Social Media and Empathy

I am not a researcher but just a social observer so whatever I will write in subsequent paragraphs below are just my own plain observations. I have been thinking about this a lot.

Full disclosure – I deleted my Facebook (FB) account more than a year ago after the Cambridge Analytica revelation of Facebook’s unauthorized personal data sharing of its members. I cannot allow a company to profit from my information and treat my own data as a commodity without my knowledge and worst, not being paid for it. My decision to leave the platform was not solely because of this but the incident was the last straw.

It took me a while to join the social media bandwagon. I remember my friends ribbing me about being “left behind.” Some even accused me of perhaps, hiding something or that I’m just scared that I may not have that many friends. Peer pressured, finally I signed up with FB. I must admit, during the early days, it was fun to connect with long-lost friends and family from near and far. I felt truly connected with their lives based on their daily posts that whenever some of us get the chance to see each other in person, we didn’t really need to fill in a lot of voids. We just picked up from our last posts on FB.

I’m pretty sure that the original objective of Facebook during its early stages was noble and simple – connect everyone anywhere, anytime and foster a giant community to help make our world a better place. Until…the pressure to show profitability came along.

It is when capitalism and the need to be measured via ROIs (returns on investment) and bottomline results ($ after all the expenses) that the common good gets muddled by what’s good for those who control the money flow.

For social media platforms, where there are really no hard assets to speak of, what is the commodity? It’s the members. It’s you and me. What’s the most valuable asset of the commodity? Our personal data. Every single action we do, whether it is just a click or a scroll or the amount of time we spend staring at our screen is being measured and…SOLD!

You may be thinking so what does my data have to do with Empathy? You have been enjoying your membership for free, you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just metadata that’s being harvested while you remain anonymous. As a matter of fact you may be earning some money as a result of the hundreds or even thousands of followers you have in your different social media platforms. Life is good. What’s the problem?

Let me ask you these questions:

1. How has your life been in general since you joined these platforms?
2. How much time have you spent scrolling up and down, toggling from one platform to another as you receive notifications in your device(s)?
3. How many times have you felt miserable because it’s been 15 minutes and you’ve only received 20 likes in your last post?
4. Did you ever feel exhilaration when a supposed friend posted a photo from a yacht holding a glass of champagne? Or in reality, did you wish that that friend fell overboard because really, that person doesn’t deserve to be there? YOU deserved to be that person.
5. Do you remember the time you decided to unfollow someone because the varied photos or posts that person has been making made you jealous, uncomfortable or perhaps, annoyed?
6. Did you ever take time to put yourself in that person’s shoe or just decided that you’re too busy to be bothered?
7. Have you ever taken the time to notice that the only posts, news and subjects coming to your feed in most of the social platforms these days are totally focused on the same things that you like, pay attention to and that the more you spend eyeballs on these subjects, the more you get introduced to many other potential friends and news of the same?

The more time you spend on these platforms, specially FB, the more focused their algorithm bots or Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs become in getting to know you with the intent on capitalizing, harvesting and shaping your behavioral data until you don’t even need to make any decisions for yourself anymore. A decision of what you should like, pay attention to, believe, follow, etc is being made for you subliminally. Subtly. Even your own beliefs are now narrowly being shaped for you. Have you noticed that you’ve been too impatient and dismissive of alternative beliefs, lately?

What is Empathy anyway? Simply, it is the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.

Over time, as we all use more and more of these “social” media platforms, while they – social media providers – have gotten ultra sophisticated in mining our data, our capacity to have empathy has been significantly reduced. We have started seeing things more definitively as good or bad. Nothing in between. Our visions and mindset are more focused. We are losing the capacity for curiosity.

Just look around you. Listen to the news. We’ve become so entrenched in our own corner believing we’re on the right side of issues that we’ve forgotten to listen, to even consider the other side’s point of view. Why should we when we have all these friends and family who feel the same way? We must be the majority. We must be right. Tribalism is upon us and we’re intoxicated by it through subtle reinforcements from like-minded members of our social media circle – via their thumbs up and comments.

If history is any guide, tribalism leads to 1) squabbles 2) violence and genocide (Nazi Germany) and 3) degeneration vs. evolution.

The manifestation of these outcomes is already here – worldwide.

Watch the documentary, Social Dilemma on Netflix. Even the early creators of these social platforms are sounding the alarm. They have unleashed something they don’t have much control anymore and they are getting worried of the results. Sadly, they don’t know how to stop it.

If I were you, I’d make it a point to take a breather from these social media platforms and take a stock of who you really are – as a person. We all need to stop becoming a commodity by taking control of our information.

I promise you, you won’t miss a thing. You’ll realize that your own life story is infinitely more interesting than the choreographed lives captured in still shots of your so-called friends!