Is Technology Really Taking Over?

“There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.” — Neil Postman

In 1985, Neil Postman published “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. Seeing that the world had not become what George Orwell speculated it might in the infamous 1984, Postman instead warns against Aldus Huxley’s predictions in Brave New World. Rather than fearing an overtake by an ultimate totalitarian government, he believed society was much more likely to fall victim to it’s own technological advances, just like Huxley imagined. Postman already saw the beginnings of this fate in the evolving television news industry slowly melding fact with fiction and becoming more focused on entertaining than informing. Nothing in history compares to the rapid development of technology we’ve witnessed in our lives. Smartphones, social media, and even the internet are by all comparisons new and novel, though it’s already hard to remember a time before them. That is why it has never been more crucial, as Huxley long foresaw, to not let ourselves be lost to our own innovations. Technology has begun to fill almost all of our waking time, offering unlimited entertainment at our fingertips. You may not think so, but almost everyone today will spend tens of thousands of hours in their lifetime staring at a screen. This is because intelligence without humanity, and without the regulation of humans, wins over our intrinsically flawed judgement. Waiting any longer to address technology and social media development with legislation will bring the U.S. and likely the rest of the world to some devastation yet to be imagined.

There is already a gaining movement to regulate technology, one action being the proposed CAMRA Act. In itself, this act won’t change much, but it opens the door to take more serious action. Currently, the law relies on applying existing constitutional rights to issues of social media and the internet. There’s a lack of legislation that directly regulates social media or technology, and since these innovations far surpass the foresight of the founding fathers, the law is greatly lacking. Still awaiting a decision in congress, the Children and Media Research Advancement Act mandates research by the National Institutes of Health on the effects of technology on children from infancy through adolescence. It will examine the effects of media ranging from “social media, applications, websites, television, motion pictures, artificial intelligence, mobile devices, computers, video games, virtual and augmented reality, and other media formats as they become available”. It would be the first to then evaluate the widespread cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional health implications these media have for developing minds and bodies. The research will also look for the best ways to restructure technology and media for the best outcomes.

What’s the Issue with Technology and Media Anyway?

There’s already more than enough evidence to raise serious public health concerns about mobile devices and growing social media use. A non-profit for children and family welfare Common Sense estimates that 98% of children under 8 years old — nearly double the rate from 2011 — have access to a mobile device in the US, with teens averaging 9 hours online a day, and tweens averaging 6. No generation has grown up with anything similar to this drastic change in lifestyle, so there’s no way to know what impact this could have over a lifetime. Research by the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) in 2019 has already found that technology use at these rates can actually alter the brain development in even very young children. The study linked high frequency of internet use with “decreased verbal intelligence at follow‐up, along with impeded maturation of both grey and white matter regions”. In early adolescence, they noted adverse effects on attention and general cognitive functions with internet usage.

They also found that greater amounts of time spent on a smartphone are associated with higher prevalence of mental illness, especially for female teens. This is highly linked to social media use, which is what most online hours are spent on in this age group. Research found that over 5 hours of screen time per day for teens increased the risk of serious ideation or attempt of suicide by 66%. This stems from the way that social media platforms have become a source of self worth, and for many the biggest source. Followers or “friends”, likes, shares, and comments put a numerical value on every part of life, which creates a perfect storm for self image issues at an already vulnerable time in life. In fact between 2010 and 2015, incidence of severe depressive symptoms in adolscents increased by 33% , and suicide deaths by 31%. This mere 5 year span comes shortly after the introduction of the smartphone to market in 2007, and by the end of the study period 92% of teens owned one. The report on these findings strongly suggests a relationship between these phenomena. It’s important to remember that adolescence refers to more than just teens, as the brain continues developing well into a person’s 20’s. Those at the end of adolescence often don’t associate themselves with this group, but they are just as vulnerable to developmental and psychological risks.

Technology doesn’t only affect developing brains, though. Researchers are actually able to predict the grey matter volume in people’s brains by their number of facebook friends. This is because even fully developed brains have plasticity and are influenced by their environment, including an online one. No matter what you use it for, the amount of time spent on social media has an effect on the brain. Constant online “multi tasking” is also found to significantly reduce cognitive performance. In an extensively hyperlinked online environment (i.e., online shopping, social media, search engines) attention is reduced for a sustained period of time following, so it’s harder to focus even after you change tabs or put down the device. Online multi tasking, which we’re doing more and more of, does not actually make people better multi taskers, but worse at focusing and directing attention overall. Even more frightening, smartphones seem to cause compulsive “checking” behaviors extremely similar to other addictions, and it may even alter the reward pathways of the brain in a similar manner. The act of opening an app, email browser, or simply picking up your phone to check for something new without a conscious thought or reason is a familiar scenario for many. Even when there’s a high unlikelihood of finding a new notification, like if you checked 10 seconds ago, people still have a persistent need to click refresh anyways. This might seem insignificant, but try going an entire day without your phone and you might start to feel how addictive it really is.

When we start to consider addiction, it goes beyond people simply spending too much of their time and attention on technology, but becomes an issue of it actually having control over them. Addiction overpowers willpower in a biological sense, and it’s clear that technology can physically change the brain. That’s what makes addiction a disease that becomes out of one’s control and begins to affect health and well being. In the case of technology, it’s the rush of new notifications or the validation of likes on a social media post that gets someone hooked. For some it can be as mild as wasting a few more minutes on their phone than they plan to everyday, but for those more vulnerable it can be more like hours a day and lead down a path of low self esteem and depression. This is exactly why we need more research on why our own inventions are causing this, and how we can change it.

