Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat…they are corporations, whose goal is to make money for their stakeholders.
It’s no surprise then that they work super hard to make their platforms addictive for users so that the more time they spend their the more adverts and other business opportunities they can serve up.
The questions as the user is, does this serve me well? Is this adding value to my life? What else could I do with the time that I spend here? What difference would this make to my life if this didn’t exist? Will this affect my self-worth, self-confidence, mental health? The list of questions could go on.
We often forget to ask questions about value anymore as we have fallen into the ‘any benefit’ trap. One single benefit is often enough, where previously humans, with more limited resources, we had to evaluate much more.
The addictive nature of social media leads to less evaluation and more time lost with the only gains to be had for the owners of the platform.
Philip Dodson 