Facebook

Vows of Digital Poverty

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 10 Comments

Maybe deleting Facebook is something akin to taking monastic vows in medieval society.

Stay with me.

Here’s the background: In the aftermath of the latest spate of revelations confirming Facebook’s status as a blight on our society and plague upon our personal lives, many have finally concluded that it is time to #DeleteFacebook.

This seems like an obviously smart move, but some have pushed back against the impulse to abandon the platform.

[Self-disclosure: I have a Facebook account. I used to have a Facebook page for this blog. I’ve recently deleted the page for the blog because it struck me as being inconsistent with my work here. I have maintained my personal profile for some of the usual reasons: I thought I might do some good there and for the sake of maintaining a few relationships that would likely dissolve altogether were it not for the platform. The former now appears to be rather naive and the latter not quite worth the cost. I’ve begun to gradually delete what I’ve posted over the years. I may leave a skeleton profile in place for awhile for the sake of those weak ties, we’ll see. Update: I’ve deleted the profile.]

Here is how April Glaser presents the case against #DeleteFacebook:

I understand this reaction, but it’s also an unfair one: Deleting Facebook is a privilege. The company has become so good at the many things it does that for lots of people, leaving the service would be a self-harming act. And they deserve better from it, too. Which is why the initial answer to Facebook’s failings shouldn’t be to flee Facebook. We need to demand a better Facebook.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, no friend of Facebook, makes a similarly compelling case in the New York Times:

So go ahead and quit Facebook if it makes you feel calmer or more productive. Please realize, though, that you might be offloading problems onto those who may have less opportunity to protect privacy and dignity and are more vulnerable to threats to democracy. If the people who care the most about privacy, accountability and civil discourse evacuate Facebook in disgust, the entire platform becomes even less informed and diverse. Deactivation is the opposite of activism.

From a slightly different but overlapping perspective, a post at Librarian Shipwreck likewise complicates the impulse to delete Facebook. The post draws on Lewis Mumford to frame our use of Facebook as the acceptance of a technological bribe: “Deleting Facebook is an excellent way of refusing a bribe. Yet it must be remembered that the bribe has been successful because it has offered people things which seemed enticing, and the bribe sustains itself because people have now become reliant on it.” The post also cites Neil Postman, a vociferous critic of television, to the effect that suggesting Americans do away with television—as Jerry Mander, for example, argued—amounts to making “no suggestion at all.”

I confess that much of the foregoing analysis seems more or less right to me, yet something does not quite sit well.

None of these writers argue that there is a moral duty to remain on the platform, Vaidhyanathan comes closest to this position, but they all imply that the best path may be to remain and fight for a better Facebook, if not for yourself then for the sake of those, in the United States and abroad, who do not, for a variety of reasons, have the luxury of abandoning Facebook.

But what exactly is the relevant temporal horizon of moral action? If deleting Facebook has some unfortunate short term consequences, is it not still the better option in the long run? Can’t I find other ways to support the class of people who might be hurt in the short run by a mass exodus of people from Facebook? If I don’t think that any good or even better version of Facebook is possible, isn’t it best to abandon the platform and encourage others to do so as well?

For my part, I find it increasingly useful, if disturbingly so, to refer to Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” as a way of framing our situation and the choices that confront us. Sometimes the only right response to the moral compromises that are foisted on us is to walk away, regardless of what it might cost us. However … it is also true that when we consider walking away, by deleting Facebook in this case, we should also consider who we leave behind.

So here is a suggestion. What if we imagine the decision to delete Facebook, or to abandon social media altogether, as something like a vocation, a calling not unlike the calling to the monastic life.

The monastic life was not for everyone. For one thing, executed faithfully it required a great deal of sacrifice. For another, society could not function if everyone decided to take vows and join a religious order. Rather, those who took vows lived a life of self-denial for their own sake and for the sake of the social order. Because the ordinary man and woman, the ruler, the solider, the artisan, etc. could not take vows and so devote themselves to the religious ideal, those who could take vows prayed on their behalf. They also, for a time, nurtured the intellectual life and preserved the materials upon which it depended. And they embodied an ideal in their communities knowing that this ideal could not be realized or pursued by most people. But their embodiment of the ideal benefited the whole. They withdrew from society in order to do their part for society.

