Column – There was a time when Facebook added value to my life. It was winter in Buenos Aires and I was sitting behind a computer in the hostel. That week I had created a Facebook profile. I saw pictures of parties on the other side of the world that I had attended. I had messages from people I had met in Iran a few months earlier. I was amazed at how easily I could stay in touch with them and follow their lives.
That wonder about the power of Facebook and other social media has now diminished. What value do they still add?
We read weekly reports about the use of our data and how they earn billions from it. About how we are lured into a trap through advertisements and fake news and how elections are hijacked with it . About how hatred – which was hidden for a long time – seems to have found a visible place . About how badly employees are treated .
The core of this is how technology is often no longer used to add value to our lives, but as something that abuses our brains to make a profit .
Because what value does social media actually add to our lives? Facebook’s newsfeed has changed from a way to keep track of how your friends are doing to a list of viral videos and clickbait articles. I still scroll through it, but I find it increasingly tiring and mind-numbing.
Yet millions of Dutch people – including me – continue to do so every day. Facebook is set up in such a job function email database way that I can’t really stop using it. After years of analyzing our behavior, Facebook knows exactly which content makes people click, like and watch.
And while we think we're on social media to look at photos of our friends and read news articles, we're actually most aroused by the things that aren't pretty: viral nonsense, addictive games, attention, likes from others.
people-on-social-media
From adding value to addiction
We love the dopamine hits we get from it , which makes us less likely to use Facebook and other social media and tech apps aimlessly. And that has changed the way businesses operate online.
The question is often no longer: how do we add value to the lives of our users?
The question is: how do we make our users as addicted as possible?
Not only Facebook suffers from this, but the entire tech sector is obsessed with it. Often, the quality of the product is no longer considered, but rather tricks to ensure that people will follow you, like you, buy you, etc. Silicon Valley and its international start-up clones are looking for ways to get people hooked . Instead of creating growth, they want to hack growth .
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