Two months later: Still addicted

Well, it's been a couple of months since I returned to Facebook & Twitter after my one-month hiatus (plan here, results here). Time to reflect on  where I'm at now with my social network usage. As you may have guessed from the title & image, it's not going too well.

I am completely, hopelessly addicted to Facebook. I check it several times a day, eagerly checking for new notifications or comments in response to my contributions. The "twitchiness" of checking email, Twitter & Facebook several times a day is back. One of my conclusions was that Facebook has a value and that I miss it when I'm not there, and I fear that now I've given myself "permission" to go on Facebook, I've let myself get sucked in. I realize now that Facebook is designed to be addictive. Seeing the "Likes" on your posts is like popping pills that give you an amphetamine rush. The stream of new "notifications" is an intravenous drip delivering compliments and ego strokes directly into your psyche. 

I recently came across an interesting article on the Psychology of Social Media by Doug Firebaugh, which argues that there are 7 reasons we participate. It's written from a social media marketer's perspective but it makes some interesting points. Here's Doug's list (I combined a couple), with my own take on them:

• We want to be acknowledged. Facebook is far more rewarding than blogging because if I post something, you don't have to comment for me to know you read it. You can hit Like, and people frequently do, giving us a Pavlovian validation for our posts. 
• We want attention.  Why just talk to one friend when you can have all your "friends" look at you at once. Facebook nurtures your inner drama queen, encouraging you to stand up on a pedestal and say "look at me and what I have to say". And it uses your friends to reward you with gold stars (Likes) on the things you share.
• We want to be approved of/appreciated. Since most of the people on Facebook are real people who know you, you won't get a lot of negative feedback to anything you say. But you will get lots of approval through Likes and comments. This generally positive feedback makes you feel great and like everyone appreciates you. Nothing about Facebook is set up to discourage you, so you post more and more.
• We want to be acclaimed. This is something Twitter excels at, with its culture of "Retweets" and giving public mention to people who share something interesting or make a difference to you. Facebook are late to the game, but with their pseudo-@ mentions/links in comments and now the ability to re-share a friend's link "via" that friend, they are now encouraging the ability for us all to showcase each other and make us feel even more admired.
• We want to be assured. By encouraging a trusted community where you can share your thoughts with a wide group, Facebook makes a highly effective forum for getting feedback and assurance that your thoughts are "normal". It's a sort of groupthink. Should I do X? I don't know, let's ask Facebook. Increasingly Facebook is becoming an amorphous friendblob and we think less about the individual friends within, or the implications of such wide sharing of our inner thoughts.
• We want to belong. By highlighting mutual friendships, showing us activity from friends of friends, and combining together friends who have shared the same update, Facebook constantly reinforces the idea that Facebook is an elite social club that we love to be part of. Everyone has a different view of Facebook, it's full of people "like you", who you feel a sense of belonging to.

So it's clear that technology alone will not solve this problem. It's psychological. It's a habit. I (and we) need to start thinking about how to get these kind of buzzes and nice feelings from something other than Facebook (real life friendships anyone?), while simultaneously discouraging Facebook's ability to manipulate our emotions. I suspect that the secret may lie in alternative interfaces to Facebook. Already you can pull your Facebook feed out to other clients such as TweetDeck, Facepad and Flipboard. Perhaps there will be other interfaces designed soon that will put our interests first (and not just the self-indulgent ones but the practical, bigger picture ones too). 

I suspect that there may also be value in separating out the different people on Facebook into different interfaces. If for the most part I was only shown updates from my 5-10 closest friends and not all the more distant acquaintances and especially not all the updates from celebrity fan pages, there would be less content to pull me in and it might be easier to consume the Facebook feed in moderation. Interestingly, Facebook recently changed the default News Feed to only show the updates from the friends you interact with the most. You have to actively change a setting to see everyone. This was surprising because it goes against the trend of trying to connect everyone into one giant Facebook monoculture social graph. 

But it is also very scary. It means that your social life and which friends you interact with will for the vast majority of users (who don't change settings), be decided not by the individual but by Facebook. That is a terrifying thought. In this busy world with hundreds of "friends", it's all too easy to forget someone. That Facebook could change your life in this way without you realizing is highly concerning.

The annoying thing is, if they had actually tweaked this slightly and let us specify the list of friends to see, this would actually be a huge improvement. Maybe they'll do that in future.

I'm always torn in such matters. On the one hand, I want to focus on the people I care about most. On the other hand, years of blogging and social networking has taught me the value of serendipity (as explained in the excellent Bitnorth Short Bit by Lenny Rachitsky). That is, the idea that public communication with a wider audience can yield unexpected coincidences - acquaintances who happen to know the answer to your problem or share your obscure interest - which you never would have discovered otherwise.

