Will Steemit contribute to society's attention drain? Is Steemit any different to other addictive social media? What direction will Steemit development take -- could it potentially become more addictive?
Like many people I feel like I've wasted far too much time on social media, games and the internet already so I use my time more wisely now. Having quit facebook (more than once!) and disabled twitter, I'm starting to see that Steemit too can very easily become an addictive drain on my life.
Before I need to join any future steemit-anon group though, I've decided to well and truly nip that timeline in the bud. This is what comes to mind when I consider Steemit and its potential for addictive use:
Rather than being driven by advertisers and profit, the community rewards good content. However, the very nature of the medium is such that in order to be successful Steemit development will intuitively promote/reward addictive qualities. In order for any social media website to work and be a substitute for nonvirtual, real life connections, it needs to exploit our brain reward pathways (like food, sex or drugs do) -- otherwise we'd just seek connection in our nonvirtual life.
One plus point of Steemit is that it promotes engagement rather than lurking but this just means it has more potential to trigger the neurological pathways that make us seek connection. There is all the more potential for a fastfood-type, superficial connection rather than eating a hearty meal of connection -- talking with a good friend in real life.
Regardless of whether we create good content and upvote posts, time and attention spent on the site is going to potentially reward us in actual currency i.e. something more substantial than 'likes' even if it's still in virtual form. Even facebook is expressing interest in integrating cryptocurrency in some way.
If projections are accurate and Steemit gets even bigger, there will naturally be increased development to streamline user experience as content and number of users grow. Think about what youtube was like 15 years ago and what it is now. Increased content can potentially increase time spent on the site so users will want better content filtering. This filtering might be sorted according to what is most rewarded/trendy/promoted/controversial. Whatever criteria Steemit might choose to use, it will be users who ultimately validate this filtering so Steemit will produce methods and algorithms for users to engage in filtering and reward users for further engagement. In any case this will mean more ways to hook attention.
Visitors and creators to Steemit driven to create better content and engage not necessarily out of the pure love of creating/sharing but also because we're being rewarded "intermittently", as opposed to predictably in regular amounts. This means we're neurologically driven to keep checking for feedback (upvotes, comments etc) to check to see if our behavior is producing results.
Ultimately, only we can be responsible for our own time, wellbeing and what we decide to put our attention on but Steemit can always choose to be socially responsible from the outset. I've only been here a month and I could be wrong but it seems like Steemit users could be a major driving force in how the platform develops. Before it gets even bigger, I suggest the community collectively chooses to place importance on the wellbeing of visitors and creators in terms of the presence of addictive elements and potential attention drains on the website. Perhaps there can be some kind of tag or community development of ideas and seeing progress if this is important enough.
I'd also like to hear more from Steem developers about what they think about the issue of addictive elements on the website. Steem could be a forerunner in this regard and endeavor to set social media best practice. Perhaps Steem developers could talk to tech activists like Tristan Harris (more about him below) and other people behind Time Well Spent.
Like food, water and exercise, human beings need meaningful connection with other people for a happy life. According to psychiatrist Gabor Maté, addiction happens when our natural hunger for meaningful connection with others isn't met. There is no doubt that the internet has positively impacted society but it seems like constant connection to information and technology has decreased the quality of meaningful connection with others. Several studies show detrimental effects in many demographic levels.
The presence of our smartphone in the same room potentially lowers our IQ, fragments our attention and makes us more distracted. Source
Rising narcissism among college students is linked to social media use Source
Several teachers have told me that primary school kids are acting very differently to previous generations. This phenomenon has long been predicted by pediatricians and psychologists. i-Minds by Dr. Mari Swingle is worth reading if you're interested in this area.
Even developers and investors at major companies like Google and Facebook are alarmed at how technology is hijacking our minds to our detriment. Silicon Valley elites and tech giants like Bill Gates and Steve Job limited or even banned their kids from using phone/game/ screen technology until they were older. Source
Tristan Harris, 33, was once a Project Manager at Google and is now a Tech Activist:
the techniques these companies use are not always generic: they can be algorithmically tailored to each person. An internal Facebook report leaked this year, for example, revealed that the company can identify when teens feel “insecure”, “worthless” and “need a confidence boost”. Such granular information, Harris adds, is “a perfect model of what buttons you can push in a particular person”. Source
Justin Rosenstein who created GChat for Google:
tweaked his laptop’s operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook. But even that wasn’t enough. In August, the 34-year-old tech executive took a more radical step to restrict his use of social media and other addictive technologies. Source
Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and once mentor to Mark Zuckerburg:
The people who run Facebook and Google are good people, whose well-intentioned strategies have led to horrific unintended consequences.
The problem is that there is nothing the companies can do to address the harm unless they abandon their current advertising models. Source
Steemit has a very different income model to other websites. The danger is that at some point contributors might start to act like shareholders in companies and start to incorporate addictive elements in their creations in order to profit more.
In a separate Guardian column, McNamee also wrote:
I have not been able to speak to [Mark Zuckerburg] about this. Unfortunately, all the internet platforms are deflecting criticism and leaving their users in peril. Zuckerberg’s announcement on Wednesday that he would be changing the Facebook News Feed to make it promote “meaningful interactions” does little to address the concerns I have with the platform. Source
This is where Steemit can be different. There are many experts, entrepreneurs and successful developers wishing they'd done things a little bit differently. As Steemit cocreators, perhaps we have a say in what the platform will be like in the future? Perhaps our collective conscience can be listened to?
Perhaps we can do more than just wait to see what happens.
These are the things on Steemit that drain my attention/time (I don't follow contributers who does these):
I like how Steemit/Steemit users value my time and attention in these ways:
A Steemit UI Wishlist -- what I'd like Steemit developers to implement:
