“Connection is evolving and so are we.” That’s the tagline from Meta‘s new website. I’d been ignoring Facebook for quite a while when the news came that the company was changing its name to Meta. I tried to write it off as a publicity stunt since the timing was the same as the Congressional hearings. I even managed to ignore the Facebook Papers in the expose printed by the Wall Street Journal. There are so many other more pressing issues in the world right now that social media doesn’t seem to be a primary concern, but the fact of the matter is at the center of most of those issues. The more I think about it the more I believe that social media is the eye of the storm. I liken it to a hurricane. Social media is the eye and the various issues are the bands of rain and wind that swirl around the eye. The storm gets bigger and more intense the more it gets fed. In the case of a hurricane that would be the warm water that feeds the storm. For social media, it is the interactions of the users.

Social media started with good intent like most innovations. Originally it was used to connect friends and family in a way that the telephone and email couldn’t. Instant updates with pictures and statuses. Connecting with old friends or family members that you had lost contact. It truly seemed like a way to reconnect with each other. Early chat boards were a way to share ideas and have online conversations with people that had similar interests. It was amusing and a source of entertainment.

Entertainment that seemed benign. And it still is in some cases. Cat memes, animal videos, kids smashing their first birthday cake…all sources of entertainment. And that’s how we missed it. Somewhere along the way social media evolved and became more. Became bigger than just a means of social connection. And when we weren’t paying attention, it became the center of the internet. It’s interesting to me that no one really talks about the internet as a physical thing anymore. The internet is just there like water and electricity. It powers our apps and is the tool we use for streaming movies and music. We used to talk about the power of the internet. Social media changed that perception.

We first recognized the power of social media during the Arab Spring. Twitter and Facebook became tools for people to connect and protest social injustice against a corrupt government. There’s a saying that power corrupts. Seems that applies to more than just people. Social media was suddenly powerful, and like any other powerful tool, there were people willing to corrupt it.

Congress had hearings surrounding the Capitol riot on January 6th of this year. And one of the focus areas was social media and specifically Facebook. White supremacists, pedophiles, conspiracy theorists, gang members, drug dealers and other bad actors have all figured out how to use social media for their purposes. Made easier by the fact that the lines have blurred between what’s real and what is not. And companies like Facebook made it even easier. The algorithms behind the newsfeeds are designed to show you what you want to see. Click on one fake news story that sounds real and your feed gets flooded with other links of a similar nature. Fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes fact. The bad actors just flood the site with their negative and false material. The social media algorithms then go to work and do all of the heavy lifting.

There is another saying that everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. TikTok and YouTube have guaranteed that fact. There is an episode of Black Mirror titled “Nose Dive” where people were judged by the value of their ratings. The number of likes and ratings were similar to a credit score. That was considered to be science fiction. But is it really? We now have social influencers and people famous for being famous. Everyone wants to have that post that goes viral. Social influencers whose job it is to make other people watch/follow them because they are glamorous or cool. Children are turning to social influencers as role models. Not their parents or teachers, but a person whose sole accomplishment is more likes, viewers or followers than anyone else.

I’m grateful every day that I did not grow up with social media. I was a nerdy and social awkward teen. I am sill nerdy and socially awkward as an adult. The difference is that I am more accepting of my idiosyncrasies as an adult. It wasn’t nearly as pretty when I was a teenager. I can’t imagine layering Facebook or Instagram atop all of that. Kids are notoriously mean to each other. Social media takes that meanness to another level. And so began cyberbullying. Facebook’s own research shows that teen girls are 32% more likely to feel worse about themselves after viewing comparison photos on Instagram. There are multiple stories of teens committing suicide or attempting suicide after being bullied on social media. I cannot honestly say that I would have been immune to the negative effects of Facebook or Instagram.

And now Mark Zuckerberg want us to believe that Meta is going to change how we connect to people. How do we trust a company that by its own research knows the harm they cause and yet do nothing about it? The truth is we can’t. They have already proven that profits mean more than the good of the community. Zuckerberg’s next evolutionary step is virtual and augmented reality. That’s not a connection. Not a real connection. If we learned nothing else from Covid, we’ve learned that people are social. We need physical interaction. There were not enough ZOOM, Teams or FaceTime calls and or meetings that were ever close enough to replacing that physical interaction. And virtual/augmented reality is not going to do it either. Ready Player One had a society that lived in a virtual playground in order to escape the realities of life. Is that the future we really want? One in which we wear equipment in order to feel like the virtual world is real. That life is somehow supposed to be perfect and pretty all the time. Life is messy. It’s supposed to be messy. It’s what makes us unique as individuals.

University of Toronto political science professor Ronald Deibert said that “in a short period of time, digital technologies have become pervasive and deeply embedded in all that we do. Unwinding them completely is neither possible nor desirable.” This was quoted in an article on the impact of social media. And he’s right. There’s no getting rid of social media. And it would be shortsighted to say that there are no positive aspects of social media. That’s not to say that we can’t be smarter and use the tool in a more productive way. We cannot control the hurricane. Not when it forms, nor its intensity. But we have learned how to better predict the path it takes and how we handle it when it hits. We are proactive in the face of the oncoming storm. Instead of following Meta on its path blindly, we need take a more proactive stance. Mark Zuckerberg does not know how we best connect to the people in our lives. That’s for us to decide individually.

Music Memories

As I was writing this, there was one song that kept popping into my head. Anything Box’s “Living in Oblivion“. One of my favorite songs when I was on the club circuit. A little alcohol to get the buzz going and this song were all I needed to get through a night. I could be in the middle of the dance floor; eyes closed and just dance as if I was alone in the room. The world would just disappear for the 5 minutes that the song played. It still my go to song when I need to escape the world –