We can usefully frame the choice to delete Facebook or abstain from social media or any other act of tech refusal by (admittedly loose) analogy to the monastic life. It is not for everyone. The choice can be costly. It will require self-denial and discipline. Not everyone is in a position to make such a choice even if they desired it. And maybe, under present circumstances, it would not even be altogether desirable for most people to make that choice. But it is good for all of us that some people do make that choice.

In this way we can create a legitimate space for refusal, while acknowledging that such a choice is only one way of fighting the good fight.

Those who choose to walk away will, if nothing else, be a sign to us, they will embody an ideal that many may desire but few will be able to pursue. They will preserve an alternative way of being in the world with its attendant memories and practices. And by doing so they will play their part in working for the good of society.

Of course, as it was with medieval monasticism, not all who pursue such a choice will do so in good faith, but those who do will be marked chiefly by humility.

 

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Facebook Doesn’t Care About Your Children

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 3 Comments

Facebook is coming for your children.

Is that framing too stark? Maybe it’s not stark enough.

Facebook recently introduced Messenger Kids, a version of their Messenger app designed for six to twelve year olds. Antigone Davis, Facebook’s Public Policy Director and Global Head of Safety, wrote a blog post introducing Messenger Kids and assuring parents the app is safe for kids.

“We created an advisory board of experts,” Davis informs us. “With them, we are considering important questions like: Is there a ‘right age’ to introduce kids to the digital world? Is technology good for kids, or is it having adverse affects on their social skills and health? And perhaps most pressing of all: do we know the long-term effects of screen time?”

The very next line of Davis’s post reads, “Today we’re rolling out our US preview of Messenger Kids.”

Translation: We hired a bunch of people to ask important questions. We have no idea what the answers may be, but we built this app anyway.

Davis doesn’t even attempt to fudge an answer to those questions. She raises them and never comes back to them again. In fact, she explicitly acknowledges “we know there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the impact of specific technologies on children’s development.” But you know, whatever.

Naturally, we’re presented with statistics about the rates at which children under 13 use the Internet, Internet-enabled devices, and social media. It’s a case from presumed inevitability. Kids are going to be online whether you like it or not, so they might as well use our product. More about this in a moment.

We’re also told that parents are anxious about their kid’s safety online. Chiefly, this amounts to concerns about privacy or online predators. Valid concerns, of course, and Facebook promises to give parents control over their kids online activity. However, safety, in this sense, is not the only concern we should have. A perfectly safe technology may nonetheless have detrimental consequences for our intellectual, moral, and emotional well-being and for the well-being of society when the technology’s effects are widely dispersed.

Finally, we’re given five principles Facebook and its advisory board developed in order to guide the development of their suite of products for children. These are largely meaningless sentences composed of platitudes and buzzwords.

Let’s not forget that this is the same company that “offered advertisers the opportunity to target 6.4 million younger users, some only 14 years old, during moments of psychological vulnerability, such as when they felt ‘worthless,’ ‘insecure,’ ‘stressed,’ ‘defeated,’ ‘anxious,’ and like a ‘failure.'”

Facebook doesn’t care about your children. Facebook cares about your children’s data. As Wired reported, “The company will collect the content of children’s messages, photos they send, what features they use on the app, and information about the device they use.”

There are no ads on Messenger Kids the company is quick to point out. “For now,” I’m tempted to add. Barriers of this sort tend to erode over time. Moreover, even if the barrier holds, an end game remains.

“If they are weaned on Google and Facebook,” Jeffrey Chester, executive director for the Center of Digital Democracy, warns, “you have socialized them to use your service when they become an adult. On the one hand it’s diabolical and on the other hand it’s how corporations work.”

