141. THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA - Does It Have Any?
I first got on MySpace back in the early 2000s to help connect with other musicians and promoters and share my band’s music. It was certainly a lot easier than burning demo CDs and asking people to send you a pound for postage. I was much more resistant to Facebook, because I couldn’t see the point of sharing updates on how I was feeling to the same people I saw in real life? I already had a blog I was writing (as a lifelong keeper of journals) for any important updates in my life, and those Facebook check-ins seemed superficial in comparison. But then I stayed on at university to do postgraduate work and the people I was friends with in my undergraduate years moved on and away and it seemed a good idea to keep in touch. And, of course, for people of my generation, there was the novelty of suddenly being able to find out what happened to all those people I went to school with who I hadn’t seen or heard of in years. That this was a result of an intentional choice, not to keep those people in my life anymore, that I had actively chosen to attend a different sixth form college than many in my secondary school and then move to another country for university, was neither here nor there. I still didn’t want to be actual friends with the people I had left behind, but finding out what they were up to in this far-removed way, online, seemed a nice piece of nostalgia, even if it was a bit stalker-ish. Then, for people like me, with international family and friends, there was the whole international element. Back then, pre-Zoom or Skype, phoning people across the ocean was expensive. Social media like Facebook allowed us to keep in contact and become part of the every day mundane things usually ignored on the rare and infrequent occasions those expensive phone-calls - or even more expensive trips - abroad were made. Grudgingly, I joined.
In philosophy there is a thing called the ‘slippery slope’ argument. Sometimes mischaracterised as a logical fallacy, the slippery slope argument is the warning that allowing X will have unintended consequences Y and Z which will be far worse. It is considered a fallacy a lot of the time because sometimes the argument is made without much supporting evidence for the alleged consequences. A classic example of the fallacy is ‘if we allow people to choose when they die (euthanasia) then we will soon lose the value of life and be killing off grandma just to get our inheritance or indulging in terrible eugenics programmes that decide some people’s lives are worth more than others’. There is no necessary logical connection between allowing euthanasia in certain cases and all life becoming devalued. In fact we already have the ability to end our lives at any moment through suicide and life is not devalued as a result. All euthanasia allows for is for people to end their lives when they can’t do it themselves, at a time when it has no longer become worth living. Something which might even make us value life more because we recognise those things which make it so important. Countries where euthanasia is legal have not slipped down the so-called slippery slope. The assertions are baseless.
But the slippery slope is not always a fallacy. Consider the known psychological methods of ‘grooming’. One minute you’re allowing a stranger to talk to you about your frustrations with your parents and a few months later you’re falling down a rabbit-hole of extremism and plotting to do something awful. Or you let the stranger you trust pat you on the back to comfort you one moment, then gradually they are touching you somewhere you don’t want them to and you can’t get them to stop. The slippery slope’s effectiveness here is the very principle on which some horrific and pre-meditated crimes have occurred. Likewise, it was argued, rightly, that early failures to address climate change might lead to a slippery slope where it becomes a lot harder to stop later and the planet will be in great danger. Such an argument has since proven to be accurate. And, in 2016, people were warning that allowing political figures like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to be flagrantly untruthful without any consequences might erode our trust in politicians and the norms of political discourse. That has happened and now egregious lies and norm-defying behaviours are regular enough in contemporary politics that it is hard to remember that at the start of this century being caught in a single lie might be sufficient scandal to end a political career.
MySpace, therefore, started a slippery slope for me. Because I was already on it, it didn’t seem that crazy to have a second account over on Facebook. And once on Facebook, as new forms of social media arose, a significant barrier had already been overcome which made it easier to explore the new offerings and find accounts on Instagram and Twitter too. In its purest form that is all the slippery slope argument is: the claim that doing X might erode certain norms or protections against Y. If I was already sharing photos on Facebook, why wouldn’t I share photos on Instagram too? If I was already shouting out my opinions into the wind on my blogs, why not do it over on Twitter as well? Hence, just a few months ago, when Elon Musk took over Twitter and it seemed a good time to leave, instead of just leaving, I sought a replacement and started experimenting with Mastodon. Once old norms erode, new ones arise in their place. Whereas once I had no social media at all and was perfectly content with that, now the thought of simply existing without it didn’t even seriously cross my mind.
Which is odd, because social media has had another slippery slope erosion of norms over the years. What once began as a method of staying in touch with people I know and sharing bits of our lives at some point became something very different indeed. It became a place where people shared stuff, but not stuff about their lives. Dumb stuff. Supposedly ‘funny’ stuff. Memes and videos. And then news-stories. Or supposed new-stories. Articles. Blogs. Information and misinformation. I would look through my feeds and realise that although I had ‘learned’ a lot about the world I had learned very little about my friends and family from what they were posting. In fact, I was learning far more about celebrities, who for some reason I was now following too. The first few fan pages for things I liked had morphed into slick, celebrity-managed, commercial sites for new projects, reboots, and advertising. So much advertising! Between the posts and within the posts. Suddenly everyone online was a brand and not a person, even the people I knew. People posting things they didn’t believe or images they had filtered and fabricated to present a reality very different from what was actually happening. That jarring sensation of seeing representation instead of reality when you have had the privilege to peek behind the curtain and then realising that you are also doing it yourself. Performing who you are rather than being who you are, warts and all.
