Social Media Algorithms: “A Conveyor Belt to Someplace Bad”

selective focus photography of person using iphone x — Photo by Kerde Severin on Pexels.com

Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.

So what chance does the next generation stand? Algorithms were introduced to my generation gradually, in the 2010s. The next cohort of kids, Generation Alpha (born after 2010), is coming online in the 2020s, a time when everything is already at the extreme—beauty standards, dating discourse, therapy culture, political polarization. Every aspect of their lives—from how they look to how they feel to what they believe—will be guided by algorithms from the very start.

Parents of Gen Alpha must take this seriously. I speak to many parents about social media; they worry that their kids will talk to predators or be exposed to explicit self-harm and suicidal content — which are, of course, real risks. But there is also something more pernicious, and more destabilizing happening. Something we have to get ahead of. Because maybe it seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.

What I would say to the parents of Gen Alpha is: don’t let your children open accounts on social media platforms when they are still in early puberty. Delay their entry until at least 16. Prioritize their in-person interactions, and encourage them to discover who they are from real-world experiences, not manipulative algorithms.

And what I would say to Gen Alpha is simple: get off your screens. Delete the apps. What these continuous streams of content do is prevent you from taking a second to pause, reflect on who you really are, and realize where you are headed.

Because you aren’t ugly. You are probably not sick. And if you are, let a doctor tell you that, not an influencer chosen by an algorithm. Just look at us, in the generation ahead of you. There are a lot of us now in our 20s who feel utterly lost. Detached from who we really are. . . The conveyor belt runs day and night. Let’s do what we can to help Gen Alpha step off—or avoid stepping on in the first place.
Freya India, writing at Jon Haidt’s After Babel Substack, “Algorithms Hijacked My Generation“

New technologies cause disruption. They amplify the best and the worst of human nature. They require time for the adaptation of behavior, the accrual of wisdom regarding best use, and the learned discipline that accompanies best use, i.e. boundary setting, desired ends, healthy outcomes, etc.

As an older Millennial (or one of the youngest Gen Xers, depending on where you draw the line), I’ve been subject to the problems and distortions brought about by the internet age. I became an active user of the internet in late Web 1.0, remaining online through Web 2.0, and now bracing for what is ahead with Web 3.0. I have not passed through these transitions unscathed, and the irony of calling myself an internet “user” has not escaped me. Some hope the future of the web will look more like its past, with a return of micro-communities as majorities abandon social media platforms. I also have fond memories of the blogging days.

My assessment is that the future of the internet will have continuity and discontinuity with its past, offering an engine of mass distraction for vast majorities of the populace, while simultaneously creating space for micro-niches of generativity, creativity, and connection, yielding both good and bad. We’ll fix some problems. We’ll create others. We’ll learn some lessons. We’ll unlearn others. The human fabric is always fraying and being mended. The sages among us will share their wisdom, and those with ears to hear will be wise to listen and put what has been learned into practice. Furthermore, they will do well to pass those lessons down another generation.

That’s where Ms. India’s essay comes in, featured by Jon Haidt at his After Babel Substack newsletter. She’s paying attention. She’s seeing what social media services, at their worst, produce. She’s sounding the alarm. If social media engines were housed in a factory somewhere vulnerable to a good smashing, the next step would be obvious.

I suspect frying all the servers would be just as fruitless as the actions of those Luddites of old. The hydra would continue sprouting heads. Social media, in some form, will persist.

Habits of resistance, then, must be cultivated. Ms. India’s essay helps by exposing us to social media’s most pernicious effects. She offers a warning and directs us toward safe passage.

In Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Odysseus desires to hear the song of the sirens. Their song was beautiful and irresistible to those who heard it. But hearing their song led to destruction. In order to hear it and survive, Odysseus orders his men to tie him tightly to the mast, to restrain him as their ship sailed by these creatures. The crew was to plug their ears with beeswax. They were not permitted to hear it themselves. Odysseus, however, would receive their song freely and fully. The crew was to keep him secured tightly no matter his degree of begging, pleading, madness, or protestation. Odysseus survives their song. His crew passes to safety. Some writing after Homer claimed the sirens were fated to die if any heard their song and lived. Odysseus, then, could add the sirens to his list of those he vanquished.

Perhaps Ms. India is a modern Odysseus. Maybe her work will not only spare her crew. Maybe monsters will be slain, freeing countless others from the suffering that might have been.