Facebook’s interest in producing an app for children appears to be a part of a larger trend. “Tech companies have made a much more aggressive push into targeting younger users,” the same Wired article noted, “a strategy that began in earnest in 2015 when Google launched YouTube Kids, which includes advertising.”

In truth, I think this is about more than just Facebook. It’s about thinking more carefully about how technology shapes our children and their experience. It is about refusing the rhetoric of inevitability and assuming responsibility.

Look, what if there is no safe way for seven-year-olds to use social media or even the Internet and Internet-enabled devices? I realize this may sound like head-in-the-ground overreaction, and maybe it is, but perhaps it’s worth contemplating the question.

I also realize I’m treading on sensitive ground here, and I want to proceed with care. The last thing over-worked, under-supported parents need is something more to feel guilty about. Let’s forget the guilt. We’re all trying to do our best. Let’s just think together about this stuff.

As adults, we’ve barely got a handle on the digital world. We know devices and apps and platforms are designed to capture and hold attention in a manner that is intellectually and emotionally unhealthy. We know that these design choices are not made with the user’s best interest in mind. We are only now beginning to recognize the personal and social costs of our uncritical embrace of constant connectivity and social media. How eager should we be to usher our children in to this reality?

The reality is upon them whether we like it or not, someone might counter. Maybe, but I don’t quite buy it. Even if it is, the degree to which this is the case will certainly vary based in large part upon the choices parents make and their resolve.

Part of our problem is that we think too narrowly about technology, almost always in terms of functionality and safety. With regards to children, this amounts to safeguarding against offensive content, against exploitation, and against would-be predators. Again, these are valid concerns, but they do not exhaust the range of questions we should be asking about how children relate to digital media and devices.

To be clear, this is not only about preventing “bad things” from happening. It is also a question of the good we want to pursue.

Our disordered relationship with technology is often a product of treating technology as an end rather than a means. Our default setting is to uncritically adopt and ask questions later if at all. We need, instead, to clearly discern the ends we want to pursue and evaluate technology accordingly, especially when it comes to our children because in this, as in so much else, they depend on us.

Some time ago, I put together a list of 41 questions to guide our thinking about the ethical dimensions of technology. These questions are a useful way of examining not only the technology we use but also the technology to which we introduce our children.

What ideals inform the choices we make when we raise children? What sort of person do we hope they will become? What habits do we desire for them cultivate? How do we want them to experience time and place? How do we hope they will perceive themselves? These are just a few of the questions we should be asking.

Your answers to these questions may not be mine or your neighbor’s, of course. The point is not that we should share these ideals, but that we recognize that the realization of these ideals, whatever they may be for you and for me, will depend, in greater measure than most of us realize, on the tools we put in our children’s hands. All that I’m advocating is that we think hard about this and proceed with great care and great courage. Great care because the stakes are high; great courage because merely by our determination to think critically about these matters we will be setting ourselves against powerful and pervasive forces.

Tip the Writer

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Digital Devices and Learning to Grow Up

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 98 Comments

Last week the NY Times ran the sort of op-ed on digital culture that the cultured despisers love to ridicule. In it, Jane Brody made a host of claims about the detrimental consequences of digital media consumption on children, especially the very young. She had the temerity, for example, to call texting the “next national epidemic.” Consider as well the following paragraphs:

“Two of my grandsons, ages 10 and 13, seem destined to suffer some of the negative effects of video-game overuse. The 10-year-old gets up half an hour earlier on school days to play computer games, and he and his brother stay plugged into their hand-held devices on the ride to and from school. ‘There’s no conversation anymore,’ said their grandfather, who often picks them up. When the family dines out, the boys use their devices before the meal arrives and as soon as they finish eating.

‘If kids are allowed to play ‘Candy Crush’ on the way to school, the car ride will be quiet, but that’s not what kids need,’ Dr. Steiner-Adair said in an interview. ‘They need time to daydream, deal with anxieties, process their thoughts and share them with parents, who can provide reassurance.’

Technology is a poor substitute for personal interaction.”

Poor lady, I thought, and a grandmother no less. She was in for the kind of thrashing from the digital sophisticates that is usually reserved for Sherry Turkle.

