In media stress
Why suffering while on social networks? - Media Ecology Newsletter #23
A better environment, quality relationships, the sense of having a place in the world are all conditions with great value, even if they are priceless. And they affect personal happiness more than the level of consumption. In this context, exercising, learning, overcoming difficulties by improving oneself, are all aspects of a good strategy to be in a state of flow, an intelligent psychological well-being linked to personal development. How are the digital social media contributing to this pursuit of happiness?
Welcome to the “media ecology” newsletter. There are many ways to discuss about the relationship between happiness and social media: but people could agree on the idea that the media are our cultural environment and we need to develop an ecological strategy to improve it. After this note, I share some links, hoping they are useful to readers. By the way: between December 1st and 3rd, I’ll be in Faenza for the After Festival.
Negative externalities
The social network system based around the experience of Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and so on, presents some well-known characteristics. But sometimes it is useful to remember them:
A. Power
1. concentrates enormous power in the hands of those who govern those platforms
2. concentrates data in those platforms
3. increases the power of artificial intelligences used in those platforms
B. Model
1. the advertising business model favors attention-gathering over information quality
2. in this model, there is an ease of distribution of fake news, hate speech, banalities published just to get audience
3. the purpose of the technologies used is to keep people on the platforms longer and longer
C. Side effects
1. the devices used to gain people's attention and keep them on the platform can be addictive
2. competition for attention and approval can generate depression
3. knowledge of these effects occurs only as a courtesy of the platforms or a confrontational gesture by employees creating a condition of opposition and not solidarity toward people's well-being goals
In this context, preventive treatment of suffering is quite rare. Platforms react late and poorly to new things introduced and suffered by users. They often have no intention of really caring for these sufferings if caring would put profits at risk.
It is impossible to share all the links that could be useful to to support the information above. But please take the time to read this Guardian’s article: Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen calls for urgent external regulation. A book has been published by two New York Times’ reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang: An ugly truth. The anthropologist Veronica Barassi has written I figli dell’algoritmo, about all the risks children face from digital media. And I have lately written about the new book by Esther Paniagua, ERROR 404. Literature, both scientific and popular, about these matters is growing everyday.
But this is not the end of the story. What can people do about it?
Ecology is within us
Well, there are many things to do. We can develop a strategy to treat the social media environment with a policy similar to the one we reserve for ecology. We also know that this kind of strategy is quite slow, while absolutely needed.
The process will be faster and faster when awareness will be stronger. Ecology is within us. We need to seek happiness in order to be willing to contribute to a healthy ecology. It is humans that must be saved: nature will find its way, it is humans that are at risk, with many other species. If we do things that contribute to our unhappiness, that create addiction and we are not able to change, and that ruin the environment, we are not useful for ecology. And this is also right for the media ecology.
What is interesting is that a healthier media ecology that reduces people's suffering could also be the premise for uniting minds to make better decisions for the planetary environment as well.
Mentally healthy people could be more prepared to find the way to building a healthier planet. Can we define a strategy to go in this direction together?
Strategies to achieve these results:
1. a policy geared toward reducing the oligopolistic power of platforms and guiding them toward greater openness and transparency
2. a cultural evolution that places as a priority the pursuit of sanity and the physical sanity of people, seeing them as linked to the very sanity of the planet
3. a blossoming of initiatives that create alternatives to existing social platforms and multiply opportunities for healthy living online
In the meantime: did you notice?
50 of Twitter's top 100 advertisers have pulled out of the platform since Elon Musk took over, report says (BusinessInsider).
How retailers are reshaping the advertising industry (FT)
The Techno-Feudal Method to Musk’s Twitter Madness (Yanis Varoufakis at Project Syndicate)
Vox Populi, Vox Mea - The messy idea of democracy that is emerging at Musk’s Twitter (LDB)
Podcasts in Italian, by me
L’altra metà del verso. Rai Radio 3
Media Ecology. Intesa Sanpaolo on air
Eppur s’innova. Luiss University Press
Ecology of screens
On the occasion of the International Conference Vivre par(mi) les écrans: entre passé et avenir, which was held in Lyon at the end of May, the newsletter of the International Research Group Vivre par(mi) les écrans and the Media Ecology newsletter agreed to signal, each to its recipients, the importance to them of the other's content, inviting them to subscribe to receive it and disseminate it among their contacts. So please visit Vivre par(mi) les écrans and subscribe to the newsletter.
This choice of collaboration stems from the common project of promoting, developing and sharing highly qualified knowledge aimed at creating tools for guidance, critique and intervention in the field of media ecology and our current and future living between(mite) screens, as well as fostering the social dissemination of the aforementioned knowledge and tools.
Follow the After Festival, in Faenza, from December 1st to December 3rd.