FACEBOOK IS KILLING US BUT WE CAN'T STOP EATING IT?
Let's face it. SOCIAL MEDIA ISN'T SOCIAL.
(It's pathological)
This latest revelation that Facebook's upper echelon has for quite some time been aware of Instagram's destructive impact on young women's mental health should be astonishing but it's not. It's just the latest in a seemingly endless tsunami of human suffering we can directly tie to the social media giant.
What’s it going to take? Donald Trump’s presidency wasn’t enough? Actual murder of actual people in Myanmar barely made a dent. Now this? Really the flood of toxic corrosive programs, algorithms, byproducts and even sometimes direct messaging from the executive office suites shows no signs of reaching an end or even slowing.
If our social fabric were a house, the basement would be filling up with toxic waste while we (billions of facebook users) continue going about our business upstairs telling ourselves that the foul smell we detect wafting up from below must really just be a figure of our imagination. After all, nobody else seems all that concerned?
So what will humankind do? We are living with an enemy of our better angels--call it humanity, compassion, mutual cooperation. And yet we all simply accept that we’re too far gone:
"We could never manage to decouple from Facebook et al.," we tell ourselves, forgetting the very real cost of staying tethered to this albatross.
Think about that statement. Never? Really? And why not? Mankind has managed far greater hat tricks. Sure it will take time and I may not live to see it through to completion but we owe it to ourselves to try. The very fact that we can on the one hand acknowledge that this enormously powerful force in daily life is itself designed to push us away from everything that makes life worth living reveals just how far down the rabbit hole we've fallen.
"I know this will kill me but I can't stop eating it."
#unfriendfacebook
Begin today. #socialmediaisantisocial
Ed. note: I have been sounding the alarm re: facebook ever since the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Most who know me now simply accept that I'm an oddity, an outlier with my pie-in-the-sky fantasies of a global decoupling from Facebook. So, please, engage me here on this question. Please, if you will, use the comments section below to make the argument(s) in favor of remaining tethered to the platform. I'd really like to try and understand your thinking.