When I speak with my children about the power of social media, they have difficulty imaging its destructive effects. I am very aware that my influence is countered by that of their peers, who outnumber me by far, and who are part of relational networks that make different choices than those I advocate for. I’ve been pressured to make compromises, to reason with my children as best as I’m able, to permit them to make their own discoveries (and mistakes), to remain in dialogue with them about which choices might be better, more life giving, more wise. I constantly encourage them to look for something better than what the world places before their eyes, to not only look at things seen, but to things unseen, even things to come.

As human beings, we fix our gaze on something. We look to our community, culture, and traditions for identity and meaning. We look for models. At present, we look into the portals opened by our phones. We’re fed and we’re led. We’re captivated, carried away. More often than not, we know not where we are being carried, only to arrive and wonder how we ended up in such a strange place, with such a strange way of being, if we wonder at all.

We’re made to gaze on something better, something divine. As a Christian person, I believe we are made to gaze upon God, the God in whose image we are made and who remakes us into that image through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. But to be remade, we must behold. We must look to the Lord, our Maker.

But if we are to behold, we have to break our gaze from elsewhere, whether it be social media or ourselves. Temptations are pervasive. Distractions are innumerable. The spells cast by social media algorithms are seductively powerful. They must be resisted. They must be named. They must be rebuked.

One step in that direction is to expose social media algorithms as the siren-sounding lie machines they are, made not to connect or educate or help or mobilize or empower us, but to engage, consume, and devour us, until we are completely and totally possessed.

What We’re Tracking This Summer: Social Interaction

Last summer I shared a reading list we prepared for our children and how we planned to encourage, track, and reward time spent reading.

We still want our kids to read. They enjoy reading. We’re glad! And we’re already off and running in the reading department.

But this summer we’re facing a different challenge: saccharine substitutes for social interaction that are made available through technology. We limit screen time and only subscribe to a couple of different streaming services. Television is not our greatest temptation and is far from our default activity. Instead, our biggest time vortex is text messaging, YouTube, and a couple of other social media services. In our household we’ve limited access to social media, but we encourage our children to interact with their friends and stay in touch through a messaging app. We see the connections and conversations as positive. But we’re aware of the pitfalls.

What’s our foremost concern? At Forbes, psychologist Mark Travers writes, “Social media can create a false sense of connection and belonging. Online interactions lack the nonverbal cues, physical presence, and emotional intimacy that are crucial to building and maintaining meaningful relationships.” Online interactions are illusory. They aren’t a zero calorie substitute, but they are a lite version of social interaction. You feel like you are in community, but those connections lack the depth, satisfaction, and opportunities for growth in social aptitude that in-person interactions yield. We want our children to connect with other human beings beyond the limited capacity that the online spaces allow.

Many of our summertime in-person interactions are built into the calendar. We’re participating in camps, church life, teams sports, sending our kids to the pool, encouraging play with neighbors, trips, and family time around the dinner table.

But to make sure we’re balanced, we’re adding evaluation and intention to our weekly planning conversations.

What will we track, and how? Each week, Molly and I plan to cover a recurring to-do item during our weekly family meeting: “Evaluate Kids’ Total Social Interactions for the Week, Create Opportunities.” After taking a quick tally, we’ll adjust our plans accordingly.

Routinely taking stock will help us see how we’re doing. Locking down screens is a step in the right direction. But we have to do more than cap screen time. We’ve generated a list of activities our children can choose from (with their help) during downtime. However, we’ll also proactively plan time with friends, people they’d like to deepen their relationships with. We’ll invite their input along the way.

A little bit of boredom is okay. Boredom is often the first step on the way to expressions of creativity. We want our kids to rest, unplug, relax, and find renewal during the summer months, too.

We also want them to learn the art of conversation, to make connections, practice friendship and develop social skills. The best way to do that is presence with people. As parents, we create those opportunities for connection. That’s our responsibility. Then, we cross our fingers. The rest is up to them.

Digital Connectivity is Overrated

Cal Newport relays a story from a reader named Peter who recently visited the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site in Stonewall, Texas. LBJ had a phone installed poolside while serving as president in order to remain accessible. A tour guide told visitors this story, who responded with laughter. We all have phones now. Everywhere.

Newport observes:

In an age of smartphones, everyone has access to a phone by the pool. Also in the bathroom. And in the car. And in every store, and on every street, and basically every waking moment of their lives. The average teenager with a iPhone today is vastly more connected than the leader of the free world sixty years ago.
I thought this was a good reminder of the head-spinning speed with which the connectivity revolution entangled us in its whirlwind advance. We haven’t even begun to seriously consider the impact of these changes, or how us comparably slow-adapting humans must now adjust. Be wary of those who embrace our current moment as an optimal and natural evolution of our species’ relationship with technology. We still have a lot of work ahead of us to figure out what exactly we want. After sufficient reflection, it might even turn out that taking a call by the pool, LBJ style, isn’t as essential as we might have once imagined.

