“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
— Micheal Porter
You probably already know that social media is damaging our health and well-being. But The Anxious Generation is worth reading. Jonathan Haidt compiles evidence and tells a compelling story that brings this issue to life.
With a focus on the impact on Gen-Z – the first generation raised entirely in a phone-based life, Haidt paints a dire picture beyond just the statistics of declining mental health indicators that correlate with an increasing phone-based life over the past 15 years:
- “Social media is a disease of the mind.”
- “This is the great irony of social media. The more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become.”
- The platform owners have knowingly used a “social validation feedback loop” to exploit a human vulnerability and addict users.
- We are “trapped in a collective action problem (a.k.a. social dilemma)” – when everyone around you is doing it, you feel you have no choice but to join them.
It’s no wonder that, when he suggests to people a need for us to get off the phones, many respond: “I agree with you but . . . it’s too late.” Despite the pervasive hopelessness, Haidt Is optimistic. He believes that, collectively, we can turn this problem around. He suggests specific actions that can be taken to drive a solution by:
- Governments and tech companies
- Schools
- Parents
Notably absent from the list of those who can help solve the problem are advertisers – the revenue source that keeps tech companies alive. Advertisers and agencies have a powerful lever for affecting change; without them, tech companies’ business model collapses. Either Haidt forgot about them, or he felt no hope of them taking difficult action, so didn’t bother suggesting any.
I’d like to think that, in our roles as planners, we can influence our clients and agencies to force tech companies to stop their relentless pursuit to “consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.”1 Unfortunately, I don’t believe we can. I hope to be proven wrong.
While we may not be able to affect the choices of our clients or employers, we can affect our own choices and those of our family, friends, and children.
The CEO of an agency I worked with said to a colleague, “You’re supposed to be the head of digital. How can you understand all these platforms without being on any social media yourself?” Without hesitation, he said, “I’m not on them because I understand them.”
The head of digital thinks about life like a planner. He has a clear sense of where he wants to go. And he recognized that social media won’t take him there.
- Sean Parker, founding President of Facebook; https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/sean-parker-unloads-on-facebook-god-only-knows-what-its-doing-to-our-childrens-brains-1513306792 ↩︎
