Social Media: No Pictures, Just Words
I don’t like social media. For many years I’ve said to anyone who’s asked (and many who haven’t asked) that in 20 or 30 years time we will look back on this era of untrammelled social media usage and ask ourselves what on earth we were thinking. Even now, it’s very easy to find academic research that demonstrates the harm social media does to our mental health and the negative impact it has on wider society. It’s much harder, even amongst social media’s most ardent supporters, to find unequivocal evidence of unambiguous benefits.
The above isn’t intended as the introduction to a polemic against social media. Despite my mistrust, I have a number of accounts across different platforms and I recognise that, for some, it provides a valuable forum for social interaction or self-expression. It’s just that, in my view at least, it’s become ubiquitous, all-consuming and has an unhealthily dominant position in the way we consume news and opinion. Lockdown didn’t help, but it exacerbated an existing trend rather than setting a new direction.
So, if this isn’t a polemic, what is it? In part it’s an attempt to get my own thoughts in order and start the process of setting some boundaries for myself. It’s not a proselytising cry to persuade you to change your behaviour, although if it gives you pause for thought, all well and good. It’s a reaction to a doom scrolling habit that has been developing in the vain hope that the world will become marginally less shite, a habit that, frankly, leaves me unhappy and lethargic when I should be out enjoying myself while I still can.
So if this is a personal examination of my own, slightly hypocritical social media use, let’s start in the obvious place and look at the social media accounts I have, the purpose they serve and the current state of play.
500px (midds_houston)
These days I would describe myself as a photographer more than anything else. After all, I don’t actually do anything in a professional capacity and photography is my main pastime. I find 500px useful for a couple of reasons; first and foremost it’s a great tool for researching locations or sparking new ideas and, secondly, the relative success in terms of engagement with the images I post gives me a good sense of what’s actually good and what might need some more thought.
It helps that it’s unequivocally a tool for more serious photographers and there seem to be enough paying subscribers to ensure that the freeloaders, such as myself, are relatively untroubled by advertising, spam and sponsored content.
Instagram (midds.houston)
Despite being the ‘influencer’s’ platform of choice, Instagram used to be very well regarded by photographers; I’m less sure that this still holds. Many photographers regarded it as a very good shop window for work and, indeed, I’ve picked up a couple of opportunities and appeared in print through images that I’d showcased on Instagram. Recent changes in focus for the platform, however, have made it less useful.
Meta (Instagram’s masters) have decreed that Instagram will be the platform that takes on Tik-Tok (me neither). To facilitate this, the algorithms favour content with moving images that engage the attention while disengaging the brain over the still images that built the user base. It means that I’m seeing more video clips, which I detest, and fewer stills, which is why I’m there. To add insult to injury, the percentage of advertising, sponsored and ‘suggested’ content seems to have risen dramatically, further diluting the content I want to see.
Finally, under the aegis of supporting their users’ wellbeing, the option to hide the like count for posts was introduced which, coincidentally, also helps disguise lower engagement levels. Ironically, one of the unintended consequences of this change seems to have been to lower users’ motivation to engage with content. Well done…
I can’t help but feel that, for photographers at least, the platform is in a downward spiral that may prove hard to reverse. I’ll probably keep my account for now, but my motivation to post content is definitely falling, and finding the good stuff is now just too hard so I’m much less likely to to look for content, ideas or inspiration. Sorry.
LinkedIn (Eddie Middleton)
So, before moving onto the big two, it’s worth covering LinkedIn, the home of earnest wannabes and corporate virtue signalers everywhere. I’ll confess that I'm there and that I have far more connections than seems likely given how many people I actually know. When I was working I found it useful in a couple of limited circumstances.
Firstly, it acted as a self-organising digital rolodex, meaning I didn’t have to think about this myself. Secondly, it was good for sifting out the obvious bullshitters in any interview process. Beyond that it’s a networking tool for people that hate networking and serves the same function as a company reunion, without having to go through the pain of actually meeting people.
Facebook (eddie.middleton.58)
Facebook is the platform that probably gives me the most grief. It’s probably number two of my list of shit, but also the one that holds the most value. We all know that what Zuckerberg wants is your data, and that he has no scruples about who he will sell that data to provided that the price is right. It vies with Twitter to be the platform that does the most societal harm, and the platform that does the least good.
