Social media

My name‿ is‿ Alex. I have used social media│ since‿ I was fifteen,│ and‿ I now regard‿ it‿ as‿ a curatorial practice rather than‿ a means‿ of communication,│ which‿ is‿ a distinction the platforms have‿ a commercial‿ interest‿ in‿ obscuring.

What they are designed for‿ is‿ engagement,│ which‿ in practice means keeping me scrolling‿ an(d) marginally dissatisfied. My feed presents the bes(t) ten minutes‿ of‿ everybody's week,│ an(d) comparison‿ is the logical consequence. The validation‿ of‿ a notification‿ is‿ a genuine reward,│ and‿ an‿ algorithmic feed delivers‿ it far more‿ efficiently than‿ a friendship does,│ which‿ is why the pattern‿ is difficul(t) to interrupt. What frightened me was noticing│ that my attention span had shortened,│ and that I^{thad I} had stopped being‿ able to read for‿ an‿ hour without reaching for the phone.

What helped was not deleting‿ everything but renegotiating the terms. I switched‿ off notifications,│ unfollowed twenty^twen-dy accounts,│ restricted my privacy settings│ an(d) now use these platforms for‿ about forty^for-dy minutes‿ a day. Influencers‿ are not the problem,│ an(d) neither‿ is the technology as such. The problem‿ is‿ a business model that requires‿ attention to be harvested,│ and‿ a system that profits from polarisation has no incentive to regulate‿ itself. Misinformation‿ is‿ a symptom;│ the mechanism‿ is the incentive.