What’s Being Done?

There have been several proposed legislations to put regulations on the Tech industry, but there’s also widespread opposition preventing them from passing. Disagreements over trivial aspects of these bills have gotten in the way of making any progress, and the greater implications of doing nothing are overlooked. For example, privacy legislation has been continually held back because of many democrats fighting for the right to sue tech companies directly, while most republicans are opposed. Since there’s little regulation, companies can collect user data and use it for things like targeted advertising and developing features intentionally designed to be addictive. Other examples, like the SMART Act, propose specific regulations to ban common, habit-provoking engagement features like infinite scroll. It would essentially target all platforms with user generated content, i.e. social media. It seems to be a lost cause in congress, however, due to it being far too specific and restrictive for any party. Such a massive industry is expected to have a huge presence in politics, and is likely fighting for their own interests in passing any of these regulations.

Take the examples of the tobacco industry. From the 1950’s, when it was becoming clear that smoking was taking a devastating toll on public health, the tobacco industry began a huge campaign to cause public confusion and doubt to scientific evidence. By funding their own research to question that of reputable scientific institutions, they delayed strict legislative action for decades. It wasn’t until 1964 that the first surgeon general’s report on smoking and health came out, after lawsuits against the industry had been piling up for years. The long fight from the tobacco industry changed the relationship of media and the public ever since, and even today there is still a lingering battle between the industry and public health advocates. And there are plenty more examples of industries who start trying to control their consumers rather than provide for them. The issue of perception has to be tackled before anything else in these cases. This means acting now to research what is really going on behind the tech industry. We need to gather enough real science to smother out the misinformation that is already beginning in response to technology regulation advocacy. The longer we let the industry and our own addictions grow, the harder it will be to get out from under them.

The issue in regulating the technology industry, though, is that it has become the media in many ways. While the media has always been crucial to gaining support for any cause, especially passing legislation, online social media has overwhelmingly taken over the market for information and news. They can be great for spreading positive messages and propelling campaigns for change, but these online platforms likely do not support the message of reducing technology use. Then the larger issue of free speech and press arises, which even congress isn’t quite sure how to address. On the one side, many individuals have questioned if social media sites violate their first amendment rights if they can discriminate against user content and block or even edit posts. Under the Communications Decency Act, though, private companies can choose what content is allowed to be shown or not on their platform, and this has been applied to online formats including social media. These companies also claim that the first amendment protects them and their editorial judgement. Multiple cases have dealt with search engines specifically arranging search results and advertisements for every user, and it has so far been upheld as a publication decision protected by the first amendment. The intention, though, is what’s important, because the way results are ordered by these platforms has been intentionally designed, using your data history, to hold your attention as long as possible and put more advertisements in front of you. We’ve always been surrounded by advertising, but it’s the subtle manipulation behind it all that makes the internet completely different. The fight isn’t hopeless, however. Just recently this year congress released a report investigating the four biggest tech companies; Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, finding that they’ve abused monopoly power and are pushing to enact new anti trust laws in response. This will hopefully help in passing future legislation to regulate the entire industry. Now is the time to push for the CAMRA act, because the more evidence and public support garnered, the better the chance for change.

What Needs to be Done?

It’s hard to demonize technology when it’s so deeply integrated into our lives and has done a lot of good for the world, too. It undoubtedly allows us to be more connected than ever to people and places all over the globe. Social media can bring awareness to important movements like never before and help to enact real change in the world. We should foster technology development to enhance these aspects rather than the interests of corporations. Following the path we’re on now, technology will only get better at using human vulnerabilities against us. Technosociologist Zeynep Tufecki illustrated one of the many possibilities of technology design gone wrong in a 2017 Ted Talk; imagine the scenario of a site using data driven advertising to target people with bipolar disorder when it detects that they are close to entering a manic state and are at their most vulnerable to making impulsive purchases. What’s worse is that this technology already does exist, and who knows what companies might already be using something like it. These advances are barely understood by the people who create them, so there’s no way for the general public to know when their vulnerabilities are being exploited through technology.

It is possible to change the direction of technology development, though. The Center for Humane Technology, founded by activist and former google design ethicist, Tristan Harris, outlines how changes in design and policy could fix the issues in technology and create a more productive environment for everyone. Harris previously studied and developed the psychological tactics that technology designers use to target and manipulate users. Afraid for how far this could go, he now advocates for changing the entire system. He believes that by acknowledging the natural cognitive biases of humans, technology and media can be redesigned as less addictive and manipulative. It will take changes in policy to actually implement this change, though.

When public health is jeopardized, our government is obligated to take action. Supporting the CAMRA act is only a first step in a huge reimagining of the technological world, and the stakes have never been higher. Never has our society had such dire situations on our shoulders. From great political divide and violence across the world, to a planet that is in imminent danger of no longer being able to sustain us, our attention and initiative have never been so vital. But at the same time, we have fallen into mass apathy, despair, and addiction. It seems that the industry that’s acquired most of this attention, that of technology and social media, is greatly to blame. We must demand transparency and accountability from companies and the government before these problems grow beyond our ability to fix them. If not, “Amusing Ourselves to Death” may very well be the outcome.