10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
Additional media and books to consider:
Black Mirror episode: “Nosedive”
Irresistible by Adam Alter
World Without Mind by Franklin Foer
LikeWar by P.W. Singer and emerson T. Brooking
Essay Assignment
In a 1,200-word essay, develop an argumentative thesis that compares the dehumanization in Andrew Sullivan's essay "I Used to be a Human Being" to the dehumanization articulated in Jason Lanier's notion of BUMMER, which is explored in his book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Be sure to have 3 sources for your Works Cited. One of the sources will be Lanier's book.
Study Questions for Lesson #1
One. How does Lanier use cats as a metaphor for freedom vs. brains that get hijacked?
Cats integrate with society but essentially remain independent and free. Humans on the other hand will find that their brains get hijacked in the manner Tristan Harris explains.
What’s scary about getting our brains hijacked is that we don’t know they’re getting hijacked. The process is so gradual it feels natural. We become enslaved to the devil because we deny his existence. He ruins us by helping us in our denial. Such is the devil that lurks behind social media. We don’t know our lives we’re ruined with addiction until we’re deep in the muck of it.
Addiction sneaks up on you and catches you unawares.
We’re more like dogs and Facebook or some other social media site has become our Master.
Two. How do we allow social media to destroy our free will?
Lanier observes that the smartphone is a “cage we carry around with us everywhere we go.” Many of us bring our smartphones to bed. Many of my students are so tethered to their smartphones they have a pathological need to attend to it during class. They think this is normal, but this is not normal. This is addiction.
Addiction and Data Mining
We’re being tracked, receiving engineered feedback, and being mined for our data.
We are being molded into specimens for advertising manipulation.
We are being siloed into our political tribe’s bubble.
Beyond Advertising (See Adam Alter’s book Irresistible)
We are living in a world beyond advertising.
We are now living in a bubble of “continuous behavior modification.” I refer you to Adam Alter’s book Irresistible.
Lanier writes that we are test subjects in an experiment, and we are not even aware of this.
We should be alarmed, but most of us are not. We are asleep at the wheel, so to speak.
Social media empires are “behavior modification empires,” so writes Lanier.
The Failure of Dopamine (“short-term dopamine feedback loops”)
We get hit with dopamine when we receive likes, followers, and positive feedback. This dopamine becomes a short-term substitute for real self-esteem, real self-confidence, and a real sense of an adult self, but of course this dopamine, like any drug, fails and our tattered self remains the tattered rag that it is.
Jason Lanier is arguing that by becoming addicted to these “short-term dopamine feedback loops” on social media we have lost our free will.
Three. What is the connection between social media addiction and the growing divisiveness and polarization of society?
Lanier argues that the underlying force of both social media addiction and polarization is behavior modification that leads to helpless addiction. This helpless addiction makes us “crazy.” We’re crazy for more and more dopamine fueled by outrage and short-term self-esteem as we lose sight of real cognitive skills to be full realized adults.
“The addict gradually loses touch with the real world and real people. When many people are addicted to manipulative schemes, the world gets dark and crazy” (10).
Four. Do the Tech Lords who make us addicted to social media know it’s bad for us?
Yes, they do. These very same Tech Lords who design social media don’t allow their children to use social media or gadgets. They send their children to expensive Waldorf schools where technology isn’t allowed.
“Don’t get high on your own supply.”
These Tech Lords know they’re dealing with dangerous addiction because they hire consultants who work with gambling sites to maximize addiction (14).
Five. How does social pressure become an unhealthy force in the world of social media?
We read on page 16 that we are hardwired to worry about what others think of us:
“People are keenly sensitive to social status, judgment, and competition. Unlike most animals, people are not only born absolutely helpless, but also remain so for years. We only survive by getting along with family members and others. Social concerns are not optional features of the human brain. They are primal.”
