Social media needs the world watching. Success for social media platforms is a higher engagement rate, higher retention rate, more visits, more refreshes, longer sessions. And, as it optimises for this (to the benefit shareholders and investors in these platforms), the content we create, as creators, changes.
We are becoming complicit in addiction. Like a rodent that gets a treat if it presses the right button, platforms ‘influence the influencers’ to create content that brings them more likes, more views, more shares. In reality, what it’s doing is training us to create stuff from which people cannot look away – to keep others scrolling and not creating. Creators learn how to create ‘stories’ or ‘reels’ that hook people – that tap into a part of our brains that don’t let us look away. An exercise in perpetual micro-suspense. A still image is no longer enough.
And whilst these platform may parade as ‘harmless modern-day marketing’ or ‘just the way it is now’, I can’t help but wonder what it’s really doing to our brains; how our dopamine response is being toyed with – slowly desensitising us so that we learn to crave and create ‘content’ and life experiences that amplifies the response further; not just in the digital world, but in the real world to. A world where quiet repetition, introspection, and reflection – those things that true art needs most – are pushed aside by the junkie-type habit we’re pushing on ourselves.
I don’t know where it goes, but I won’t be watching. I’ll be making.