Overview

The seemingly free social media products we use every day help us to stay connected learn new things and find information But they also analyze our actions and the data we share using what they learn about us to trick us into paying attention to them more than we want They sell that attentionand ultimately changes in what we think and how we behaveto advertisers These social media products are caught in a race to capture our attention in order to make money

In this issue guide youll learn

Why our attention is valuable to social media companies

How that value shapes the design of products we use every day

How the financial incentives of these products create harm to us and to society as a whole

By understanding these key points youll begin to see how you can help push for technology that aligns with humanitys best interests

Introduction

Phone

As the generation that has grown up with social media you know it has incredible power That power can build connections lift up our voices and help us solve problems

But social media can also distract us divide us and downgrade our collective ability to solve problems Consider these excerpts from MySocialTruth a story bank project for young people to share their experience on and off social media

I constantly refreshed my likes as they came in spent hours reading and replying to comments and taking in other peoples posts I became obsessed with living what social media promotes as a worthwhile and perfect life

Anuja Age 20 Fresno

My morning time ritual became an afternoon ritual to a night ritual to an all day ritual where I would habitually check my phone every hour eagerly waiting for the next notification to come in

Sam Age 18 New York City

For Anuja and Sam the addiction and distortion they faced on social media was not an example of technology that supports our wellbeing and larger goals

Consider

Think about your own experience on social media

Do Anuja and Sams experiences of addiction and distortion compare to yours

How are they similar

How are they different

Lets go behind these experiences to look at how social media companies operate

Question 1

How do social media companies make money

We are in a time where weve sort of accepted the unrestricted unregulated mining of the human consciousness the harvesting of human attention We are the resource and I think it takes its toll

Tim Wu author of The Attention Merchants on Your Undivided Attention

Our attention is a limited resource There are only so many waking hours in the day and therefore only so many things we can focus on When we pay attention to one thing were not paying attention to something else

This fact of life has been deeply complicated by technology With more information and more choices at our fingertips than ever before there are unprecedented demands on our attention

Work

This feeling of constant distraction is fueled by tech companies that rely on capturing your attention to make money normally by selling it to advertisers

Advertising has always been about convincing you to do what the advertiser wants It could be buying a new pair of shoes taking an online class or voting for a political candidate

Traditional advertising on TV newspapers magazines or billboards is very straightforward everyone sees the same ads and the ads dont feed precise data back to advertisers about the people looking at them Social media has several unique advantages that make advertising vastly more powerful

Artificial Intelligence No other media draws on massive supercomputers to predict what it could show to perfectly keep you scrolling swiping or sharing

247 Influence No other media steers two billion peoples thoughts 247 spending over 150 minutes on social media a day from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep

Social Control No other media redefines the terms of our social lives selfesteem when we believe we are missing out and the perception that others agree with us

Personalization No other media uses a precise personalized profile of everything weve said shared clicked and watched to influence our behavior at this scale

All this gives social media intimate access to your thoughts and behavior The goal is to find the right moment while youre online to strategically grab your attention and insert an ad that youll engage with Thats what these platforms promise to their advertisers

Each app is caught in a race for your attention competing not just against other apps but also against your friends your family your hobbies and even your sleep

Social media companies keep finding new ways to win this race making them among the most valuable companies in the world Alphabet the company that owns Google is worth 1 trillion and Facebook which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp is worth about 700 billion

How are these extraordinary valuations possible when social media companies give away their products for free

Because social media companies dont sell software they sell influence They collect indepth data about how to influence your decisions then sell that influence to the highest bidder The more time they can get you to spend scrolling and clicking the more data they can collect and the more ads they can sell

Consider

We dont pay up front to use apps like Facebook Instagram Snapchat and TikTok but the competition between these platforms to capture your attention in exchange for advertising revenue is fierce Because of this competitive environment these platforms are using ever more sophisticated techniques to grab your attention and keep it

Does this change how you think about your use of these apps

Why or why not

Question 2

How does competing in the attention economy shape the social media products we use

The attention economy is made up of anything trying to capture our limited attention Because companies are able to profit from your attention there is intense competition within the attention economy

Social media apps are incentivized or motivated to develop increasingly persuasive techniques notifications targeted content personalized feeds and more to

Keep you coming back

Get your friends to use them

Collect more data about you so that they can get better at capturing your attention and influencing your behavior

