Tag Archives: social media

Attention and distraction

Do you ever look at the length of an article or a video before deciding if you’ll bother reading or watching it? Do you ever stop what you are doing to read an incoming message or notification?

How many notifications do you get in a day? How many times is your attention on a task taken away by digital distractions?

After years of these interruptions, how are our brains being re-wired? However much the distractions affect us, they are distracting our younger generations more. I have many notifications turned off on my phone, and I’m not using apps as a means to communicate with friends regularly. Teens today are in constant contact with friends, and even parents, and the interruptions are continuous.

I recently had a lunch at a restaurant with family and no phones came out the entire meal. This is normal for us, but not what we see around us. My daughter mentioned a dinner we had on holidays in Whistler, where a family of a mother and three girls sat next to us. The youngest had headphones on and barely looked up from her iPad. Another was glued to her phone. The third was drawing and had one earphone in. None of them had a single conversation with their mom that any of us witnessed.

I have to wonder, are our attention spans shrinking? Are digital distractions affecting our ability to hold continued focus without interruption? Are we no more than Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the sound of the next notification?

This isn’t new. TV used to interrupt our shows for commercials. Kids shows like Sponge Bob don’t hold the same camera angle for more than 4 or 5 seconds, giving constant stimulation even when nothing is happening. So, interruptions aren’t new, but they are exponentially worse on unlimited data, social media packed phones.

We are, as Neil Postman suggests, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. We are slowly destroying our ability to sit focused and uninterrupted on a single task. More than one notification came up while I was writing this, so I’ve obviously not figured out how to reduce the distractions myself. How many years of these distractions before we become incapable of staying on one task for any extended period of time?

Fear to share

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I’m pretty honest when I write here. I have written about challenges with my headspace, about how hard it can be to write every day, and when things haven’t necessarily gone well for me. I’ve even ranted a few times about things that drive me nuts. But if you were to look back at my 1,600+ blog posts since I started writing daily, I think you’d see that I’m a pretty positive person.

And still I find myself struggling to share that today was a crummy day for me. Nothing bad happened, I didn’t get any bad news, I just had a crappy, unhappy day. I was in a funk and I couldn’t get out of it.

I recognized it enough to ask a friend to connect with me after work, and he gave me some good advice. So I stayed off my phone other than listening to a podcast in my hot tub. And I’m in bed at 9pm writing this so that I can set it to publish in the morning and sleep in a little later.

It bugs me that I wanted to hide this melancholy feeling and pretend that everything is ok. I am thinking about the problem with the happy lives of Instagramers, who put only the happiest, most perfectly posed photos on their stories, and who hide every blemish, ever disappointment, and every mundane experience or feeling. I don’t want to replicate that. I think it’s ok to say, ‘today sucked, I’m not feeling like I’m in a good place,’ without making people worry about me, or question my happiness at work or at home.

We stigmatize sharing mental health challenges and simultaneously glorify our best lives on social media. No one wants to be seen as ‘broken’. So a simple bad day gets tucked away. And a selfie with a pet and a smile goes online.

Today was not a good day. I’m privileged enough to be able to say that because I have 1,600 other things I’ve written that normalize me and don’t make me look fragile or weak. But how many people hide it? How many smiling Facebook and Instagram posts are masks hiding darker, unshared feelings? How many people would benefit from sharing but don’t have a friend or partner to rely on, or a space to share their feelings and feel safe rather than vulnerable and exposed.

Tomorrow will be a better day for me, I know this already. I’m lucky, I have good coping mechanisms figured out and I’m told by many I have an ‘even keeled’ disposition. Those who know me aren’t going to be concerned about what I’ve written.

But what about those who aren’t ok? Who don’t have good coping strategies, and who have a fear to share? How hard is it for them to see the happy, smiling social media posts, oblivious that some of those posts mask the same feelings they have?

Not everyone is as fortunate as me to be able to share a crappy day and not feel judged.

The digital wall

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What is it about the internet that gives people permission to be awful and mean to others? I follow an astrophysicist on social media. She’s brilliant, and makes great content. She also posted a rant about all the misogynistic comments she gets from men commenting on her rather than her content. I’m not sharing any more details because it looks like she took the video down.

This is just one of many examples of people behaving badly from the safety of behind their keyboards. Many don’t even hide behind an anonymous profile, no they are just openly rude, mean, and/or sexist. I don’t understand the desire to do this? I don’t understand how a digital profile somehow creates the permissions to do this?