In truth, I didn’t catch too many reactions to the piece, but one did stand out. At The Awl, John Hermann summed up the critical responses with admirable brevity:

“But the argument presented in the first installment is also proudly unsophisticated, and doesn’t attempt to preempt obvious criticism. Lines like ‘technology is a poor substitute for personal interaction,’ and non-sequitur quotes from a grab-bag of experts, tee up the most common and effective response to fears of Screen Addiction: that what’s happening on all these screens is not, as the writer suggests, an endless braindead Candy Crush session, but a rich social experience of its own. That screen is full of friends, and its distraction is no less valuable or valid than the distraction of a room full of buddies or a playground full of fellow students. Screen Addiction is, in this view, nonsensical: you can no more be addicted to a screen than to windows, sounds, or the written word.”

But Hermann does not quite leave it at that: “This is an argument worth making, probably. But tell it to an anxious parent or an alienated grandparent and you will sense that it is inadequate.” The argument may be correct, but, Hermann explains, “Screen Addiction is a generational complaint, and generational complaints, taken individually, are rarely what they claim to be. They are fresh expressions of horrible and timeless anxieties.”

Hermann goes on to make the following poignant observations:

“The grandparent who is persuaded that screens are not destroying human interaction, but are instead new tools for enabling fresh and flawed and modes of human interaction, is left facing a grimmer reality. Your grandchildren don’t look up from their phones because the experiences and friendships they enjoy there seem more interesting than what’s in front of them (you). Those experiences, from the outside, seem insultingly lame: text notifications, Emoji, selfies of other bratty little kids you’ve never met. But they’re urgent and real. What’s different is that they’re also right here, always, even when you thought you had an attentional claim. The moments of social captivity that gave parents power, or that gave grandparents precious access, are now compromised. The TV doesn’t turn off. The friends never go home. The grandkids can do the things they really want to be doing whenever they want, even while they’re sitting five feet away from grandma, alone, in a moving soundproof pod.

To see a more celebratory presentation of these dynamics, recall this Facebook ad from 2013:

Hermann, of course, is less sanguine.

Screen Addiction is a new way for kids to be blithe and oblivious; in this sense, it is empowering to the children, who have been terrible all along. The new grandparent’s dilemma, then, is both real and horribly modern. How, without coming out and saying it, do you tell that kid that you have things you want to say to them, or to give them, and that you’re going to die someday, and that they’re going to wish they’d gotten to know you better? Is there some kind of curiosity gap trick for adults who have become suddenly conscious of their mortality?”

“A new technology can be enriching and exciting for one group of people and create alienation for another;” Hermann concludes, “you don’t have to think the world is doomed to recognize that the present can be a little cruel.”

Well put.

I’m tempted to leave it at that, but I’m left wondering about the whole “generational complaint” business.

To say that something is a generational complaint suggests that we are dealing with old men yelling, “Get off my lawn!” It conjures up the image of hapless adults hopelessly out of sync with the brilliant exuberance of the young. It is, in other words, to dismiss whatever claim is being made. Granted, Hermann has given us a more sensitive and nuanced discussion of the matter, but even in his account too much ground is ceded to this kind of framing.

If we are dealing with a generational complaint, what exactly do we mean by that? Ostensibly that the old are lodging a predictable kind of complaint against the young, a complaint that amounts to little more than an unwillingness to comprehend the new or a desperate clinging to the familiar. Looked at this way, the framing implies that the old, by virtue of their age, are the ones out of step with reality.

But what if the generational complaint is framed rather as a function of coming into responsible adulthood. Hermann approaches this perspective when he writes, “Screen Addiction is a new way for kids to be blithe and oblivious; in this sense, it is empowering to the children, who have been terrible all along.” So when a person complains that they are being ignored by someone enthralled by their device, are they showing their age or merely demanding a basic degree of decency?

