According to Jonathan Haidt, the fracturing rather than the integrating character of social media’s dynamic began to change in 2009 with the introduction of “Like” and “Sharing”, two similar options that transformed the exchange of person-to-person information into the mass distribution of opinions, rumours and judgments, without providing any substantial corroborating information. This process was abetted by the social media algorithms that favoured emotional rather than rational responses. Facts were boring. Extremism and lies generated more “sharing”, registered more “likes”, and earned more advertising revenue for the social media platforms.
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The Quadra Project – Social Media
“We invent things, and thereafter they invent us.” This is a fundamental principle in the media theory articulated by Marshall McLuhan, but it is rarely considered because we are usually so enamoured by the ingenuity of our inventions that we fail to consider the ways in which they invent us.
A brilliant essay by Jonathan Haidt, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”, in the May 2022 edition of The Atlantic Monthly magazine deserves careful reading and thought. Its insights do much to explain the factious irrationality that has been generated by social media, an adjunct of the internet that was supposed to facilitate and deepen communication, but instead has created angry disputes with irresolvable differences. What went wrong?
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