The Little Black Box

I used to work in online advertising, in fact, I worked in San Francisco at the height of the tech boom for one of the first online advertising agencies. I remember being so excited when the technology that allowed us to personalize content and track engagement was created. Finally we could actually see which ads were opened and which ones were successful instead of just blanket commercials on TV or mass direct mail campaigns that we had no idea who saw them or which ones inspired action. Looking back it was the just the start of how much technology now knows about us and directs our lives. We recently had several friends recommend the movie Social Dilemma. so we decided to give it a watch. Both of us have close family ties to the industry and know many people who have and still do work for most of the big names the movie talks about. And given my own history I shouldn’t have been as surprised by the content of the movie as I was. And while every movie is written to prove a point, even if it is sensationalized, there are some real concerns addressed in the movie. So here are my major take-aways and ideas for reducing the time we all spend staring at a screen.

Concerns

The Washington Post reported in 2019 that Americans ages 8-12 spend on average 4 hours and 44 minutes on screen media each day and teens average 7 hours and 22 minutes (and that’s not including time spent using screens for school or homework). The consensus on adult time appears to be more than 10 hours. I have started tracking my screen time on my phone and it is scary how many hours of the day I spend on it. According to the movie there are three major dilemmas:

1. Mental Health: “A 5,000 person study found that higher social media use correlated with self-reported declines in mental and physical health and life satisfaction. - American Journal of Epidemiology, 2017” I don’t know if you notice your own mood or your kids’ moods after too much screen time but it is ugly over here. We have stolen our neighbor’s term ‘screen mean’ as the behavior after a lot of time staring at the screen. And that is just from the pure time looking at screens not the implications of social media making everyone else’s lives seem so much better than our own.

2. Democracy: “The # of countries with political disinformation campaigns on social media doubled in the past 2 years. - New York Times.” The algorithms are set so that we see stories and news from people who think the same way as we do – so often people are being led to believe only one side of the story.

3. Discrimination: “64% of the people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there. - Internal Facebook report, 2018.” Like above, we are being fed news that social media companies think we want to hear – whether it is real or not. So double check what you read and try to research to get other sides of the equation.

I would add physical health to the list as the radiation from the radiofrequency energy is a concern as well as the effects of too much screen time. According to the Mayo Clinic, excessive or poor quality screen time is linked with: Obesity, Irregular sleep; Behavioral problems; and Impaired social skills.

Additionally, the current research is showing that our brains are changing: “children’s screen time has wide-ranging implications for their social and emotional development, how they form relationships, how they identify themselves, and how they are exposed to extreme politics, hate speech and conspiracy theories.” I could go on and on but I would prefer to shift to some of the things we can do to reduce these effects, so here are a few simple things we can all do.

Actions

- Turn off notifications on your cell phone and computer

- Track your screen time – most phones have this built in now

- Delete extra apps from your phone

- Keep your phones charging outside of your bedroom

- Help teach your kids about news sources and who/what to believe

- Educate yourself about politics and what is really happening in the world so our news comes from places besides social media

- Use the time that we normally spend scrolling social media to send quick notes to friends and family