Yes, children are wont to be blithe and oblivious, often cruelly indifferent to the needs of others. Traditionally, we have sought to remedy that obliviousness and self-centeredness. Indeed, coming into adulthood more or less entails gaining some measure of control over our naturally self-centered impulses for our own good and for the sake of others. In this light, asking a child–whether age seven or thirty-seven–to lay their device aside long enough to acknowledge the presence of another human being is simply to ask them to grow up.

Others have taken a different tack in response to Brody and Hermann. Jason Kottke arrives at this conclusion:

“People on smartphones are not anti-social. They’re super-social. Phones allow people to be with the people they love the most all the time, which is the way humans probably used to be, until technology allowed for greater freedom of movement around the globe. People spending time on their phones in the presence of others aren’t necessarily rude because rudeness is a social contract about appropriate behavior and, as Hermann points out, social norms can vary widely between age groups. Playing Minecraft all day isn’t necessarily a waste of time. The real world and the virtual world each have their own strengths and weaknesses, so it’s wise to spend time in both.”

Of course. But how do we allocate the time we spend in each–that’s the question. Also, I’m not quite sure what to make of his claim about rudeness and the social contract except that it seems to suggest that it’s not rudeness if you decide you don’t like the terms of the social contract that renders it so. Sorry Grandma, I don’t recognize the social contract by which I’m supposed to acknowledge your presence and render to you a modicum of my attention and affection.

Yes, digital devices have given us the power to decide who is worthy of our attention minute by minute. Advocates of this constant connectivity–many of them, like Facebook, acting out of obvious self-interest–want us to believe this is an unmitigated good and that we should exercise this power with impunity. But–how to say this without sounding alarmist–encouraging people to habitually render other human beings unworthy of their attention seems like a poor way to build a just and equitable society.

Et in Facebook ego

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 55 Comments

Today is the birthday of the friend whose death elicited this post two years ago. I republish it today for your consideration. 

In Nicolas Poussin’s mid-seventeenth century painting, Et in Arcadia ego, shepherds have stumbled upon an ancient tomb on which the titular words are inscribed. Understood to be the voice of death, the Latin phrase may be roughly translated, “Even in Arcadia there am I.” Because Arcadia symbolized a mythic pastoral paradise, the painting suggested the ubiquity of death. To the shepherds, the tomb was a momento mori: a reminder of death’s inevitability.

Nicolas Poussin, Et in Arcadia ego, 1637-38
Nicolas Poussin, Et in Arcadia ego, 1637-38

Poussin was not alone among artists of the period in addressing the certainty of death. During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, vanitas art flourished. The designation stems from the Latin phrase vanitas vanitatum omni vanitas, a recurring refrain throughout the biblical book of Ecclesiastes: ”vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” in the King James translation. Paintings in the genre were still lifes depicting an assortment of objects which represented all that we might pursue in this life: love, power, fame, fortune, happiness. In their midst, however, one might also find a skull or an hour glass. These were symbols of death and the brevity of life. The idea, of course, was to encourage people to make the most of their living years.

Edwart Collier, 1690
Edwart Collier, 1690

For the most part, we don’t go in for this sort of thing anymore. Few people, if any, operate under the delusion that we might escape death (excepting, perhaps, the Singularity crowd), but we do a pretty good job of forgetting what we know about death. We keep death out of sight and, hence, out of mind. We’re certainly not going out of our way to remind ourselves of death’s inevitability. And, who knows, maybe that’s for the better. Maybe all of those skulls and hourglasses were morbidly unhealthy.

But while vanitas art has gone out of fashion, a new class of memento mori has emerged: the social media profile.

I’m one of those on again, off again Facebook users. Lately, I’ve been on again, and recently I noticed one of those birthday reminders Facebook places in the column where it puts all of the things Facebook would like you to click on. It was for a high school friend who I had not spoken to in over eight years. It was in that respect a very typical Facebook friendship:  the sort that probably wouldn’t exist at all were it not for Facebook. And that’s not necessarily a knock on the platform. For the most part, I appreciate being able to maintain at least minimal ties to old friends. In this case, though, it demonstrated just how weak those ties can be.

