I love social media so much that I leave no stones unturned to heap praises on it:
Yes, that’s a post on social media describing the hate for social media. Problem? Man has gotta fulfil social obligations sometimes.
I recently came across the manifesto of the anti-social media app minutiae. As noted in the manifesto,
Social media was supposed to keep us in touch with our friends but has instead turned us all into unwitting monkeys filling out the world’s longest consumer survey.
Just like above, the privacy concerns and consumeristic aspects of social media are often talked about but the way it influences our behaviour is usually left out. I take the latter as a premise for this article.
Social Media as a Panopticon
With many of us spending most of our time online during this pandemic, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that we are living in a Panopticon. Jeremy Bentham, the father of modern utilitarianism had devised the model of a prison, the Panopticon, wherein the prisoner cells were located around a central guard tower. The prisoners are indeed exposed to the vision of the guards; however, they cannot look back into the tower. Uncertain about whether they are currently being observed or not, the prisoners thus self-regulate themselves almost all the time.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault was overtly fascinated by Bentham’s Panopticon. Foucault argues that living a life in a Panopticon causes the prisoners to internalise the behaviour recommended by the institution. After a while, it gets absorbed into them to such an extent that they continue to follow it even when let out of the Panopticon.
Social media involves interaction between various participants, where each participant is the target of subjectivity. Although here, unlike a Panopticon, no central guard is watching over all the participants. Here, the participants themselves play both the roles, administering and judging each other as they move about sharing content. It, therefore, wouldn't be wrong to say that each participant subjectivizes themselves as well. They aim to project the best of their image, be it by showing that they care for a cause or otherwise, and receive acceptance from the ever-judging crowd.
Revenue, Engagement & Confirmation Bias
It is not unknown that the prime model of the various free social networking platforms is to increase user engagement and thus the ad revenue. There is extensive use of algorithms to show relevant content and increase engagement levels. These opaque pieces of code track every interaction of the user on the site and determine the most appealing content for them.
The issue with these algorithms is that their only aim is to display whatever content gets the maximum possible engagement and thus they tend to ignore the less appealing content. Naturally, we find the content of our interests more interesting and so the algorithms prioritize that.
Now the human brain is imperfect. One of the so-called imperfections is the confirmation bias. It is the natural human tendency to look for, interpret and remember information that reaffirms our pre-existing beliefs. The brain likes to defend its pre-existing beliefs and looks for information that makes them appear concrete, regardless of what others may believe. And it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the same happens when we use social media. People tend to interact more with the content that reaffirms their bias.
Echo Chambers & Radicalization
If we couple the bias and the opaquely coded algorithms whose only aim is to increase engagement, we see a myriad of content thrown up on our social media feeds that not only reaffirms our pre-existing beliefs but also introduces us to other users who have similar opinions. This leads to the formation of epistemic bubbles.
Often confused with echo chambers, epistemic bubbles are slightly different. Epistemic bubbles are formed when one side isn’t exposed to the opinion of the other side whereas echo chambers are a step ahead and are formed when one side has reaffirmed their beliefs to such an extent that the opinion of the other side automatically appears false, untrustworthy to them.
It can be argued that even traditional means of information i.e., newspapers, TV channels are a form of epistemic bubbles. However, it needs to be noted that they share a relatively higher responsibility to factually check information. They can be held accountable for the factual correctness of the information regardless of how it was presented. This, unfortunately, isn’t possible on social media. Excluding from the renowned publications, there are perhaps millions of sources that do not fact check the information that they provide. And their dangers immensely increase when inside an echo chamber.
Living in an echo chamber can affect a person's views and opinions dramatically, for not only they are unexposed to the other side but they also find them unworthy of trust. It further worsens due to subjectivation when they try to project themselves as similar to the other ‘better’ participants in the echo chamber. The result is a gradual fall into the rabbit hole, the rabbit hole of falsifications, extreme polarisation, and cyberbalkanization.
All this, however, doesn't imply that every social media user is at the risk of radicalization but instead serves as an example to show how a user can gradually slip into a rabbit hole. But we do have a myriad of other issues as well.
In 2017, Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook in a talk at Stanford admitted, “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works”. Here is an interesting article that talks about dopamine, social reward and addiction. And an article from MIT Sloan talking about the case for new social media business models.
I would also like to recommend you to read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. It’ll definitely be worth your time.