Would these people say the same things if they were physically in a crowded room with the person they are actively being inappropriate with? In most cases I would guess not. But somehow their keyboard acts as a digital wall separating them from their bad deeds.

I wonder what these people would think if someone was saying the same rude things they are saying online to one of their family members? Would that be enough to stop them? Would they think it was ok if a person spoke like them to their daughter? What would it take to make them realize what jerks they are being?

I’m pretty sure Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t face the sexism the female astrophysicist I mentioned above does. I bet the internet is a very different place for these two people with similar jobs. The inequity is magnified on the digital, social media front. The blatantly sexist and rude comments of yesterday-year are still alive and well on the internet.

I’m not the one getting the worst of it, so I don’t see it that much. Yet it still bothers me. I’d hope to see a change for the better soon, but I’m not terribly optimistic. In fact, I think it will likely get worse before it gets better. I hope not, but I think so.

Intolerance for bad faith actors

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I have always been a pretty strong advocate for free speech. To me it’s the underpinning of a robust democratic society. We don’t have to like what someone says, but they have a right to say it as long as it isn’t hate speech or harmful to someone. We shouldn’t allow racism, threats, and doxing, but we should allow differences of opinions and even angry rants when they are not threatening to a person or group of people.

But I’m struggling with the lack of good faith that I’m seeing. In our country, I see a lot of protests and anger towards our Prime Minister. I believe people should be allowed to protest and share their concerns, but when I see articles like, ‘Attack on Trudeau unsurprising, experts say, warning of future violence against politicians‘ stating that he was “pelted with gravel while at a campaign stop in London, Ont.” Or I read that he was heckled so loudly that he couldn’t continue a speech… Then that is going way too far. This isn’t protest, it’s fascist, it is intolerant and oppressive.

There is a difference between voicing concerns and harassment. There is a difference between protesting and threatening, there is a difference between peaceful, civil behavior and what seems to be happening today.

If I was to describe my politics, I’m definitely left of center. And while I fundamentally disagree with many things Ben Shapiro thinks and says, I get upset when I read articles that he can’t even speak at a university because of safety concerns… And that was 6 years ago! Things are even worse now. Much worse.

When I recently read, “The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after being accused of evading questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.” I am deeply concerned. Should students be allowed to protest? Absolutely! Should they be allowed to promote genocide of any person or people as part of their protest? Absolutely not.

It’s an easy line to draw. Absolutely not. That’s acting in bad faith. That’s undermining our democracy and our freedoms.

We need to differentiate how we handle protests and free speech by people who are acting in good faith from those acting in bad faith. The very rights and freedoms we are given in a free and democratic society depend on us doing so. When we give those freedoms to people that abuse them, we subvert our own liberty. We diminish our freedoms and allow others, with harmful words and actions, to impose less civil values on us.

When free speech is misused, it harms us all. When violence is advocated or permitted; when protests prevent civil conversation and debate; when harassment is permitted; we all suffer. We can’t let people acting in bad faith weaken our civil liberties. We can’t just expect people to act in good faith, the minority who don’t will be too disruptive. We need to squash the bad faith actors. The trick is that we need to do so with legal actions. We need to have zero tolerance for intolerance, and we need to create laws that clearly restrict and penalize threats, hate crimes, and malice.

This is known as the paradox of tolerance, “The paradox of tolerance states that if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.”

Instead, what I am seeing is things like this happening:

People who have caused over a decade of harm to others do not deserve a social media platform. That’s not censorship, that’s prevention of further malice, pain, and suffering to innocent people. As I contemplate leaving Twitter, news like this makes me lean towards shutting down my account. But I don’t pretend that will have any meaningful impact beyond my own peace of mind.

The acceptance of bad faith actors has been building over the past decade, and we are deep into the consequences now. Free speech should only be a right for people who act in good faith. There can be disagreement, there can be discourse, there can even be civil arguments and protests. What there can’t be are bad faith actors and activists using free speech as a mechanism to promote harmful ideas, hate, violence, and disruptions to public discourse. For this we need zero tolerance.

Related: Ideas on a Spectrum

All a Twitter

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I love what Twitter did to open the digital world for me. I even wrote a small ebook about how to get started on Twitter. But it has been a decade since I really spent time on this app. I used to have both public and private conversations, and I used to engage in Twitter chats, but now I mostly just transmit these daily posts to Twitter, and only engage there if someone replies to one of my posts.

