social media | The Perfect Response

The solitary self is becoming an unfamiliar place we would rather not visit.

We can all celebrate the expansion of information made possible by the internet. But there is a price to be paid for total connectivity, especially the portion of it that drops into the black hole of phone culture. The ability to call or receive messages from people we know or public figures we ‘follow’ takes a heavy toll on the energies of addicted users. It’s becoming a familiar complaint.

Notice what people are doing when they are caught in a pause between activities: maybe waiting for a train, a friend, or the start of a meeting. They are usually in the thrall of their devices. Any pause in the day must be filled with the search for an incoming distraction. The solitary self is mostly an unwelcome place we would rather not visit. True, a person could be reading a provocative book on their device. But it is far more likely they are cleansing their phone of throwaway messages: thumbing through the detritus of a culture increasingly caught in a web of inconsequential moments.

If the need for personal mobility arises, the protocols of this addiction usually require a device clutched in the right hand, ready to receive an incoming “message.” The left hand is the withering appendage still used to carry whatever else must also come along.

There can be no doubt that a portable phone has all kinds of useful functions for journalists, travelers, business people, and many of the rest of us. But it has become an easy reason to postpone more demanding tasks. We are too ready to divert our attention to screens of minor delights. Even counselors and psychotherapists are now advised to tolerate mid-session phone-checking from their younger clients, who now average well over 100 hits a day (Psychotherapy Networker, November, 2018).

Consider a brief sampling of what this overuse is costing us.

–Intrapersonal thought is impaired. We are not the people we should be if we don’t consider our actions and decisions. The work of a fully functioning human includes examining the events and moments in our lives. Plato’s reminder that “an unexamined life is not worth living” is self-evident. We need time to hear ourselves in order to set our own compass for the days and weeks ahead. While many are proud to cite their devotion to yoga or meditation, the concentration and sustained awareness they can produce used to be a common experience for previous generations. The natural rhythms of the pre-digital world gave individuals a natural window to their consciousness.

A spectator’s world is one where things happen to them; where the screen is to be seen; where reaction dominates over action.

–Time is lost on tasks that could be more innovative, creative and educational. We seem to turning into the kinds corpulent and devoted spectators that populated Pixar’s prescient WALL-E (2009). A spectator’s world is one where things happen to them; where the screen is to be seen; where reaction dominates over action. Since creativity and innovation require sustained attention to a single task, we must nurture the capacity for such linear thinking. How many symphonies would Joseph Haydn have written if his pocket held an iPhone 8? He wrote over a hundred in his lifetime, but I doubt he would have made it even to the Farewell Symphony, Number 45.

–Personal identity that needs to form and evolve is put under siege. We can easily succumb to the seemingly happier but mostly inflated self-presentations offered by others. Evidence from recent studies suggests that many adolescents tend to fall into lower levels of self-esteem if they are heavy users of social media. (Journal of Adolescence, August 2016, 41-49). This is probably because online communities like Instagram tend to norm what’s “cool” and what’s not. The resultant checking of self against others drains away the natural impulse to shape one’s identity to passions found in the inner self.

–Real-time contact with others is decreased. For many of us, rates of daily “screen time” have crept into the eight hour range. Phones make up about half of that time. Researchers have also documented a disturbing recent trend indicating that middle and high school students are avoiding actual interaction with strangers or adults. For them, face-time with all but a best friend is stressful. More perversely, as recently noted, a phone has become its own excuse to not see or connect with another.

The new year is a good time to reconsider what matters. Phone culture is too often the cause of a downward spiral where ‘listeners’ no longer hear, observers no longer notice, and the rest of us are on the verge of becoming immune to the advantages of figuring out what we actually think.

_{Russian Facebook ad}

Barack Obama was right. Russia is a pariah for good reasons, and all the worse for ‘having nothing that other countries want.’

Recent news of extensive Russian infiltration of American social media sites is hardly a surprise. We have known for some time that a country that has retreated from its once-blossoming democracy has been interested in sowing discord in ours. Authoritarian regimes tend to be lazy. It seems to have been easy to ‘play’ American social media to confuse and divide Americans. On the available evidence recently released in two Senate Intelligence Committee reports, the Putin government decided it would do its best to use hostile and divisive information to undermine the Clinton campaign in favor of Donald Trump’s. As is increasingly apparent, the President has an indecent soft spot for Russian money and power. By contrast, the former Secretary of State was always far more critical of Russian ambitions generally, and the annexation of Crimea in particular.

To be sure, it requires a selective memory for any American to criticize others for meddling in the politics of a foreign nation. We used to make it a habit in Latin America and sometimes the old Soviet Union. Even so, it’s a stunning act of hubris when the leader of a government that can’t even decide if they will tolerate rap music decides American elections are fair game. Russians exploited our personal and media freedoms to disperse bogus opinions that were ostensibly from Americans, many apparently aimed at alienating African American voters.

It’s an understatement to note that Russia looks desperate and weak to enforce authoritarianism values at home while exploiting the freedoms of other nations. Barack Obama was right. Russia is a pariah for good reasons and, to paraphrase him: all the worse for ‘having nothing that other countries want.’

The tech sector has always been slow to see the effects of their technologies on the lives of their users.

Aside from possible complicity for our own President, what makes all of this news of Russian interference worse is compelling evidence that major social media giants suppressed awareness of these planted ads, opinions and news stories. According to the Senate reports, a Kremlin-backed group uploaded over ten million tweets to Americans, 1100 videos and over 30 million Facebook posts. All appeared to be coming from Americans.

Facebook is an especially egregious case. Born as the plaything of privileged kids luxuriating in their own narcissism, the fast-growing company expanded under the thrall of being another tech money machine. It’s leaders failed to notice or did not care that Facebook was fast becoming a new kind of agora: a digital version of the town square cherished long ago by early Greek democracies. Along with Google, Youtube, Twitter and Instagram, it prospered on the illusion that it was functioning as just a “personal” form of media. It was meant to make it possible to observe others’ best versions of themselves. Yet the problem with this orientation was that their leaders were slow to notice that their house was on fire. They were abetting a colossal fraud on the American public. Apparently the self-presentation mirror is too alluring to be bothered by bigger ideas like fairness and democracy.

Social media executives tend to see themselves as being in the ‘common carrier’ business, providing channels but not content. Instead, we must begin to insist that they view themselves using the higher standards that apply to content providers. Perhaps they merit less regulation than broadcasters. But the days of making connections without noticing the social havoc they can create need to be over.

The tech sector has always been slow to see how the aggregation of people over time and space would have important consequences for the soundness of our Republic. Too many have been neither interested or motivated to function as corporate citizens, in the full sense of that phrase. As hapless tools of Russian disinformation, they have become a drag on the nation, doing too little too late to protect America’s fragile open society.