We The Users
The other day, my 7-year-old said, “Dad, when I grow up, I’m not going to have Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of those.”
In my mind I said, “Hallelujah.” Though he may not fully grasp what those apps exactly are, he understands what they do: steal his parents.
My wife’s social media of choice is Instagram, mine is Twitter. We each spend a lot of time on either app, so much so that we know we need to tone it down. So much so that our kids have resolved it’s no bueno too.
This past week, my wife and I had a moment of reckoning in the form of the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma.”
This film exposes the dirty truths of social media: we the users are the product, and our human futures are being shaped incrementally by it, often for the worst.
A concurrent dramatic storyline portrays an American family in which the teen and preteen children are deep under social media’s spell. There is certainly some element of science fiction in this docu-drama, but its main thesis shines through.
Though perhaps never rooted in evil, social media has grown thorns, and there’s not a real way to chop it down at this point.
The only real solution was what my child so matter-of-factly stated: reject it.
Whether our children stick to that pledge or not, or whether the platforms even exist ten years from now, the world will be vastly different. Will the posts of today even matter, ten, twenty, or one-hundred years from now?
If the internet is permanent, then yes.
If we, the users, turn away from it all together, the answer is no. None of it will matter. Only humanity will triumph.
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Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash