For what reasons do you use social media? Do you feel more or less social, in a non-technological way, using Facebook? Are there ulterior motives from the people behind social media platforms?
These are questions that we should be asking ourselves, especially with what the first president of Facebook Sean Parker said in an interview with Axios at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
Here’s some of what Parker told Axios:
When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, 'I'm not on social media.' And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be.' And then they would say, 'No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.' And I would say, ... 'We'll get you eventually.’
Parker was absolutely correct.
As much as we all bash the ills of social media, and a lot of us realize that it’s making us anti-social, it has become a social necessity in the times we currently live in.
Parker continued with some very telling insight:
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you ... more likes and comments.
It's a social-validation feedback loop ... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.
Basically, the people who created these groundbreaking algorithms and engaging platforms prey on your sensibilities as human beings. They know that people in this modern era are motivated by emotion, so they promote ideas and concepts that will target those areas of our minds.
But hey, don’t take my word for it. Take heed from Parker’s closing comment.
“The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously,” Parker said. “And we did it anyway.”
“We did it anyway.”
There’s not much more that needs to be said than that.
For video of Parker's comments, watch below:
H/T: Market Watch