A lot has been written (and shared on social media) about the damaging impact of social media. That it is designed intentionally to be addictive and thrives on strong emotion, which naturally leads to it being filled with provocative and divisive stuff that makes our blood boil. That it has influenced us in far more than our product choices, but led to various unsustainable practices and played havoc with people’s mental health, especially in terms of eating disorders and self-harm. And, that it has ruptured our political discourse into something incredibly nasty and unwilling to compromise or listen to a different point of view. Echo chamber is a term often used. You follow people who think the same way as you, or you follow people you disagree with to get mad about them and then shout into your echo chamber about how awful they are and hear back reinforcing agreement.
We know all this stuff, and yet we click, scroll, share, incessantly nevertheless.
Which shouldn’t be surprising. Cigarette packets literally told you they were killing you and yet people still kept on buying them. Even now smokers still find them impossible to resist. We know we are killing the planet but still engage in practices which hinder rather than help the problem. Alcohol reminds us to ‘drink responsibly’ and gambling products tell us to ‘gamble responsibly’, and we seldom do. I know 100% I should be a vegan if I follow the logic of all the reasons I am a vegetarian and yet I can’t bring myself to do it. Collectively we self-harm every day.
Social media is one such self-harm. But we have our reasons for sticking with it. I myself have always justified all the awful aspects because it’s still been an extremely helpful tool for promoting things like this website, or my book, my other writing, or my music. Even my teaching. Since leaving my old job last summer I have been able to do all kinds of interesting things in teaching and those offers have all come in through social media.
Ironically, I benefit from social media for all the same reasons I hate it: because it is very good at selling stuff and spreading commercial messaging, even if it isn’t good any more (if it ever was) for finding out what my friends and family are up to. If I were a celebrity, I would hate me: another post advertising his silly philosophy blog or latest music project! Why do I even follow this guy?
I have tried to come off social media several times over the years but never been particularly successful. A few months here and there but soon I have something new I want to sell or people I’m curious about. In fact, I have found it very interesting that every time I do leave for a while, the algorithms of whichever platform it is instinctively know that the way to woo me back is with personal news of real friends and family rather than celebrity, commercial, or political stuff. By leaving that world, you feel incredibly disconnected from what people in your life are doing. Colleagues, friends, family - if they share it they expect you to know it. When you choose not to be a part of the conversation it is almost as if you are turning your back on them.
At least that’s what the social media companies want you to feel. But the fact is, most of the time you have no idea who, if anyone, is actually seeing what you post. And if they do see it, you have no idea how they are engaging with it. Did they read it fully, or skim over it while sitting on the toilet? Did they mute you long ago? And do you really talk to your friends and family in real life without mentioning the important stuff simply because it was already posted on social media? Of course not! You will still talk about that which is important if you talk, and if you don’t talk to each other then the relationship you think you have is not the relationship you actually have. You are just voyeurs in each other’s lives, not actual friends. Maybe it’s time to move on?
In 2022 I found myself reaching for my phone the way an addict reaches for whatever it is they crave. My fingers idly prodding my phone to check for notifications without my even wanting them to. Suddenly scrolling mindlessly during an ad break or in five minutes between tasks where once I might have just got my thoughts together and had a recharge. And I found myself posting a whole lot too.
I have said that social media has had value for me in promoting projects I want people to know about and that is true, and in a way, as part of what I do is philosophy, specifically political philosophy which is critical of government and philosophy of education, that includes letting people know some of my thoughts on those areas. But more and more, in line with my increased activity online, I have been asking myself what posting my thoughts in these forums is meant to achieve?