Essentially, Twitter has become a sharing tool and not a social tool. So, when I see Elon Musk hitting the self-destruct button on Twitter/X, I just question whether I’ll leave before or after that happens?

It has been an amazing ride, and I’m thankful to Twitter for all the wonderful connections I’ve made. I have met so many people on Twitter that I consider friends. I have met these friends at conferences and felt like I’ve known them for years, because I had rich conversations with them on Twitter before we met face-to-face. But I don’t remember the last time I had one of those Twitter conversations. I think it has been years since I engaged meaningfully on Twitter with someone, (although this recent post was inspired by a Twitter reply).

I’m not boycotting Twitter. For now I’ll still transmit my blog there. But it hasn’t been what it used to be for me since before Elon took it over. The difference now is that I find it has a bias like the old YouTube algorithm that leads you down negative rabbit holes. It plays up the rage, and doesn’t curate topics I’m interested in. My timeline doesn’t feel like my timeline, it feels like a newscast, and I hate watching news because it focuses on the negative.

So, I’ll use it as a transmission tool for a while longer, but if Elon decides to blow it up, either intentionally or not, I won’t shed a tear. It will be sad, but so is watching its slow demise. Nothing lasts forever, and maybe Twitter needs to die before a new platform can blossom. I think we might find out sooner rather than later.

High versus low trust societies

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I love when someone adds to my perspective on social media. That’s exactly what happened after I posted Basic assumptions a couple days ago. The post reflected that, “people no longer give each other the benefit of the doubt that intentions are good. This used to be a basic assumption we operated on, the premise that we can start with the belief that everyone is acting in good faith.”

I shared the post on Twitter and Chris Kalaboukis and I had the following conversation thread:

Chris: Reading your post: could we be transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society?

Dave: Yes, that seems like an appropriate conclusion. Is there an author that speaks of this idea?

Chris: Not that I can recall, however, if you look at the attributes of low-trust societies you see a lot of what is happening now.

Dave: So true! The circle of high trust seems to be shrinking and it really seems like a step backwards… tribalism trumps the collective of a greater community.

Chris: It is. It seems that even our institutions are driving us towards more tribalism and division.

Dave: And how do you suppose we correct this course? I honestly don’t have a clue, and see things getting worse before they get better.

Chris: I think that in reality, most people prefer to live in a high-trust society. We need leaders and media who support that vision.

Dave: I think the biggest problem right now is that most leaders do not want to step into a limelight where both social media and news outlets are only interested in focussing on the dirt. It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.

Chris: If it bleeds it leads. we’ve never been able to communicate with more people at the same time but the only communication which seems to get through is negative. It’s all about keeping your attention to sell more ads.

Dave: I sound like quite the pessimist, that’s not usually my stance on things, but I do struggle to see a way forward from here.

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The idea Chris shared that we could be ‘transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society’ seems insightful and really intrigues me. It isn’t happening at just one level, but many!

• Scam phone calls and emails are perfect examples. We used to operate from a position of trust, but now unknown calls and unsolicited emails are all necessarily met with skepticism.

• Sensationalized news leads with misleading headlines that are more about getting attention and clicks than about providing truthful news. And if the news slant doesn’t match your beliefs, it’s ‘fake news’.

• Sales pitches and advertising promises almost everything under the sun, you aren’t buying a product with a basic function, you are buying a product that is going to change your life or transform how you do ‘X’, or use ‘Y’… your results will surprise you and you’ll be amazed!

• If you are even slightly left wing you are ‘woke’ or ‘Antifa’ in the most derogatory way you can use these words. If you are even slightly right wing you are ‘Alt-right’ and racist. No one gets to sit on a spectrum, you are either viewed as an extreme on one or the other side. And even agreeing on one topic on the other side makes you less trustworthy on your side.

These are but a few ways we’ve become a lower-trust society. Ad hominem and straw man attacks get more attention than sound arguments. A well said lie is easily shared while complex truths are not. Saying a situation is complex and sharing nuance does not make for catchy sound bites, and aren’t going to go viral on TikTok, or Instagram Reels. No, but the snarky personal attack will, as will a one-sided, extreme view that packs a powerful punch.

What’s worse is that moderate voices get shut out. And in general many people feel silenced or would rather not share a view that is even slightly controversial. So the extreme voices get even more airtime and attention.