That last point is particularly key to their success Everything we do online is monitored and analyzed Everything weve ever clicked on how long weve hovered over a post in our feeds how deep weve scrolled on our friends profiles its all data that helps companies study us better They are able to track behaviors like

The types of videos we watch

The news we click on

The products we search for

Who we talk to

Which posts we linger on

Apps then feed this information into complex algorithms that determine which content to show us Generally algorithms use what they know about us to show us content that gets us to like click and share

This is what every business has always dreamt of to have a guarantee that if it places an ad it will be successful Thats their social media companies business They sell certainty In order to be successful in that business you have to have great predictions Great predictions begin with one imperative you need a lot of data

Shoshana Zuboff professor and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism in The Social Dilemma

This doesnt happen through sponsored ads only videos that autoplay promoted posts from influencers and clickbait sites that cleverly disguise ads in posts are just a few of the examples of types of services paid for by advertising On top of that advertisers are able to target their messages to specific audiences for example by zip code gender age relationship status hobbies job education and much more Check out the screenshot below to see just the basic targeting options Facebook offers to advertisers

Some of the basic targeting options Facebook offers to advertisers

More advanced options allow advertisers to target based on complex psychological factors Say that someone wanted to target information at people likely to believe in conspiracy theories They could identify a group of a few dozen conspiracy theory believers then use Lookalike targeting to point ads at millions more This technique has been used by everything from small businesses looking to find a niche audience to foreign governments trying to stop people from voting

Were told by social media apps that their goal is to connect educate and entertain through the sharing of photos text and information The technology certainly does that some of the time

But once we understand social media companies business model how a business designs products and services to generate revenue its obvious that their interests are not aligned with ours

CONSIDER

In Shoshana Zuboffs quote above she says that the ability to guarantee a successful ad is what every business has always dreamt of

Why is this ability to make predictions accurately so valuable to businesses

Now take a look at the apps you use the most Consider the things you post and the way you use the app

What do you think the app could know about you

How do you think that knowledge helps them sell advertising

How do you think they use that information to keep you engaged

How does the race for attention distort how we see the world

I like to say that algorithms are opinions embedded in codeand that algorithms are not objective Algorithms are optimized to some definition of success So if you can imagine if a commercial enterprise builds an algorithm to their definition of success its a commercial interest Its usually profit

Cathy ONeil PhD Data Scientist and Author in The Social Dilemma

Because social media apps are caught in a race for our attention they tend to promote more provocative attentiongrabbing content Thats what keeps us engaged and coming back Emotionallycharged content on social media achieves between 1724 more engagement per moralemotional word than content without it

At the same time everyone generates so much content each day that its impossible for platforms to show it all to us Why do you see some posts and not others Algorithms decide They pick the content that is most likely to keep us liking and scrolling They show us the stuff thats emotionally engaging and hide everything else

We end up in an environment where we are all in competition with each other for attention If we want our voices to be heard we need to have more interesting posts Usually that means

More hyperbolic language

This is the most amazing cat video Ive ever seen

More beautiful photos

enhanced by filters

More frequency

more chances to get attention

If we want to be seen we need to construct a less authentic version of ourselves and our lives one that people will like comment on and share and that algorithms will pick up and amplify If we feed the algorithm we get rewarded with attention if we ignore the algorithm then we feel like were being ignored

In the process were doing companies work for free we are creating the content they use to grab our attention Whats more the people with the most attentiongrabbing content become influencers who are then paid to keep coming up with the most attentiongrabbing content

In this environment we see increasingly fake versions of each other as well as a fake version of the world around us The algorithm doesnt show you everything that the people you follow post it shows you the content that is most likely to get you to like and share

If you like fashion youll be surrounded by friends and influencers being glamorous If you care about the environment youll be surrounded by emotionally intense calls to save the planet Youll see a uniquely crafted version of reality that is more sensational than the real thing since thats what will keep your attention

ACTIVITY

Find a partner and open up the same social media app Scroll through their main feed and please refrain from looking at any of their notifications messages etc

What is the same about your feeds

What is different

Now think about someone who deeply disagrees with you about some of your core beliefs

