Hit that like button(?)
When I had access to a phone as a kid, I wanted to play a game called snake. The purpose of the game was fun and testing your speed. I played it on my dad’s phone, with a green backlit screen and rubber, bubbly shaped buttons. Outside of a phone call - the phone really had no other use to me at all. If you wanted answers to your questions about the world, we would check the encyclopaedia, went to the library or bought a book.
Rapidly, from the 2000s to 2010s technologies current form started to take shape. Phones became a way of showing wealth and even an extension of someones personality and a way to connect with people at ALL hours of the day/week. The phone became an entry point to modern life, if you didn’t have one, you weren’t connected.
Today the phone has become, in my opinion, the world’s biggest double edged sword. With it, you can start and operate an entire business - do in minutes what would once take hours or days. But they have also become the ULTIMATE tool of distraction. A television still does it’s job of being a screen to display images. A laptop still does it’s job as being a portable work device. A phone though - that has transformed.
I love seeing young people working, studying and practising the basics of life - which is why, every time I go shopping with my wife I make an effort to make conversation with the young people serving at the checkouts. When asking about their studies, ideas, goals - social media is almost always mentioned, often in relation to mental health. Once upon a time, you got home from school and could switch off - now, there almost is no down time.
So, how exactly does all this relate to the like button? Well, the short, sweet sentence ‘Every dollar you spend is a vote you make’ is one we need to visit. In the technology riddled world we now live in, money is only one form of currency - and it may not even be the most valuable one - because it definitely isn’t the most useful. This is especially important to note for our youngest members of the community. What am I referring to? ‘Views’, ‘Likes’ and ‘Subscribes’ - the new currency of the 21st century. Our decisions, actions and habits all accumulate for the gain of others. We are all being pulled left right and centre on the web, with endless scrolling, ads presented as posts, ‘influencers’ selling products they don’t believe in and websites pushed to the top of lists thanks to clever marketing whizzes. With social media acting like a rolling advertisement, understanding the impacts of your actions is important - here are some questions I pose that we should all be asking ourselves.
1) Do you actually like it? - Do you actually like what they are subscribing to? Are there other motivations behind this?
2) Why hit ‘like’ in the first place? - Are you supporting an artist/creator/brand/person? Or simply doing what they told you to?
3) Business behind the like. - What are the mechanics of the like button once you hit it? Cents, dollars, ads viewed, what happens behind the scenes?
4) Social currency and the like button - How do friends view the like button? How do friends need to respond to posts? Is this simply an act they have learnt to avoid fights and arguments? What can go wrong if you don’t ‘like’ something?
5) Subscriptions. Are the pages and people you subscribe and connect to chewing up your time rather than filling it with the things you want to spend time on.
Just like casinos without clocks, social media is on a war path to keeping you glued to your seat/screen. More minutes, more data they can collect. More data they collect, the better they can advertise to you. The better they can advertise to you, the more money others make off of YOUR TIME.
To finish off this post, I would like to ask how else you think you can show your support? How would you/do you show support in the real brick and mortar world? How can we keep things local and support the day to day people that impact our lives - the people in our communities? What gratitude and support are they shown?
Get away from the screens and take a breather - it’s time to find more things that you really do like, without needing to hit a button.