When we receive negative feedback on social media: being ignored, being scorned, being insulted, or being rejected, we experience hurt. We experience physical and emotional pain.
This hurt is a powerful force in controlling our behavior. We feel compelled to curate an existence to others that they would approve of. Social media pours gasoline on the fire of our desire for others’ validation and approval.
Social Anxiety
The resulting social anxiety from social media is probably enough reason to delete our social media accounts.
When we feel rejected, our social anxiety turns into depression, dejection, and despondency.
For those of us who are already vulnerable to this type of social anxiety and depression, social media is a nightmare scenario.
Rewards and punishments as the primary tools for controlling our behavior is called behaviorism.
Six. Why are rewards and punishments (behaviorism), as doled out on social media, degrading to human beings?
On page 18, Lanier writes:
“In the bigger picture, in which people must do more than conform in order for our species to thrive, behaviorism is an inadequate way to think about society. If you want to motivate high value and creative outcomes, as opposed to undertaking rote training, then reward and punishment aren’t the right tools at all.”
The Tech Lords don’t want behaviorism to affect their children. They don’t want their children to be Pavlovian dogs in a behavior modification experiment. That’s why they ban their children from social media and gadgets. The children go to Waldorf schools where they grow organic produce in a garden, make soup for lunch, and do creative projects in class.
We’re seeing the Upper Classes enjoy their power by not being tethered to behavior modification of social media.
The rest of us are like a giant underclass being mind-controlled by the social media and gadgets that the 1% foist upon us. We’re being punked.
Propaganda
The Tech Lords use propaganda: euphemisms for their mind control over us. They love to use the word “engagement,” which really means we’re Pavlovian dogs beholden to punishments and rewards.
We are addicts. Addicts are not engaged. Addicts are mind-numbed zombies, the opposite of engagement.
Lanier also prefers “manipulator” to “advertiser” (19).
The Tech Lords are running “empires of behavior modification.”
Seven. What happens when we fall prey to hidden manipulators?
Lanier argues that the hidden manipulators can make us zombies more often than not. Free will is not absolute. We will zone out from time to time. However, when we fall prey to the hidden manipulators, we become zombies more and more to the point that we lose more and more free will. Our behavior becomes more and more meaningless (23).
Eight. In Chapter 2, Lanier tries to pinpoint what is driving the world to craziness. What is it?
The problem is we all have small devices and we’re being manipulated by a few Tech Lords. But the problem goes deeper.
New Business Model Is Getting You Addicted
Being manipulated by social media is the new business model that everyone wants to emulate.
Your measured behavior change is now a product (25).
Social media is like a house made with lead. If you live in the social media world, lead toxins will poison and kill you (26).
Nine. What is BUMMER?
Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an empire for Rent (27).
To elaborate, BUMMER is a “statistical machine that lives in the computing clouds.”
BUMMER has enough data to predict human behavior.
Using BUMMER platforms degrades us, makes us a worst version of ourselves.
6 Parts of the BUMMER Machine
A = Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole supremacy
B = Butting into everyone’s lives
C = Cramming content down people’s throats
D = Directing people’s behaviors in the sneakiest way possible
E = Earning money from letting the worst assholes secretly screw with everyone else.
F= Fake mobs and Faker Society
Ten. Why do people get “weird and nasty online”?
People become their worst selves online, nasty, belligerent, ill-tempered. Why?
Ordinary people’s behavior is modified for the worse by the online behavior modification: attention. You must get attention. That is the online force.
Ordinary people begin to seek fake power by dominating others online. This need to dominate makes people act belligerent.
Lanier says ordinary people become “assholes because assholes get the most attention.”
Therefore, we’ve arrived at Part A of the BUMMER Machine: Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole supremacy.
Eleven. How are we now placed under surveillance?
Lanier observes that our gadgets are mining our personal date 24/7. We act as if this is normal, but it is not.
We have become product to Tech Lords. We pay them to manipulate us and use us for future manipulation. We act as if this is normal.