So why bother? I, like many of my generation, have a distributed family, friends from years ago who are no longer local and, like many, we’re no longer local to the area where we forged our early friendships or where our family lives. Easier, and less disruptive, to post a single update, or family snaps or news on Facebook rather than emailing / calling / visiting everyone in turn.
I’m also president of my local camera club and Facebook is one of the main tools we use for keeping in touch with our members and recruiting new members. Additionally, Helen (like many other creatives) uses the platform to sell some of her artwork, in her case glass and mosaic artwork. In short, over the years for many people Facebook has become an integral part of the way we communicate with each other.
The downside, of course, is the garbage that comes along with all of the above. The repeated, unoriginal memes, the video clips, the promoted content and the ceaseless bloody adverts. (Facebook’s response to a lower click-through rate on adverts appears to be… more adverts. And the AI that serves up the promoted content also appears to be particularly thick and incapable of taking a hint, no matter the number of times you hide, decline or tell Facebook you bloody hate this type of content…). Finding the wheat can require scrolling through endless chaff.
The bottom line is that Facebook, for me at least, is something of a necessary evil. However, it’s as well to remember the evil part as well as the necessity and tread carefully.
Twitter (DELETED)
Finally Twitter, the brutally unapologetic scumbag of social media platforms. About 2% of what’s on Twitter is genius (see Orkney Library for an example), the other 98% is a healthy mix of content that’s banal, unoriginal, offensive or hate-filled, and quite possibly all of these together.
Of all the platforms it’s the one that’s most brazenly polarising, because most people sign up to content that will polarise. They follow people whose views they share, views they can retweet or people who they hope will retweet their own banal take on the story of the minute. Or they follow people they detest, but follow to disagree with and use as a target for their invective. It’s hoards of people shouting the same thing endlessly in the hope that they get noticed. (Facebook, of course, does the whole polarising thing, but with greater intelligence, for money and with less honesty).
In the early days it used to be the case that Twitter would get ahead of a story; these days it’s much more likely that what’s trending is driven by content from the same old tired mainstream media figures promoting their own agenda and content. It has become both tedious and absorbing, as you continue to hunt for the one nugget of new news or insight.
I have to be honest, Twitter is the platform I detest most and the one that prompted this piece. The time spent looking for the latest evidence of dishonesty from Johnson, or the most recent atrocity of a statement from the US right, would be better spent elsewhere. But the firms know they have a product that’s addictive, and spend huge amounts employing behavioural psychologists to design it to be more addictive.
What Next?
So, I guess the obvious next question is what am I actually going to do, other than complain? The point of writing this was to get my thoughts in order and prompt a few actions:
Delete Twitter. Over the last few days and weeks I’ve come to realise that I just don’t need this level of hate and bile in my life, particularly when it’s delivered in a package that contains so little insight and originality.
Delete the apps. I don’t need Facebook, Instagram and the whole nine yards with me every moment of every day. If I need them, I can sit at a desk and log on.
Don’t engage with the newsfeeds, but rather go to content providers direct. The feeds are mainly filled with shite anyway.
What to do about the bigger picture, and the wider harm, I don't know. I’m not that clever. What I do know is that the suggestion that the platforms themselves are effectively policing content is laughable. Ask Alex Scott, or Jack Monroe, or Jess Phillips or any women with the temerity to express an opinion on any form of media. I suspect that they’ll tell you that content moderation isn’t particularly good. Or ask Raheem Sterling, or Marcus Rashford or Lewis Hamilton or any moderately successful young black man and the story will be the same - abuse is rife, accountability is non-existent.
Anonymity doesn’t help, but in and of itself the removal of anonymity does nothing unless it's accompanied by systems and processes that properly hold people accountable for their words and actions and the impact that they have on their victims (and no, a 24 hour Twitter ban doesn’t cut it). As of today, we seem to be a very long way away from anything close to tools that will make users truly accountable for the content they post.
I hope, as I alluded at the start, that in 20 and 30 years time we actually are looking back on this period in horror, because the alternative is that social media will have become one long, hate-filled scream into the void. With promoted content…