I want to sample everything (which is why I love Flipboard). But I don't have the bandwidth to read everything. Right now, we don't have the interfaces to let us easily separate what's really important from the "background noise".

I'm still working on tweaking Twitter lists (via the excellent formulists) and RSS feed groupings to try and address this. But when you want to sample everything you're interested in, it's hard.

I haven't even talked about Twitter in all of this. On the bright side, I think my Twitter usage is still about the same. Twitter still prefer to keep their interface constrained and fragmented, which discourages a lot of engagement or long focussed conversations, and this means there is less "pull" than with Facebook - also because I follow so many people that I don't know - for that serendipity effect.

I don't have any firm conclusions for this post - except to say that the experiment in how to manage my digital social life in a controlled way is far from over. Facebook is winning the battle for my attention, but they haven't won the war.

I'm seeing a lot of articles pop up about the idea of "mindful social networking". I think this is a new trend and one which I will certainly be revisiting on this blog. More and more people are feeling overwhelmed and wanting to take control. It remains to be seen whether Facebook and Twitter will help us with this challenge, or leave us to flounder. One thing's for sure, any startup that launches a simple effective way to drink from the firehose will go a long way!

Image (C) by jasonjhr on Flickr.

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Is the #turnred (RED) "AIDS-free generation by 2015" campaign lacking something?

As you may know, it was World AIDS Day yesterday, raising awareness of the global fight to eradicate the HIV/AIDS disease. I missed the day itself but was greeted by this popup today inviting me to "join RED" and help make the AIDS-free generation by 2015 a reality.

In case you're not familiar, RED is an initiative whereby you buy a particular variant of your product in red with a special (RED) brand - everything from iPods to shoes, clothing, coffee and books - and the manufacturer donates a portion (typically about 20%) to the global fight against AIDS (and possibly other causes as well, I'm not sure). Which is great, and they are having huge successes, having raised $160 million in 5 years.

I wholeheartedly support the goal of eradicating AIDS, and I love the idea of making such a bold statement that "We can have the first AIDS-free generation by 2015". But a number of things bugged me about this campaign.

1) The call to action is confusing

You click the banner and you are taken to this page. What does it want you to do? What does "join RED" mean? It turns out they want you to change your twitter avatar or facebook picture to the logo for the campaign. I thought I'd missed something, but after much searching this really does seem to be all they are asking people to do (and perhaps also to buy RED products). Is it just me or is this a bit odd?

2) When did social media attention become more important than money?

I can see that having people change their profiles on social media can help raise awareness (though perhaps not as much as the high profile stunts like lighting world buildings such as the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge in red - see video here) but it's hardly the most valuable thing people can do. Surely the thing that will make the most difference is PEOPLE DONATING MONEY. And yet there is no facility to do that on the campaign's website. That is just ridiculous.

3) What's the basis for the statement that in 2015 we could have the first AIDS-free generation?

My first thought when I read the bold claim was, well that sounds great, but how are they going to do it? There's no information easily findable on the campaign site, or in most of the media coverage. It's completely not obvious where this claim comes from. Where's the science? Don't people care about science any more? Eventually I found a brief paragraph on the RED blog which explains that there is now medication available that can prevent HIV-positive mothers from passing the disease to their children, but that it is not always available. The implication is that the campaign can help with that.

Isn't that a pretty important fact for supporters to understand? Why is this barely covered anywhere?

4) How can people help make an AIDS-free generation a reality?

The question remains largely unanswered, by the campaign and even by high profile coverage like that on CNN. Is the best answer we can come up with "Buy more products but pick the ones with a (RED) logo?" It's a pretty sad state of affairs if that's the best society can do. Have we really become so capitalist that the only way we can mobilize people to helping a charity is to get them to buy more products?

Or by plastering their Twitter and Facebook profiles red? Is that the best we can do?

I think this is part of a disturbing trend. Ask people to do something trivial like that, and sure, they'll do it, you'll get lots of attention.. but nobody really made a difference by doing that did they? They might feel like they did but it's a meaningless gesture in terms of actually buying treatments and helping the lives of real AIDS sufferers.

I'm probably being controversial but I am appalled by how badly thought out this campaign is, and what it says about society. We have become the one-click generation. Click your mouse and you've done your bit, swipe your credit card and leave with a clear conscience. Perish the thought we might actually go out of our way to make some effort and really make a difference.

If you want to help fight AIDS, go and make a donation right now with an organization like the UK's National AIDS Trust. But don't think that you have made any difference at all if all you did was paint your profile red. 

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