To some extent, almost everyone is addicted to social media. This column, for example, was submitted via email, and some of the sources for my research where accessed online. While more sophisticated people (such as my grandchildren) may not regard email as social media in the same class as Facebook or Google, I regard it as a “gateway addiction.”
For all the good that digital technology has made possible, it also has a dark side that needs to be exposed and dealt with, such as the issues discussed in Harvard professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff’s book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.” Her book convinced me that we should heed the warnings about technology and social media.
Surveillance capitalism is defined by Zuboff as, “A new economic order that claims human experience as a free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction and sales.” It is also a “parasitic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioral modification.”
Almost every time we access Facebook, Amazon, Google or many other such platforms, as much personal information as possible is extracted from us, to become the products that can be sold to advertisers who use the demographic data to target us. As ominous as that may sound, it is really far worse for reasons too numerous to mention in an article of this length. Warning: Social media commodifies people and invades our privacy.
The title of Professor Jean M. Twenge’s book summarizes the results of her research: “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.”
She identifies social media as the primary culprit noting, for example, that excessive screen time has serious implications regarding the psychological health of young people, including feelings of isolation, of not being loved and bouts of depression. Yet, we persist in promoting the ever increasing computer-dominance of our society. Warning: Social media may be harmful to our children.
With a shrug and a smile we nonetheless choose to ignore the warning signs, while proudly celebrating the fact that our schools are awash with computers and digital technology, ignoring the fact that much of that technology is in schools because of corporate marketing strategies, not because it enhances learning, or that it enriches the lives of our students.
In this regard, a 2019 study conducted by Reboot Foundation and reported in Hechinger Report, shows a negative connection between a nation’s performance on international assessments and 15-year-olds’ self-reported use of technology in schools. The study also found that fourth graders who use tablets in “all or almost all” classes scored 14 points lower on the reading portion of a test that was administered by the federal government.
Still, many parents persist in the belief that technology works only for the good. Warning: Too much classroom technology may not be a good thing.
All I am asking is that we at least consider the warning labels. I accept that technology is here to stay, but I am not indifferent to the research highlighting the potential risks that are inherent to technology’s mushrooming power.
One step we can take is to request that governmental entities, such as municipal governments, police departments and schools, refrain from using social media to post information to which we are entitled to have without being compelled to compromise our privacy.
Each time a government, school or private organization invites us to “follow them on Facebook,” they broadcast an unfettered endorsement of social media, without regard for the numerous abuses the digital world inflicts on us, and without regard to our right to decide not to subscribe to, or access those online providers.
Jim Palermo lives in Southampton.