We’ve arrived at B: Butting into everyone’s lives.
Twelve. What is personalized content?
Algorithms choose our content and experience and therefore modify our desires by choosing what to cram down our throats. We think we made the choice, but the algorithm made the choice. We’ve arrived at C: Cramming content down people’s throats.
Thirteen. What is a feedback loop?
People don’t realize they’re being manipulated by getting positive feedback. Customized feeds are designed to maximize our addictions. Of course, Tech Lords say they’re “engaging” us, but in reality that is a sneaky way of saying they are making us addicted to their product. We’ve arrived at D: Directing people’s behaviors in the sneakiest way possible.
Fourteen. How does traffic or clickbait affect the quality of news?
Websites don’t get paid on quality of content. They get paid on clicks or traffic. If phony news gets higher traffic than real news, then real news may compromise itself to compete with the fake news. We’ve arrived at E: Earning money from letting the worst assholes secretly screw with everyone else.
Fifteen. How have fake people taken over social media?
Social media has become a place of weaponized misinformation. That is the dominant purpose, according to LikeWar by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.
Trolls, bots, A.I., fake people, cat fishers, and so on populate social media in giant hordes. We don’t know who’s who.
This brings us to F: Fake mobs and Faker Society
Sixteen. Who are the biggest users of BUMMER?
Facebook and Google. The more a company uses BUMMER the more it attracts trolls like Russian operatives trying to destroy democracies around the world.
Social Media Is Designed for to be Addictive
Material from Adam Alter's Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
One. How does “Never Get High on Your Own Supply” pertain to Steve Jobs?
Adam Alter is making the point that even as Steve Jobs wallowed in the glory of making the greatest Internet device ever, the iPad, he refused to use one or let his children use one.
Likewise, other tech avatars refuse to let their children use iPads. They sent their kids to expensive private anti-technology Waldorf schools.
The point is that drug dealers stay strong and rich by not getting high on their own supply.
Alter asks a great question: Why are all the world’s greatest public technocrats also in private the world’s greatest technophobes?
Clearly, they know the dirt. They know the hell that is at the end of the iPad journey. They’ve seen the darkness, and they don’t want to go there. They don’t want their kids to go there.
But they want you and me to go there. They want our money. They want us hooked on technology they don't want for their kids, and this speaks to a huge exposure: The tech giants' moral integrity is seriously lacking.
Alter is making the point that we might reconsider embracing technology made by people who have no moral integrity and who secondly wouldn’t privately use the gadgets they make so seductive to the rest of us.
Adler asks: Could you imagine the outcry if religious leaders didn’t let their children practice the religion they preach to you?
What if the FDA recommended food to the public that the FDA wouldn't let their children eat? That they themselves would not eat? Imagine the scandal.
Why the double standard in technology? Because we're addicts, and addicts don't use their brains.
This book's introduction is a piece of rhetorical brilliance as it drives home the point that the technology that is being foisted upon us is by its very nature addictive. It’s not built to help us. It’s built to manipulate us. The technology makes money for its creators after all.
Video game designers avoid World of Warcraft.
An Instagram engineer admits Instagram is designed to send its users down a bottomless pit of addiction.
Smartwatches, Facebook and Netflix, like Instagram, are designed to maximize addiction and obsession.
A smartphone is an opium-drip gadget you carry around with you 24/7.
Two. Why can “normal” people succumb to addiction?
Because addiction is about immersion into environment and circumstance.
Steve Jobs and other successful technocrats know the secrets of addiction, and the addiction model is what fuels their designs.
Making irresistible tools to ensnare us is the formula for success in the crowded tech space.
Therefore, technocrats are in the addiction business.
“Design ethicist” Tristan Harris says even normal people with strong levels of willpower will succumb to addiction when “there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.”
New York Times journalist Nick Bolton, who doesn’t allow himself or his children to use an iPad, observes that the environment and circumstances for addiction in the digital age have no precedent in human history.