I feel this often. Writing every day, and sometimes picking controversial topics to discuss, I find myself tiptoeing and treading very carefully. I said in my Twitter conversation with Chris above, “It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.” I sometimes wonder what one thing I’m going to say is going to get blown out of proportion? If I write one single inappropriate or strongly biased phrase, will it define me? Will it undermine the 1,500+ posts that I’ve written, and make me out to be something or someone I’m not?

This sounds paranoid, but I wrote one post a few years ago that a friend private messaged me about, then called me and said I’d gone too far with my opinion on a specific point. I totally saw his point, went back and adjusted my post to tone it down… but I feel like that one issue, that one strong and overly biased opinion shared publicly put a rift in our friendship. And that’s someone I respect, not some stranger coming at me, not someone that doesn’t know my true character. My opinion in his eyes is now less trustworthy, and holds less value. That said, I appreciated the feedback, and respect that he took the time to share it privately. That’s rare these days.

The path forward is not easy. We aren’t just swaying slightly towards a less trustworthy society, we are on a full pendulum swing away from a more trustworthy society. Tribalism, nationalism, and extremism are pulling our world apart. Who do you trust? What institutions? Which governments? Who do you consider a neighbour? Who will you break bread with? Who do you believe?

The circles of trust are getting smaller, and the mechanisms to share bias and misinformation are growing. We are devolving into a less trusting society or rather societies, and it’s undermining our sense of community. We need messages of kindness, love, and peace to prevail. We need tolerance, acceptance, and more than anything trustworthy institutions and leaders. We need moderates and centrists to voice compromise and minimize extremist views. We need to rebuild a high trust society… together.

Calculated Misery

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I recently watched this TikTok, about ‘calculated misery’.

It starts off with the idea that social media platforms are going to work together to get us to pay or pay more for their services. It’s no longer enough that we have to watch ads to play along. I notice it when I watch YouTube on my phone and I’m regularly asked if I want to upgrade to avoid ads. Meanwhile I’m also watching more ads that I can’t skip after 5 seconds.

My Twitter feed is filled with ‘blue checkmark’ profiles where that check costs anyone $8 a month to have, regardless of if their content or expertise is valuable to me. And meanwhile, my checkmark-less profile is being viewed less often than those who pay.

Also discussed in the video is how airlines use calculated misery to upsell you. The carry-on suitcase I bought 15 years ago used to be good on any airline, now it needs to be checked on many of them. Leg room has been reduced, and while tickets used to include choice of seats, now that’s something you need to upgrade or pay more for to get. You want a meal or beverage on a 5 hour flight? Those used to be free, but many airlines charge for them now.

It used to be that the basic price was good enough, and upgrades gave you perks, but now it seems anything less than premium is meant to suck a little bit, meant to be just enough misery to make you want to pay more. Even amusement parks are doing it, giving people privileged access in lineups if they pay more. And it’s hard to be in line and watch others get priority over you.

We’ve moved from an era of customer value and service being a priority to an era where profits matter more. It’s a world where customers are made less comfortable, unless they pay a premium, and the benefits are really to shareholders. Essentially, services are getting gradually worse, and misery is creeping in… unless you pay a little bit more.

Untruth and Truth Bombs

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Here it comes. It didn’t take long. The unrest in the Middle East has already led to a flood of fake news, videos, and photos. Video of past battles are showing up as if they are current. Clips from video games are being passed off as current battles. And AI generated or modified videos and photos are being passed off as real.

Waves of untruths, fake news, and misinformation are being spewed out and shared virally. There isn’t a video clip, news heading, or photograph you can take for face value as being a truthful account of events that actually happened.

Except that some of it is real. Some of it is too real. Before it can be edited or censored, there will be some very graphic videos and images that will be spread across social media. Even respectable media sources will over-share overly violent clips, but on these sights there will be a pre-warning of what’s to come and some of the video will be blurred out to protect the audience or the victims, or both.

Warning or not, truth or untruth, we’ve entered an era where we, and our kids, are likely going to see things that never would have been shown just a few short years ago. No matter what social media you use, you’ll likely be exposed to graphic images too real to stomach, even if they are actually fake.

I don’t know what to worry about more, graphic images or fake images? What’s the worst bomb dropped, the truth bomb or the untruth bomb? Neither are good, and both are headed to a social media platform near you. In fact, they are already there.

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Update: Great article from Forbes on the topic of deepfakes spreading virally, “In A New Era Of Deepfakes, AI Makes Real News Anchors Report Fake Stories“.

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