Design Example: Socializing Social Media
This redesign piece was written from a place of urgency, which is not necessarily a bad thing - but definitely means I could've used a few more of my peers' opinions if I were to turn it in, to tune down my rapid thoughts into a more solid argument. Overall I think it is clear, and would've loved to spend more time on it to get at the nuance of connection on SocialMedia in general since it is a really fascinating topic. I'd give it a 3.4, perhaps.
Socializing Social Media
Rotem Landesman
Perhaps going cold turkey and quitting social media while the world is on fire, quite literally in a sense, but mostly politically was not a good idea. That’s what I’m thinking, standing here in front of you and almost every 30 seconds for the last few days ever since I - you guessed it - spontaneously and without warning deleted Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Linkedin - though the last one barely counts - off my phone. I never thought myself a true addict until I didn’t have access to my supply; but when you find yourself staring into the abyss without the constant flow of information and dog memes to your brain, or opening your phone to check the time for the fifth time in the past 10 minutes, you may have to admit you have a problem. But I digress.
The toughest part of giving up my social media presence is the realization that many of my social connections, though they are all grounded in offline realities and conversations, are maintained, even partially, online. I’m not alone in admitting social media provides me a sense of connection, creativity, and support (Pew Research, 2022), as most teens did in the latest study from Pew about social media trends. As we see young people using SM now more than ever before (New York Times, 2022), studies upon studies have emerged trying to crack what each type of social connection these virtual worlds provide us. Though some scholars cite instances of shallow connections formed and barely maintained on these platforms (Twenge, 2013) , much like texting has been shown to elicit (Wiseman & Gould, 2018), others paint a more complex picture of social media forming and disconnecting us from our peers (Zhao & Bazarova, 2022). On one hand, I and many others find it easier to perhaps keep a connection alive with a friend who lives far away through social media and “light sharing” of the periodic meme; on the other hand, online communities may also be a cause of alienation (Allen et al., 2013), since the nuance we are used to in offline conversations is no longer present and people are judgmental beings.
But however complex the connection may be through online services like social media, it would be hard to argue it does not exist at all. And I miss it. So why the break from these apps all of a sudden?
My main concern, and the final straw perhaps, was the realization that my feelings while scrolling on my feed for hours on end are not my own; or at least not within enough of my control. The algorithm that dictates what we see on social media is a mysterious one that caters to our every need and secret desire, but is also prone to show the general “trends” others similar to us are watching or liking, sprinkled in with too many ads so companies like Meta and TikTok can stay afloat. I found myself scrolling through friends’ vacation pictures, images of war, and Subaru ads all in the span of 30 seconds. Something about that just doesn’t seem right.
I suggest a redesign of social media platforms that focus on the thing I miss most about them, and their original intention: connection. As social animals, it is amazing how we managed to revert back to image based languages (see:emojis) to communicate our emotions, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t carefully integrate the social computing aspects of our lives into the face-to face interactions we have everyday. As someone who grew up in the era of AIM and got asked to prom through a <pRoM?> message popping up on my old windows, I owe a heap of gratitude to these systems for mediating one of the first loving exchanges I’ve had (and heartbreaks, to be honest) and so many more connections since. I’d like to think we can have all the good that social media can offer, including discovering new content, keeping up with trends, checking in with our friends and keeping in touch with peers we see on a daily basis in a more meaningful way than texting or phone calls can provide - without the bad. Here’s what I’d suggest:
- When entering social media, the user should have an option to select the type of “mood” they would like to scroll through today. If I am, say, in an activist mood, please go ahead and show me all the political posts the algorithm can fathom. But, if I am sick and tired of the news today and would like to save it for another time, please only show me memes. If I am in a shopping mood, you may have some highly curated ads in my feed - but keep on coming with the dog videos in Halloween costumes. And, if I am vaguely thinking about the holidays, I’d love some recipe ideas to pop up in my feed, but I’d also love to turn those off as soon as the holiday is over so that I don’t get cooking FOMO. I don’t want to block anyone, I don’t want to curate this myself; but I also want to feel like if the platform is boasting about knowing me and my persona, it makes the extra effort to get to know me at this moment; dynamically changing as I change throughout the day.
- Since social media is already where me and my friends check in on each other most often - and by check in, I usually mean to send funny posts back and forth, and have actual conversations elsewhere - I’d love some help from the platform in doing so. It shouldn’t be too difficult, technically speaking, to see when I last checked in with a particular friend, and suggest I send them a “hi” every now and then to let them know they pop up in my head sometimes. Ideally, I would be able to choose the friends I would get reminders about, and be able to toggle the timing and the severity of these reminders based on how serious I am about maintaining some of my long distance friendships.
My proposed design is absolutely fallible, first and foremost to the companies who make these platforms. The incentive structures they work, unfortunately, do not cater to the user needs but rather to the greatest amount of time they can keep us glued to the screen. My hunch is that the combination of communicating with our friends and family, a function that is so important to us, alongside the garbage and offensive material we need to wade through to get to said communication is part of the secret sauce that makes these companies so successful. In this case, I feel compelled to say that perhaps it is not my design which is lacking, but rather the systems which encourage companies to make zombies of us; but that’s a different story.
My design would also not, perhaps, be a favorite for people who make their living off these platforms, and who bought into the goal of maximizing our time on screen to buy their products. We must also consider, if we were to make these major changes, that users of the platform often open them to turn off their brains for just a second, not make an active decision about what they want to see. Many of my peers and colleagues have stated that often wading through the garbage the platform offers is a pill they are willing to swallow for those few moments of connection, and who am I to take those moments away from them and replace them with yet another decision point.
With all this in mind and this fantastical redesign that may take someone much more powerful and influential than me to enact, I am unsure of my decision to keep off social media in the long run. Perhaps this insight and exercise at the meaning of digital connection and its place in my life will not change my life dramatically, but hopefully would make me more aware of the purpose of these exchanges and allow me to take a much needed reevaluation of these connection platforms every once in a while.
Sources:
Links to an external site.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/well/family/child-social-media-use.html Links to an external site.
Allen, K. A., Ryan, T., Gray, D. L., McInerney, D. M., & Waters, L. (2014). Social media use and social connectedness in adolescents: The positives and the potential pitfalls. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 31(1), 18-31.
Taylor, S. H., Zhao, P., & Bazarova, N. N. (2022). Social media and close relationships: a puzzle of connection and disconnection. Current Opinion in Psychology, 45, 101292.
Twenge, J. (2013). Does Online Social Media Lead to Social Connection or Social Disconnection?. Journal of College and Character, 14(1), 11-20. Links to an external site.https://doi.org/10.1515/jcc-2013-0003 Links to an external site.
Sarah Wiseman, Sandy JJ Gould (2018). Repurposing emoji for personalised communication: Why🍕 means “I love you” Links to an external site.. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.