If I have some first thoughts about a particular issue, often I write them with far more consideration on here - as an essay - than I would on social media. When forced to write more than a few sentences, you start to see whether the idea you have actually has any legs. When given time and scrutiny, that initial knee-jerk reaction often turns out to be something ill-considered and wrong-headed. When I post a ‘hot-take’ on social media - why am I doing it? Do I really want a conversation? Because in my experience social media has long stopped being about those. Sure, some people might tell me that I am wrong, others might tell me that I am right, and others still might offer frighteningly specific pointers about exactly what was problematic with the post, but no one is actually there for a back and forth discussion as they would be in a philosophy seminar, or even in the comments section of this blog. It is just about planting a flag and sticking your fingers in your ears. I have tried to have conversations and be open-minded, but that kind of discourse just isn’t expected or wanted on there. I don’t recall changing anybody’s mind about anything or anybody changing my own. Nor do I recall any post about an issue changing the actual issue either. In fact, when prepping for some teaching on meta-ethics and re-reading Ayer I was struck by the idea that social media gives us a living example of what emotivism really would be like sufficient enough to demonstrate why Ayer is wrong about normal moral discourse. Places like Twitter or Facebook really are just expressing ‘boo’ or ‘hurrah’ about certain issues and moral discourse is rendered meaningless there. Meanwhile, I am not posting those ‘hot-takes’ about the day’s news to share with my friends and family. They already know my views, and when we discuss them in person, it is to have, again, an actual conversation about something. With friends and family in real life, I have changed minds and had my mind changed. It happens a lot in fact. Because we are having discourse, not mere expressions of boos and hurrahs.
Social media, I have come to realise, is good at what it has been designed to be good for: selling stuff, stealing time, and making you angry. While one of those things can be, and has been, useful for various ventures, the other two are definitely not useful and can, in fact, be very harmful. It is my belief that social media has not only made me an addict of something i don’t want to be addicted to, but has broken political and moral discourse in ways that have been incredibly harmful for society as well as eroded real life relationships by reducing them to the level of superficial banter and gossip outsourcing the heavy-lifting of real communication to our phones instead of our investing proper time and effort in real life.
Consider this thought experiment: imagine in the times before social media that a friend printed out ten copies of the exact same letter and sent them to ten of their friends. The copying will have saved them time, sure, but knowing that you each received a facsimile of the exact same letter they sent to nine other people definitely would make the message seem somewhat tarnished. Unimportant, mass produced, lacking the personal touch of hearing from a friend. Yet for many of us this is how we keep in touch with people these days: through a post they share identically with hundreds.
All of which is to say that as I write this there are still twelve days left of 2022, but by the time this is posted we will be nine days into 2023, and it is my intention to make a new year’s resolution to spend far less time on social media in 2023 than I currently do. I will still use it to promote things I am doing (like this blog) and I will still check it sporadically to see what friends and family are up to. But if I have something I feel is worth saying, I will save it for my personal blog or this website. Better still, I will call someone or see them over a coffee somewhere for a chat. I’m not going to go cold turkey and remove myself entirely, but I intend to read a book when free moments arise instead of whiling away my free-time scrolling through superficial feeds of nothingness. I am going to do this because I think it’s time to start to recognise that the harms of social media are real. Not just the personal time and energy they steal, but the way our use of it has eroded our public and private discourse in so many ways and brought us to the mess we are in today, with seemingly no ability anymore for the sort of collaboration, compromise, and constructive advice needed to solve our increasingly desperate problems. I think I’m going to try and come off it for ethical reasons, like a vegetarian or vegan who realises they just cannot continue to contribute to an industry which they believe is responsible for so much suffering. I have come to the belief that it is bad for us and maybe bad in itself.
At the same time, so long as people are using it, and until others share such beliefs as my own, I have to be a realist and acknowledge that it remains the place most people I want to know in my real life will continue to share their news, and it is also the only effective place for sharing my own if I want people to read or listen to something I have made.
As a final thought experiment I want you to imagine a classified section of a local paper sent free through your letterbox every day. (Fun historical fact: this is how people used to get their local news pre-internet). The classified section is designed for short job ads, paid for by the letter. That section makes sense as a place to tell people you have a book or new album to sell, but seems a terrible place to share news about your day to day life, especially as the newspaper needs to sell classified ads to keep itself alive. Amidst the commercials, people try to talk about their recent holiday, or the birth of a child, but, rightly, those messages get drowned out by the ads for lawn mowing services, plumbers and roofers. Other people, enraged by some of the stories they read in yesterday’s edition of the paper, try and send their outraged comments into the classified section too. Others still try to respond to something they saw someone say in yesterday’s classified section.
To me, that is what social media has become. It is a form fit for advertising, built on commercial profit (selling your information to advertisers), and yet we are using it for something completely different. As a result, it isn’t working very well. Although I have written earlier in the year about the possibilities of a different approach in the non-commercial fediverse via Mastodon, I fear that even here the colonised mindset of those joining from commercial social media is already changing that environment into yet another place to share Wordle scores and memes. Mastodon is included in my list of social media sites I will be limiting my use of going forward, and I am reminded of a toot I saw on there a few weeks ago warning readers to remember that electric cars were not invented to save the planet, but to save the car industry. A social media without commercial backers is still a social media, and I am at the point now when I am not so sure social media can be healthy. If the human instinct to distract themselves from death is not, with the unfettered bandwidth and never-ending scroll of social media, distracting itself to death?
I think I might love society too much to continue blindly participating in its self-destruction?
And I just think there must be better ways of spending our time.
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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