We can be snared by many digital hooks:
Porn
Online shopping
The list goes one until we’ve lost the very core of our being.
In the early 2000s, tech was slow and “clunky,” but now it’s fast. It has to be fast if it’s to have sufficient addictive powers.
Tech engineers do thousands of experiments to make the visual experience appealing and addictive. They’ve created a sort of digital Las Vegas to seduce us.
Newer and newer versions of these digital Las Vegas seductive machines keep coming out until they’re “weaponized.”
“In 2004, Facebook was fun. In 2016, it’s addictive.”
Behavioral psychologists say everyone has an addiction, even successful, educated people, and they learn to compartmentalize, which means be functional addicts, like the teacher who has $80,000 debt from online shopping.
Three. Is Adam Alter guilty of making an over simplistic, paranoid anti-technology rant?
No, the concedes that technology has many virtues and advantages, and he has used tech to stay in touch with his family from Australia.
His book is not an anti-technology screed. He writes that technology is neither good nor bad until it’s designed for mass consumption.
Four. How our substance addictions and behavioral addictions similar?
Both stimulate the same area of the brain. But there’s a big difference. If you’re a speed or alcohol addict, you can do a lot to change your environment to avoid speed and alcohol.
But technology is different. It’s part of who we are, where we work, and how we connect with others. It is ubiquitous, meaning it is everywhere.
We can create boundaries and minimize digital addiction if we understand how behavioral addiction works.
Five. What 6 Ingredients does technology contain to create behavioral addictions?
One, it creates compelling goals just beyond our reach. We can never have enough likes or followers, for example.
Two, it gives us irresistible and unpredictable feedback.
Three, it creates a sense of incremental progress and improvement.
Four, it creates tasks that slowly become more difficult over time.
Five, it creates unresolved tensions that demand resolution.
Six, it provides a sense (delusion?) of strong social connection.
Six. What is the smartphone screen time average for people who use the app Moment because they are concerned about how much time they’re using their smartphones every day?
About 3 hours. We can infer that people who don’t use Moment are on a lot more. Not knowing how much we use something, and not wanting to know, contributes to behavioral addiction.
In the same way, food obsessives are asked to keep a food journal in which they write down everything they eat. This cuts down on eating.
Most smartphone users are addicts. They spend over a quarter of their life on the smartphone. And they don’t even know it.
Seven. What’s the difference between addiction and passion?
Addiction is a deep attachment to an experience that is harmful and difficult to do without.
Addictions arise when a person can’t resist a behavior (compulsion), which, despite addressing a deep psychological need in the short-term, produces significant harm in the long-term.
Addictions bring the promise of an immediate award or positive reinforcement.
Original use of the word addiction was in ancient Rome, and it meant a strong bond to something like slavery. So the first sense of the word addiction was to be enslaved to something.
Passion is different than addiction.
Passion is a strong drive for an activity that is important and valued as bringing meaning to one’s life. Because this passion is valued, it is worth the time and energy devoted to pursuing it.
Whereas we feel free to choose our passion, we are slaves to addiction, which is a form of compulsion.
Eight. How common are Internet-based behavioral addictions?
Internet Addiction Test (IAT)
The Internet Addiction Test (IAT) is the first Validated measure of Internet Addiction described in the IAT Manual to measure Internet use in terms of mild, moderate, to several levels of addiction.
For more information on using the IAT and building an Internet Addiction treatment program in your practice, visit RestoreRecovery.net for our comprehensive workbook and training programs.
Based upon the following five-point Likert scale, select the response that best represents the frequency of the behavior described in the following 20-item questionnaire.
0 = Not Applicable
1 = Rarely
2 = Occasionally
3 = Frequently
4 = Often
5 = Always
- ___How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?
- ___How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?
- ___How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?
- ___How often do you form new relationships with fellow online users?
