Have we realised how much time social media steals from us? You know, I was watching a documentary on YouTube called The Social Dilemma. A very thought-provoking and revealing documentary about how the social media business model operates. The documentary reveals so many issues about social media and how social media companies make a profit. The main issue that I got from the documentary is that social media thrives on grabbing your attention at all costs. And that got me thinking.
Primarily because yesterday, I realised how this can become an issue. Yesterday, I woke up early. I went for a light jog and came back to officially start the day. I planned my day with the aim to be as productive as I can. The moment I sat on my chair and opened the laptop, a notification appears that I have been tagged on a Facebook post. Lately, there are these idiots tagging me in pornographic posts so I try my best to untag myself immediately when Facebook tells me that someone has tagged me to a post. At that moment, I remembered one guy in the documentary making an example of the attention-grabbing techniques used by Facebook. He said that it would be easier if Facebook would show you the picture you’ve been tagged on rather than telling you that you have been tagged. Instead of Facebook asking you to review the post on the notification, it forces you to the platform to review it. That’s one of the strategies that they use to grab your attention.
This got me thinking why is that there is no setting to block people from tagging me period? Quite frankly, I get annoyed when the 35-year-old local rapper tags me on his latest suck-in-the-90s mixtape. I get annoyed when someone tags me so I can see him or her on a mountain or at some resort, with some self-praising caption. With the strategy of growing my social media following, there are imbeciles who tag me in some virus-infected links disguised as pornographic content. It is not like Facebook does not know about this. Perhaps there is a method to completely block one from being tagged on unnecessary posts. But this is only but one of the strategies these platforms use to grab your attention. This is important because it is your attention that these companies make money from.
There is another guy in the documentary who said that he is addicted to his emails. He asked why isn’t there a tool or a code that can make emails less addictive. And if you think of it, in some form, aren’t we all addicted to our emails? Emails are official. Emails have a sense of being productive. For those of my generation, emails were usually associated with successful and wealthy people. Having an email address was a status symbol. I believe that the belief that having an email address is a status symbol is ingrained in our subconscious. And so, we take pride in having one. Even when hosting companies advertise having a personalised email address for your business, they focus on making your business stand out and look “professional”. Therefore, we access our email address having a sense of importance and feeling that we are somewhat productive because we sent an email. We feel productive that we read an email. When the reality is, emails, like meetings, can lead to unproductive habits. It can lead to people being addicted to sending and reading emails and missing the true essence of being productive. One of the greatest filmmakers, Christopher Nolan, it said that he doesn’t use emails, let alone own a phone. Yet this man has directed one of the greatest movies of our time. Yes, he directed Inception, Interstellar and the Batman Trilogy to mention a few. E-mails at the end of the day, are the grandparents of all these instant messaging platforms we have grown accustomed to. It makes sense why the really rich say that they check emails for just an hour a day. The rest of the day they dedicate it to actually being productive.
Yesterday was an interesting day because after I went through my emails I thought that perhaps, now I can work. I made the mistake of going to YouTube. Working or reading while listening to rain sounds is one of the most powerful things I have discovered. So, I was going to YouTube to find one of these rain sound videos. The power of YouTube recommendations, I found myself watching episode after episode of various videos from my favourite YouTubers. The time I realised that I have not started working, it was already 4 pm.
The whole morning and the afternoon I spent it on social media. And if it wasn’t for the documentary, I would have considered it just a normal day. That got me thinking. It made me think of what Steve Jobs once said about computers. He said that computers are tools with the potential to greatly advance the human race. And to a great extent, social media is also a tool that can greatly advance the human race. These platforms allow you to connect with old friends and distant relatives. Being someone who grew up on Hip Hop, watching a YouTube channel like Hood Vlogs is so interesting because it shows the true, unedited and raw streets of Compton and those areas. Because of YouTube, I can learn about the art of filmmaking and watch a daily vlog of someone who lives in Japan (a place I wish to call a second home one day).
Social media only becomes a problem when we use it unchecked. Because the greatest threat that social media possesses is that it robs people of time. And time is the currency we use to pay for living our lives. It makes sense why most content creators would say things like that after they post on Instagram or Facebook, they delete the app and will reinstall it when they want to post again. Some of our favourite celebrities do not have social media accounts. The ones we follow could be fan ones or ones created by their PR teams.
In essence, like television, social media is the latest evolution in the way we consume media. And like television, there are primarily two kinds of people who use the media. Those that produce content for the medium and those that consume it. Unlike television, content creators for social media do not need expensive equipment and contacts in production companies to create content. Most phones today have decent cameras to create content. I am one of those people who believe that if one can buy data to watch re-runs of your favourite shows on Netflix, then one can definitely use that data to create content for YouTube or the Gram. I do not believe in the myth that we do not have access to information. Not in today’s world. Some of our favourite content creators share so many nuggets of wisdom with their posts that we can choose to follow their advice or not. Mind you, the advice they share is usually based on their own success.
At the end of the day, social media is here to stay. Perhaps at a later stage or in the next generation, there will be a new form of media that will replace social media the same way TV did to the radio, the same way social media is replacing TV. The key important element we should keep at the back of our minds is the question of how are we using the media to enrich ourselves. Are we watching, learning and strategizing on how to create content for these platforms? Or are we slaves, selling our lives by the hour by consuming endless content from these platforms? That’s up to us to decide.
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