CONDITIONED TO BE ADDICTED

Social media is unraveling our minds. Our energies are being shifted towards everything electronic. We are losing our human connection and no one cares.

After taking a year off, I recently logged back into my twitter account. My failed login attempts prompted me to reset my password because lets face it… no one even remembers their passwords anymore, there’s an app for that.

Once I was finally into my account, I realized that I came back to a mini hub of information overload. The main page of twitter has turned into articles upon articles that drown out what I use to like about the platform. The pages scroll and scroll full of information and retweets that I don’t want to see. But that’s the new life these social media companies have created.

While we are zoning out for likes and retweets, Billionaire entrepreneur Sean Parker revealed some eye-opening commentary behind what he thinks Facebook is doing to the world.

‘Sean Parker Speaking..” – Photograph by Stuart Isett for Fortune Brainstorm Health

The former President of the social media giant, said this at a recent Axios event:

It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.

He went on to say,

The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’

It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.

Interesting, very interesting.

When someone who became a Billionaire from exploiting the human mind tells you that he is exploiting the mind; you should believe him. Moreover, you should mimic his actions. Because many of his former colleagues in the tech field are literally living off the grid. A few don’t even use their own creations and better yet they don’t want their children to use them. That is very telling. 

Notice how more and more people are announcing Social media breaks? Or better yet disappearing altogether from certain platforms? Burn out is inevitable when you overuse something.

We are in fact being conditioned to be addicted to attention via electronic distractions. However you cut it, nothing you do online is really subjective. It’s all connected to one goal – to create one big mindless society that is easily influenced.

Change happens fast and if you’re not paying attention you won’t have a clue. Now if you don’t mind, I have a twitter page to go back to…

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