How might their feed look different from yours

What do you think their feed does to their view of the world

What does your feed do to your view of the world

NOTE

Please dont share your feed or read someone elses feed without mutual consent If youre working in a group ask for two volunteers to share their feeds with each other and get permission to share their answers with the group

Consider the big picture What happens to our collective view of reality when were each receiving different information thats motivated by these incentives When were in competition to get the most likes and shares And when the most sensational content is what helps us feel seen

We quickly end up on a path to a distorted view of both reality and ourselves

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What do the distortions of the attention economy mean for our future

I really struggled when I looked in the mirror after joining social media Im too fat or I have ugly features or my neck is too long or my hair doesnt frame my face correctly I overthought every word that I spoke for fear of being unliked by someone It was always something and it still comes back every once in a while I also have seriously struggled with depression and anxiety that I never had before social media

Morgan Age 14 St Louis MO

Morgans story from MySocialTruth is just one of billions of experiences in a social media environment distorted by the attention economy To understand why stories like this one keep happening around the world we need to understand the system that produces them

Stories like this are part of a pattern of experiences that show up again and again in social media These patterns are the results of mechanisms like algorithms that optimize for engagement concrete features that define our experience with technology

These mechanisms in turn are the result of ways of thinking within technology companies Assumptions like if people are engaging with our product it must be helping them live better lives are baked into the way that technology is built

Together these patterns mechanisms and ways of thinking make up a system that has harmed society in countless ways including

Skewing our Sense of the World Algorithms promote misinformation conspiracies and fake news

Undermining our Relationships A focus on short digital communication results in less empathy more confusion and misinterpretation

Disrupting Attention Cognition Constantly checking our phones leads to loss of crucial abilities including memory and focus

Degrading Physical Mental Health Social media use has been shown to contribute to stress loneliness addiction and increased risky health behaviors

Polarizing our Politics Elections Political influence sold to the highest bidder leads to widespread propaganda distorted dialogue and voter suppression

Amplifying Systemic Oppression Technology built by a small number of privileged engineers often amplifies racism sexism homophobia and ableism

Challenges for Young People Research shows that harms from developmental delays to increased risk of self harm are particularly prevalent among young people

Each of these problems is the subject of extensive study While they may seem distinct they share a root cause technology that is incentivized and overoptimized to capture attention from its users

How do we change such a big system

When we consider the scale of these harms and the size of the largest companies competing in the attention economy we can easily feel overwhelmed All of us have complicated relationships with technology and most of us dont have a great way to talk about them Whats more we dont want companies taking advantage of us

Consider some assumptions we have about social media We might think that

we need to be on social media because everyone else is

having a large number of friends online is important

constant engagement on social media is useful

Rest

In order to build a better system we will have to deeply reconsider these beliefs and find new ways to connect around what matters to us We will go deeper into some ways to do this in later issue guides

Beyond individual change advocacy is an important way to push for change When the public raises their voices and puts intense pressure on companies the companies are forced to spend time and money to address the harms Their once profitable business model can become unsustainable

For instance onceunstoppable cigarette companies have been forced to pay for the public health costs of their products and for antismoking marketing campaigns Oil companies are pressured to make clean energy investment as the costs of climate change become clearer to an increasingly activated public Consumer advocacy has made a difference in industries ranging from meatpacking to pesticides

Technology especially social media is facing this same reckoning today as users governments and technologists alike come to understand just how dangerous these products are for society and how quickly the fixes must happen

Supporting one another is the first step towards understanding how to push back against technology that creates harm through education through regulation and by building new technology built on better assumptions

Often politicians and tech workers have conversations about young peoples experience on social media without their voices in the room You will inherit the world that is made by their decisions When you can clearly articulate your experiences and the change that you want to see you add a muchneeded perspective to the conversation about transforming social media

This makes you especially powerful advocates for change As the generation most deeply impacted by these issues your truth is most potent when its voiced by you

When you share your stories organize your communities and demand change the world will listen

Reflect

Weve discussed how technology designed to capture as much attention as possible from as many people as possible creates major societal harms

What would you like to see change about the technology you use every day

What beliefs and values would tech companies need to have to make those changes

Go Deeper

Listen to economist Kate Raworth on the Your Undivided Attention podcast Kates framing can teach us a lot about how to transform the economic model of the technology industry and help us move from a system that values addicted narcissistic polarized humans to one that values healthy loving and collaborative relationships

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