Questão 1914528

TEXT 23

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Social Media’s Dark Side: How Connectivity Uprooted Our Self-Worth

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We used to use technology. Now technology uses us. Silicon Valley ethicist Tristan Harris explains how the attention economy hijacked our self-worth for profit.

In the 1970s, at the dawn of personal computers, people like Steve Jobs and the scientists at Xerox PARC talked about computers as “bicycles for our mind”. Sure, someone was going to make big money selling these hardware units, but the intention was at heart quite pure; computers would give our minds wheels to go farther than ever before. Our capabilities would be augmented by technology, and we would become smarter and more capable. That ethos has not really stuck, and today we fi nd ourselves in a Pavlovian relationship with push notifi cations, incapacitated by the multi-directional pull on our attention spans.

We’ve made it through every new technological wave—newspapers, radio, TV, laptops, cell phones—without the social decay that was widely prophesied, but there’s something diff erent about smartphones loaded with apps living in the palm of our hand, says tech ethicist Tristan Harris. It would be a mistake not to recognize how, this time, it really is diff erent. Companies today are not more evil than they were in the 1970s, what’s changed is the environment they operate in: the attention economy, where the currency is your eyeballs on their product, for as long as possible— precious exposure that can be sold to advertisers. Unlike the neutral technology we once used, and could walk away from, today’s technology uses us. Behind every app—Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat— are 1,000 software designers working every day to update and fi nd new psychological levers to keep you hooked to this product. The most powerful development has been that of ‘likes’, public feedback that externalized our self-worth onto a score card (this has reached new heights with Snapchat’s streaks, which research by Emily Weinstein at Harvard has shown puts extreme stress on kids and adolescents.) “These products start to look and feel more like media that’s about maximizing consumption and less like bicycles for our minds,” says Harris. Is it too late to do something about the attention economy?

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Extracted from: https://bigthink.com/the-present/tristan-harris-socialmedias-dark-side-how-connectivity-uprooted-our-self-worth/ (Adapted)

What is diff erent about the new communication innovations when compared to those from earlier decades?