- ___How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online?
- ___How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend online?
- ___How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?
- ___How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?
- ___How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do online?
- ___How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?
- ___How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go online again?
- ___How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?
- ___How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online?
- ___How often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?
- ___How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when off-line, or fantasize about being online?
- ___How often do you find yourself saying “just a few more minutes” when online?
- ___How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend online and fail?
- ___How often do you try to hide how long you’ve been online?
- ___How often do you choose to spend more time online over going out with others?
- ___How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are off-line, which goes away once you are back online?
After all the questions have been answered, add the numbers for each response to obtain a final score. The higher the score, the greater the level of addiction and creation of problems resultant from such Internet usage. The severity impairment index is as follows:
NONE 0 – 30 points
MILD 31- 49 points: You are an average online user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.
MODERATE 50 -79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.
SEVERE 80 – 100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.
Personal Score
I took the test and scored a 57, which is a low moderate addiction.
University Students
We see that 48% of university students suffer Internet addiction.
Worldwide, Internet addiction is about 40%.
Nine. What is the purpose of Alter’s long exposition on Freud’s research into cocaine?
Freud and others believed cocaine as safe. Coca-Cola sold cocaine to its consumers because cocaine was considered a safe and natural ingredient. We look back at this as foolishness because now we have a body of research that exposes the dangerous addictive forming nature of the drug.
In the same way, Alter wants us to see social media as early cocaine, something seen as safe or benign in the absence of massive research.
Alter’s book is one of the first comprehensive books about the internet and social media addiction.
But we see evidence that tech gadgets are like cocaine. Psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair observes that many children see their parents as “Missing in Action” as these parents are lost zombies, their noses deep in the screens of their iPads even while they sit with their children at the dinner table.
Parents claim they love their children, but they are mentally absent and are back-seating their children in favor of their gadget addiction.
“Wait, honey, I have to check my phone.”
“Not yet, honey, I have to check this text.”
These common words evidence twisted priorities of a nation of addicts.
And what’s worse is this behavior seems normal because everyone does it.
Ten. What game-changing study radically altered our view of addiction?
In 1954, Olds and Milner discovered that stimulating the pleasure centers of rats’ brains made them addicts.
Before this experiment, it was believed that certain people had a predisposition to addiction.
But juxtaposing the Olds and Milner Study with Vietnam Vets (20% developed heroin addiction), we saw that addiction was based on environment and circumstance.
You could have a healthy “non-addict” disposition, but still be a victim of addiction if your brain’s pleasure centers were stimulated effectively.
Welcome to the Internet.
Why Fake News Is Spreading
Falsely attributed to Mark Twain is the following quote: "A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
The above is ironic because the statement is true and Twain to this day is given credit for the quote.
Why does fake news flourish today more than ever?
One. More news than ever.
Two. News is now integrated into entertainment formats.
Three. News is now integrated into social media.
Four. Most news readers are not readers; they are skimmers.
Five. Skimmers often confuse parody news with fake news and spread the parody as if it were real.
Six. Foreign agencies like Russia specialize in fake news to sway elections and cause chaos.
Seven. Fake news targets bias so if someone dislikes Person X, Fake News then paints Person X in negative way and this Fake News spreads with the help of Person X's haters.
Eight. Internet can generate lies and fake news so rapidly that it's impossible for countermeasures to address these lies adequately.
Nine. Internet makes it easy for Internet site to mask itself as real site. Take CNN, for example.
Ten. Once lies solidify in the collective consciousness, they are difficult to erase.
Finding Credible Sources
Indiana University Fake News Guide
BUMMER is reviewed in The Guardian.
Jaron Lanier is on 21-minute video explaining how social media ruins your life.
Jaron Lanier is on 14-minute Ted Talk video about how to remake the internet.
Sherry Turkle gives 19-minute Ted Talk.
See Atlantic essay, "War Goes Viral."
Comments