And this is exactly right. Who knows what we’ll think about the smartphone in another ten, twenty, or fifty years?

We may discover that our obsession with social media has proven even more destructive, harmful, and wasteful than we perceive it to be now. The smartphone has affected how we consume news, who and what we consider a friend, our social expectations, our speed of life, our perception of the “good life,” and our emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. We may find that a flourishing human life doesn’t depend on the connectivity created by digital technology, but is found instead in something older and much less dependent on a screen, an electronic portal allowing us to transcend time and space.

What would that be? Unmediated human connection; flesh and blood presence, conversation, and shared activity. Doing things together in the concrete, rather than the digital.

Newport is careful. He says that digital connectivity may prove to be less essential than we imagined. It will still have a place. But it may be better to begin finding ways now to lessen dependence on our smartphones, create space for solitude and silence, designate spaces and zones where digital connectivity is no longer expected or required, and invest our energy in connecting face to face with family members, neighbors, and others living nearby.

If you Mute a Person’s Online Presence Think About These Things

Alan Jacobs wrote an excellent post on muting, and how we go about it, and why. Jacobs is responding to Noah Millman, who wrote a longer essay in The Week on muting. Millman claims that when we mute someone, we do it for ourselves, and it is not the best way of being a friend, or a citizen.

Jacobs answers:

First, when I have disengaged in this way I have indeed, and absolutely, done it for myself — but I don’t think that’s necessarily a reason not to do it. I find the online direhose of wrath and contempt and misinformation immensely wearying, and indeed depressing, and especially given the damage I have sustained from the unavoidable depredations of the Year of Our Lord 2020, I think there can be good reason for avoiding the depredations that are not necessary.
Second, I think that how you disengage matters. On many occasions I have decided to unfollow or mute or just ignore people I know IRL, and when these were just acquaintances it was a simple thing to do. But on the rare occasions when they were genuine friends it was complicated. In all such cases, I began by telling them that I had problems with their online self-presentation and that I wished they would behave differently. Memory may fail me, but I can’t at the moment remember an occasion when that intervention had any effect whatsoever. So eventually I unfollowed/muted/ignored — and I told them I was doing that, also.

In 2020 I decided to ditch Instagram and drop off Facebook. I quit checking Twitter in 2019. In every case, the decision I made to abandon those environments has proven to be the right one for me. I have more mental focus, I’ve freed up energy to read other sources of information, and I think my mental health is better. Plus, I’ve stayed in touch with friends and family via email, text messages, and phone calls. Such communication is more personalized. Sure, I miss out on bits of information and on occasion some important news. I’m living life as it was a couple of decades ago, B. S. M. (Before Social Media).

There is no obligation to be on social media. Maybe you love it, and you find it adds value to your life. Maybe, like Jacobs and Millman and so many others, maybe there are people in your social media environment that you have reason to mute, ignore, unfollow, or hide. If you do, it is at least worth considering the contours of these arguments, and to factor them in how you take action within these online environments (and offline in your relationships, if you read the rest of Jacobs’ post).

What Would It Take For Me to Quit Social Media Forever?

An algorithm will probably bury this post. You should share it everywhere! But you are under no obligation. Never. Obligations are nowhere to be found among the terms and conditions of this website.

Alan Jacobs writes:

Here’s your semi-regular reminder: You don’t have to be there. You can quit Twitter and Facebook and never go back. You can set up social-media shop in a more humane environment, like micro.blog, or you can send emails to your friends — with photos of your cats attached! If you’re a person with a significant social-media following, you can start a newsletter; heck, you can do that if you just want to stay in touch with five of six friends. All of the big social-media platforms are way past their sell-by date. The stench of their rottenness fills the room, and the worst smells of all come from Facebook and Twitter.

In your heart you know I’m right: It’s time to go.

I agree that the social media platforms are odious. I don’t know if it is time for me to ditch all my social media accounts officially and forever. Today I was thinking: “What would it take for me to change my mind?”

The truth is that I hate social media services. I hate the way I get addicted, the way I long for likes and favorites and hearts and flattery and affirmation and shares and followers and friends. I don’t like how social media ecosystems have come to manage, shape, and alter our human psychology, to shape our view of the world, to reveal the ways we’re polarized, to intensify our polarization. I don’t like the ways they create the illusion that we’re keeping up, or that we’re connected, or how each service becomes its own broadcast medium, and that then, for some reason, we feel compelled to create content for those providers, to tell stories and provide updates and to compose tweet-storms, and the like.

I feel guilty from time to time that my presence on social media contributes to forces that hold other people there. Odds are you landed here from your social media feed. I like that and I don’t like that at the very same time.

I haven’t been on Twitter for a couple of years, I ditched Instagram this summer, I left Facebook about a month ago. I genuinely believe I am happier person because of these decisions. My accounts are still active. But I don’t log in.

I don’t like the codependencies that have emerged between social media platforms and traditional, old-world media. I find the relationship between Twitter and those who work as professional journalists disgusting. Twitter depends on traditional outlets for content, traditional outlets depend on Twitter as a source of clicks. It is no surprise that Twitter would bend to the demands of the power brokers in traditional media, and that journalists working in traditional media would tailor their trade to the contours of what “works” in social media ecosytems. The cycle is vicious, and devours all, even bystanders.

But as someone who has written on the internet since MySpace, I know and understand the game. Readers live on social media platforms. If you want them to come to your website, you have to open the portal, leave a breadcrumb, open the door, show them the path, leave them a link, create a trail. I’m not wrong. The headline needs to be enticing. The image needs to be compelling. Then, the content needs to be good.

You’ll notice that my website has followers. Visit my homepage, and you’ll see this in a sidebar:

But here is a little secret: 1,303 of those subscribers are connected to my WordPress site via social media channels, mainly Twitter. My audience at my Facebook Page is much smaller. I have twenty-four email subscribers and seventy-five people who follow me in their WordPress feed. Forty-four people receive my occasional newsletter.

This past weekend I was talking to my brother. We touched on this dilemma. From time to time, I have something to say. The social media platforms are often the easiest medium by which to connect with a readership. It is where the readers are, it is the road they take to arrive here. On the grand highways of Twitter and Facebook, more often than not I have to post a billboard and provide an exit. Then it is up to the reader to travel down the information superhighway, stop off at my website, and enjoy the offerings at this here greasy spoon.

So what would it take for me to quit social media forever? To close my accounts? I don’t know. I do, after all, want to develop a readership.

But if one day, on Facebook and Twitter, you notice I’m gone, I hope you’ll track me down, see what I’ve been up to, sit a spell, and read and gaze and rock on.

I think we’d all be better off if we ditched social media, returned to readers and RSS feeds and listservs. I used to bookmark my favorite websites and visit to find out what’s new. That was before social media services learned how to put those enticing clickies in front of my face, to be my aggregator of information.

Do you ever get tired of having a massive supercomputer directly aimed at your brain?

I do.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see what we had opted to see rather than what our social media algorithmic overlords want us to see?

Sure would.

Another world is possible. Ditch social media. Build another network. Your own.

The Things You Do In Private, Like Enjoying Your Life

The past few years I’ve conducted a staggered withdrawal from all forms of social media, most recently backing away from Facebook.

I left Twitter during a Lenten fast; I dropped Instagram this past summer.

(If you’re saying, “Wait! I got to this post via social media!” please remember: WordPress pushes my content to my registered social media accounts automatically, and I’d prefer you follow my blog via subscription. Just submit your email to the proper field.)

This post by Alan Jacobs captures one thing I’ve loved about my step back from social media environments: privacy. Being alone, and letting others alone. Not knowing what a loose connection thinks about a news story, or not knowing the latest conspiracy theory a friend is now pushing.

Mo Perry, whom Jacobs quotes, writes that ditching social media gives us a “chance to rediscover privacy.”

What happens when you rediscover privacy?

Perry identifies one significant consequence. You get “[t]o inhabit…experience without broadcasting it or framing it for public consumption.”

Perry hopped off social media for a weekend trip, motivated by her observation that “my social media feed is full of people scolding others who have the audacity to try to salvage a shred of joy and pleasure from their lives…The communally encouraged state of being is dread and misery and rage. People who eat at restaurants, people who let their kids play on playgrounds, people who walk around the lake without a mask — all condemnable, contemptible. Selfish. How dare they?”

Who wants to be part of that kind of environment? Why continue to subject yourself to it if you don’t have to? Why continue to log in and camp out in social media environments that are stoking hatred for others while also bolstering your own feelings of self-righteousness?

Remember, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest are all algorithmically designed to show you more of what you want to see, more posts that confirm your biases, and more posts that stoke your outrage. It’s built to put the things before you that make you happy or make you mad, and we’re more drawn to the things that make us mad. Social media is well designed to make you angry.

Regarding Perry’s observation, Alan Jacobs writes:

A ray of hope, this thought. That what the scolds will achieve is to push the rest of us “to rediscover privacy.” To take photos that we share only with friends; to articulate thoughts just for friends. To leave Twitter and Facebook and Instagram to the scolds, who will then have no choice but to turn on one another.

Why not just go back to the way things were not that long ago, when we enjoyed our life in private, without social media? That doesn’t sound so bad. Wouldn’t we all be just a little better off?

We like to believe the myth that social media connects us, brings us together. The longer we go, the more that bit of ideology is exposed as patently false.

Punting Facebook…For Now

Today I made the decision to log out of Facebook. I don’t know when I’ll log back in.

From time to time, someone in my network has posted an announcement to their feed saying, “I’m out!” This may be an act of courtesy. In some cases, the intent is to display sanctimoniousness. In other cases, the tone is apologetic: “I’m sorry everyone, but I just can’t take it any longer! I know you’ve enjoyed knowing that I may or may not be monitoring your feed, as Facebook’s hidden algorithm allows or disallows, I’m not really sure, but I can’t stay any longer. Your posts about [insert topic, controversial or benign] are driving me insane.”

About three years ago now, during the season of Lent, I chose to log out of Twitter and Facebook for the season. I deleted Instagram from my phone. I initially returned to Instagram once per month. Facebook was a daily check, usually to drop my notifications to nil and to make sure I did not have messages. I still have a Twitter account. My blog posts push there. But I have no intention of returning. I think I’ve been better off without those voices in my head.

The pandemic resulted in my return to Instagram, at least for a stretch. I reinstalled the app on my phone and kept it there. I’d post videos and I made it a habit to share one image a week that I captured with my phone. I still enjoy photography. But I eventually would get sucked into the “Explore” tab, where I’d see videos that maybe caught my interest, but mostly that were not edifying. At the midpoint of the summer, or around then, I deleted Instagram from my phone.

Why am I punting Facebook?

I check it more than once per day, and mindlessly flit there via my browser.

I’m starting to scroll. I don’t think that is good for me.

I haven’t watched The Social Dilemma, but I’ve heard enough to make me want to run from social media.

I’m concerned about taking part in social media ecosystems that foster addictions in others. My presence in these digital spaces fuels the desire of others to engage in those spaces as well. I’m worried participation in these digital environments may violate the command to love my neighbor as myself.

I think social media engagement increases mental noise and prevents me from focusing, thinking freely, and expending energy on other, more productive ventures, like writing, art, and building.

I have reservations about chronicling the life of my family, and particularly my children, on services that are sucking up information about them, too. Maybe my kids don’t want my online “friends” to know certain things about them.

The written word is disembodied and can be depersonalized. If you know me, you know how I would say this sentence. You factor my character. You might even hear my voice. I’m connected to people on social media that I don’t know, or who I don’t know as well as I used to. I think this changes how I read. I don’t think I’m as charitable as I would be if these readings were complemented by in person interactions.

I think Facebook’s website has gotten slower, clunkier, less aesthetically pleasing, less user friendly, more cluttered, and isn’t as fun to use as it once was.

I think our technological overlords are not honest or transparent about the ways they monitor us, how they use our data, and what their products are designed to do.

So why don’t I deactivate and delete my account altogether?

It’s strange. First, I think there is a gospel imperative to seek connection and then maintain connections with others, even if that connection is by means of an imperfect vehicle. My Facebook Page keeps me connected to some who want to read what I write. So does my Twitter feed. I’d prefer that everyone subscribe to my site via email. But some prefer to collate information via social media networks. Some comment there.

Second, I’m trending toward a digitally hermitic life, but I’m not there yet. I’ve given serious thought to writing primarily at this website, posting photography here, making art and building other things at home which I may or may not share online. I like the web. I like having my own space. But I don’t like the social media ecosystems.

Third, like everyone, I experience the human desire for connection. There are certain high school friends, and even some teenage friends, that I’m glad I have loose ties with. When I see posts from my boyhood next door neighbors, my heart is warmed by the knowledge they are doing well, that they have found success or have family they love.

Lastly, at some level, social media does help me keep my finger on the pulse of trends–at least the trends the algorithms want me to see. That’s the trick, really. My feed runs through a value-grid, one I do not determine. Facebook does. Twitter does. Certain speech is buried. Some content is elevated. And I never know exactly why, or which, or even if it has happened.

I’m only left to wonder.

For now, I’m out.