Redefining online community Part 2: Social media with a soul? Yes, please!

I’ll just say it - sometimes I really struggle with social media.
Today's popular social media platforms serve such an important function for many of us that about 82% of us (223 million people) in the US regularly used one or more of them in 2020, according to Statista. Datareportal reports that in the third quarter of 2019 there were 3.5 billion social media users across the globe. Despite the societal ills and perils wrought by the most widely used platforms (more on that later), these numbers suggest that social media plays a huge role in the ways we interact and relate to one another in this day and age.   

Why are so many people using today’s popular social media platforms even knowing that they may be bad for them?  Truthfully there is no universal answer, as the reasons we flock to these platforms vary as widely as the individual identities we bring to them. Many feel isolated and lonely as the pandemic persists, and social media is an easy way to connect with friends and loved ones, no matter how inferior that connection might be as a substitute for IRL interaction. Some fear missing out on the latest pop culture news, social event or meme – a phenomenon commonly known as FOMO. And because developers design these products to draw us in with likes and comments, playing on our dopamine receptors and need for social validation, many are simply addicted. 
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As both a techie and a skeptic, I know what these platforms are doing to me, and that I probably should have said goodbye to them long ago. And yet I remain plugged in, despite my reservations - what am I so afraid of leaving behind? In her December 2019 Psychology Today article “Can’t Delete: Why We Stay on Social Media,” Bree McEwan Ph.D. writes “Using these platforms can feel like mindless scrolling, but in fact, social media’s ability to make us more aware of our friendships and relationships may keep us tied to our accounts. Further, the author states that for her personally, quitting Facebook and Twitter “… would mean resigning a meaningful volunteer position, losing an avenue for connecting with my scout troop moms, and cutting myself off from a wise and caring network of academic mothers. I would lose connections I have made throughout my nomadic life.” It would also mean “… leaving behind not only the influencers and misinformation memes, but also community group pages, updates from cousins, news of friends over the years, memorial pages of deceased loved ones, and networks of industry colleagues.”  
With this in mind, let’s take a look at those who have managed to permanently retire from their newsfeeds, and what alternatives remain for those of us who aren’t quite ready to entirely let go. 

​So, why are so many people ditching social media?
According to their own data, Facebook’s user base in North America shrunk from 198 million users to 196 million in just one quarter. In an article entitled “This Might Be What Finally Makes Me Quit Facebook in 2021,” journalist Jason Atken hypothesizes why two million people migrated away from the platform in such a short period of time:  "There are privacy concerns, data leaks, and incendiary content, not to mention the monetization of your personal data.” Furthermore, Facebook is “… designing its product solely to make it better and more profitable for Facebook, even when that results in a worse user experience.” In general, many are coming to an understanding that the major tech companies play on human psychology and brain chemistry to keep users scrolling and maximize profits. Tristan Harris’ article “How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind – From a Magician and Google Design Ethicist,” gives an in-depth explanation of what they’re doing and how - and if you need convincing that some of these companies are acting in bad faith, you should read it. More and more people are leaving, and as recently as February 2nd, 2022 it was announced that Meta (formerly Facebook) lost over $200B (yes, Billion) in market value.

On top of privacy and psychological concerns, data in “Suicide Risk in Emerging Adulthood: Associations with Screen Time Over 10 Years” by Sarah M. Coyne, et. al, suggests that the negativity and incendiary content that plague these platforms can severely affect peoples’ mental health. In the United States, we are in the midst of a mental health crisis of epic proportions, undoubtedly exacerbated by the negativity we encounter on social media in addition to the isolation wrought by the COVID-19 crisis. People are re-evaluating what and who are important to them, where they want to work and live, what they want to do with their time, and what being in community really means to them. How many times have you seen a friend announce that they're "taking a break" from social media? It happens a lot, and often the user is back on the platform shortly after the announcement. In the words of earlier-mentioned author Bree McEwan Ph.D, “People aren’t making a choice about whether or not to leave a social media platform, they are making a choice about whether to leave their personal social network. Leaving Facebook isn’t about leaving Mark Zuckerberg, it’s about leaving Aunt Rose.” Personally I’d leave Zuckerberg in a hot minute if there was a better alternative, and I think “leaving Aunt Rose” is better than staying connected in an unhealthy, unsatisfying way.

​A fresh alternative
So we know that social media platforms are actively harmful to our mental health, but so is social isolation. Where do we go from here? How can we connect in a more mindful, healthy way? In her December 2020 Atlantic article, Adrienne Lafrance wrote that “We need people who dismantle these notions by building alternatives. And we need enough people to care about these other alternatives to break the spell of venture capital and mass attention that fuels megascale and creates fatalism about the web as it is now." 
​Who are these people and where are they now? Knowing that profit and greed drive the many things wrong with today’s popular social media platforms, how can we trust that an alternative wouldn’t eventually lead us down a similar path? One possible answer is that an established non-profit company or benevolent social enterprise could step up and deliver a fresh, alternative social media platform that doesn’t depend on making money from selling user data or selling advertisements to those users. Their primary goal could be to provide a better way for us to build community, and to give us all a place to connect with other people and organizations in a safer, more authentic way. They’d likely offer up a privacy policy that guarantees they would never sell users’ personal data, and transparently give users the ability to determine which other users could and couldn’t see their personal data. They would not allow annoying advertisements or in-system direct marketing at users. They would commit to not using self-serving algorithms to determine who sees what content and when. They may also create an emotionally safe environment by establishing and enforcing a set of basic, shared community values that all users would have to agree to before posting any viewable content. They’d create a fair and transparent system to ensure that people are held accountable for their words and actions toward other users, and that system would include actual community members to make sure the will of the greater community is heard and enforced. 
Hmm, that sounds like an interesting platform, and it would be an ambitious undertaking to say the least!  A platform like that wouldn’t be for everyone, but a sizable portion of the crowd currently using social media platforms might welcome the change. 

Personally, I’ve had Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and other social media accounts for years. Admittedly, they often feel like an addiction.. For me, online dating apps were even more addictive - I had accounts on three different dating sites/apps until very recently, and I found myself searching sites for possible matches, responding to messages from people I don’t know and likely never will, or swiping one way or the other way too much. I’ve been feeling pretty turned off by it all for months. I’m aware that the time and mental energy I put into it almost every day could be used for much better things. Working on this post inspired me, so I finally decided to pull the plug yesterday. I deleted the dating apps from my phone, and permanently deleted my accounts on all three dating sites. It felt so good to cut those cords that I decided to take it a step further and delete the social media apps from my phone as well. I would like to ultimately delete my personal social media accounts permanently as well, but my business pages are attached to them so I have to figure out how to get them to stand alone before I do. But I will. I’m encouraged by the February 2021 Guardian article “I get better sleep: the people who quit social media,” in which author Soo Youn shares first-hand stories of five people that ditched social media and found that their lives were better for it. I’m betting I’ll feel a lot of the same things these five did and I’ll be happy I did it. For me it isn’t about straight-up ditching social media, it’s about choosing to invest my time and energy in ways that are good for my soul. Plus, I happen to know that an alternative community platform like what Adrienne LaFrance called for - one with a soul - is coming, and its name is Eos.  More about that in upcoming posts.  
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Coming up next: “Resource matching platforms – your “go-to” when you need to find help”.