Upon clicking over to their profile, I read a few odd notes, and very quickly it became disconcertingly clear that my friend had died over a year ago. Naturally, I was taken a back and saddened. He died while I was off Facebook, and news had not reached me by any other channel. But there it was. Out of nowhere and without warning my browser was haunted by the very real presence of death. Momento mori.

Just a few days prior I logged on to Facebook and was greeted by the tragic news of a former student’s sudden passing. Because we had several mutual connections, photographs of the young man found their way into my news feed for several days. It was odd and disconcerting and terribly sad all at once. I don’t know what I think of social media mourning. It makes me uneasy, but I won’t criticize what might bring others solace. In any case, it is, like death itself, an unavoidable reality of our social media experience. Death is no digital dualist.

Facebook sometimes feels like a modern-day Arcadia. It is a carefully cultivated space in which life appears Edenic. The pictures are beautiful, the events exciting, the faces always smiling, the children always amusing, the couples always adoring. Some studies even suggest that comparing our own experience to these immaculately curated slices of life leads to envy, discontent, and unhappiness. Understandably so … if we assume that these slices of life are comprehensive representations of the lives people acutally lead. Of course, they are not.

Lest we be fooled, however, there, alongside the pets and witty status updates and wedding pictures and birth announcements, we will increasingly find our virtual Arcadias haunted by the digital, disembodied presence of the dead. Our digital memento mori.

Et in Facebook ego.

The Facebook Experiment, Briefly Noted

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 8 Comments

More than likely, you’ve recently heard about Facebook’s experiment in the manipulation of user emotions. I know, Facebook as a whole is an experiment in the manipulation of user emotions. Fair enough, but this was a more pointed experimented that involved the manipulation of what user’s see in their News Feeds. Here is how the article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  summarized the significance of the findings:

“We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.”

Needless to say (well except to Facebook and the researchers involved), this massive psychological experiment raises all sorts of ethical questions and concerns. Here are some of the more helpful pieces I’ve found on the experiment and its implications:

Update: Here are two more worth considering:

Those four six pieces should give you a good sense of the variety of issues involved in the whole situation, along with a host of links to other relevant material.

I don’t have too much to add except two quick observations. First, I was reminded, especially by Gurstein’s post, of Greg Ulmer’s characterization of the Internet as a “prothesis of the unconscious.” Ulmer means something like this: The Internet has become a repository of the countless ways that culture has imprinted itself upon us and shaped our identity. Prior to the advent of the Internet, most of those memories and experiences would be lost to us even while they may have continued to be a part of who we became. The Internet, however, allows us to access many, if not all, of these cultural traces bringing them to our conscious awareness and allowing us to think about them.

What Facebook’s experiment suggests rather strikingly is that such a prosthesis is, as we should have known, a two-way interface. It not only facilitates our extension into the world, it is also a means by which the world can take hold of us. As a prothesis of our unconscious, the Internet is not only an extension of our unconscious, it also permits the manipulation of the unconscious by external forces.

Secondly, I was reminded of Paul Virilio’s idea of the general or integral accident. Virilio has written extensively about technology, speed, and accidents. The accident is an expansive concept in his work. In his view, accidents are built-in to the nature of any new technology. As he has frequently put it, “When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash … Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”

The general or integral accident is made possible by complex technological systems. The accident made possible by a nuclear reactor or air traffic is obviously of a greater scale than that made possible by the invention of the hammer. Complex technological systems create the possibility of cascading accidents of immense scale and destructiveness. Information technologies also introduce the possibility of integral accidents. Virilio’s most common examples of these information accidents include the flash crashes on stock exchanges induced by electronic trading.

All of this is to say that Facebook’s experiment gives us a glimpse of what shape the social media accident might take. An interviewer alludes to this line from Virilio: “the synchronizing of collective emotions that leads to the administration of fear.” I’ve not been able to track down the original context, but it struck me as suggestive in light of this experiment.

Oh, and lastly, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg issued an apology of sorts. I’ll let Nick Carr tell you about it.