer with some content – with some heart. No, not every time… but sometimes. Let’s see if we can have a real conversational exchange once or twice a day – it need not be lengthy – although by definition a conversation seems to imply some actual content. On the other hand, what is real content? Let’s have that conversation. I welcome your thoughts.

Five Problems with Social Media

*Photo credit: Steve Johnson on Unsplash*

Last week I wrote about the mental health issues related to social media. This week, let’s pull that critical lens back a little further to evaluate five additional problems with social media.

Problem #1: Social Media Is Addictive

Most social networks and their content creators are fighting for your attention. After all, why – with all the other things you could be doing online – should you pay attention to them?

To ensure that not only will you visit once, but you’ll visit again and again (and again), social media platforms and posters have every incentive to be as addictive as possible.

And they’re getting better at it. Social media addition has become prevalent enough to spark some serious discussion in the mental health field, as well as in the field of ethics.

Learn the basic stats of social media addiction here.

Check if you have any symptoms of social media addiction here.

Problem #2: Social Media Kills Productivity

This shouldn’t be a surprise given the addictive nature of social media, but turns out it’s difficult to focus – let alone get into one of those highly productive “flow” states – when you are only a ping or click away from social media.

What you intend to be a quick check on that notification that just popped up on your phone can turn into a massive time sink. That one thing leads to another ad infinitum (see: addictive nature of social media) in something I’ve heard referred to rather aptly as “going down the rabbit hole.”

Learn more about the effect of social media on workplace productivity here.

Problem #3: Social Media Enables the Spread of Misinformation

To quote that line frequently misattributed to Winston Churchill: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

Misinformation spread by social media takes many forms. It could be benign, in which someone misquotes or misremembers something (like the falsely attributed Churchill quote). It could also be an intentional falsehood: catfishing, posing as someone else, lying to further yourself or a political cause, even propaganda.

For the vast majority of social media platforms, there is no fact-checking, no editorial staff ensuring that the information being spread is true.

To make matters worse, we are more likely to share information that we have an emotional gut-reaction to – which also happens to be information more likely to be false. This knee-jerk proclivity for sharing is something that attention-seekers and propagandists are happy to exploit.

Read about why social media is so good at spreading accidental and intentional misinformation and biases here.

Problem #4: Social Media Encourages Extremism and Echo Chambers

Analysts have demonstrated time and again that social media is more likely to encourage extremism and echo chambers where the only opinions we hear are the same as our own.

There are a number of reasons for this. Social media users tend to engage with like-minded users, which leads to framing your ideas for a specific audience of like-minded peers, and exacerbates in-group/out-group thinking. In certain cases, this culminates in stoking fears about out-groups and posting increasingly extreme content as that’s what gets the most attention.

Social media platforms also contribute to this by showing only cultivated content that aligns with your likes, as opposed to content that challenges your views. (This one-sided-ness is part of why I find my Facebook feed and YouTube recommendations so predictable and boring, I think.)

Read about how social media builds extremist divisions here.

Problem #5: Social Media Contributes to “Mean World Syndrome”

Mean World Syndrome is a concept originated by George Gerbner in the 1970s to describe how mass media’s content tends to make viewers believe that the world is much more dangerous than it actually is.

While Gerbner was originally focused on television’s impact on society, Mean World Syndrome has been argued to apply to many other mass media technologies, including social media.

When you log onto Facebook or Twitter and scroll through a list of grievances, horrors, tearjerkers, and nastiness, the feelings you come away with are fear, hopelessness, anger, and jaded cynicism about humanity. That is Mean World Syndrome.

Learn more about what Mean World Syndrome is and how it manifests in television and social media here.

Read about ways to combat Mean World Syndrome thoughts and perceptions here.

Have you experienced any of these problems with social media yourself? Share your thoughts below.

Empathy & Social Media

Social media can be a double-edged sword. They have advantages and disadvantages and the key to a healthy social media life is empathy, self-control, and moderation.

This week we have seen some of the frightful consequences of the misuse of social media. We saw how a tweet can destroy a life. Reference was made to “5 problems with social media”, we saw the results of disconnecting from the internet for a whole year, and finally, we laughed a bit and reflected on the trend of using #hashtagsforeverything in the video #Hashtag. Without a doubt, social networks have transformed our lives and society.

I think Paul Miller would say that it is not social media’s fault, but of how we use them and what our intentions are. When he disconnected, he thought his problems would end; he would modify his habits and be a productive member of society. However, this was not the result he obtained. He continued procrastinating, wasting his time and alienating himself even more from his friends and family. His conclusion: social media is not the problem. What happens in social media is only a reflection of who we are individually and collectively.

Also this week, in another class, we were reading about empathy. The concept of empathy is a bit problematic to define. It takes a little imagination and willingness to be empathetic and “put yourself in someone else’s shoes” or better yet, “become the other” to understand him/her. Although we read about empathy under the “Design Thinking” framework, I believe that for our holistic development it must also relate to our overall psyche and lifestyle.

Empathy leads us to make decisions with others in mind. Many of the problems that social media have generated are due to self-centeredness and lack of empathy.

Source: Six Habits of Highly Empathic People, By Roman Krznaric on Friday September 9th, 2016

How do you solve some of the problems generated by social media with empathy?

Problem One: Shaming, defamation, cyberbullying.

Before insulting and acting cruelly against someone with whom we disagree or who has offended us, one must act with caution. What consequences can a violent reaction bring to me and the other person? It is better to respond than to react. Reacting is an impulsive act; Responding requires thinking before acting.

Problem Two: Wasting time and being unproductive.

Instead of numbing the brain scrolling down forever through Facebook or Instagram, you can take advantage of time with others. Have a conversation with your partner, a friend or your mom. Take advantage of leisure time to be productive: bake a cake for your family, play with your children, volunteer at an NGO. Do something that helps others.

Problem Three: Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

Be happy for the success of others. Envy produces nothing positive; it hurts you and your relationship with others. Rejoice because others are having great experiences and sharing them with you.

Problem Four: Privacy issues.

You don’t need to share every idea, thought, emotion in the cyberspace. As the saying goes: We are masters of our thoughts and slave to our words. There is no need to oversharing, especially when you can affect or offend others for your opinions.

In conclusion, I think the biggest lessons are first, to be empathic with others when it comes to social networks and other public forums and, second, to think before posting. Life is too short to not live in harmony with oneself and those around us, even in the cyberspace.