The prevalence of technology designed to be purposefully exploitative and addictive can no longer be apathetically accepted. Currently, the worst offenders of this are the social media apps that harness the power of engagement driven algorithms. This can be seen in the fact that the past decade has seen an explosion in "social" technology, and simultaneously, a breakdown in social connections. Your average American spends 2 hours and 21 minutes a day on social media. Meanwhile, data shows people now have fewer friends, more distant relationships with their families, attend fewer events, and are active in fewer organizations than ever before. Social media's purported benefit of connecting the world was a hypothetical, and it should now be regarded as a failed experiment.
The issue is that psychologists, data scientists, and engineers have intentionally built a system that only thrives when it is increasing the amount of time you spend on it. This is well-documented and publicly available information.
Even without other factors, the psychological issues it is causing should be reason enough for us to act. Attention problems among kids who use social media are well-known, as well as depression and anxiety among people of all ages.
Awareness about the harm it is causing isn't new, nor is it uncommon. Almost everyone knows that something has to change. However, there has been an embarrassing lack of action on this issue until now. Our leaders are failing to protect us from these predatory practices.
People are encouraged to take steps to protect themselves on an individual level (screen time limits, etc.), but in reality, only people with exceptional awareness and self-control have been able to distance themselves from these platforms. This should not be the standard. Rather than having to opt out of being targeted by addictive technology, being protected from it should be the default.
Our teamwork and action can make this a reality.
It will require widespread participation in a boycott against Facebook, Twitter/X, and TikTok. We have chosen these platforms as our target because they combine algorithmic feeds, mass surveillance, and addictive techniques at a scale unmatched elsewhere. (Reddit and YouTube are examples of extremely culpable apps as well, but we chose not to include these since they have more educational benefits than the apps we are targeting, and we did not want to convolute our message, or make the adoption of this boycott too demanding).
This boycott will be effective because the pressure it creates will tear down these companies' public legitimacy and cut their profits. This will show them that in order to remain relevant, they will need to change.
What will they do when the same institutions who led accounts with thousands of followers stop lending them their legitimacy and their traffic? One should ask why, for example, our universities, which exist to further human knowledge and prepare our next generation for the future, should feed into a system that creates attention issues?
Additionally, we are thrilled about the personal benefit this boycott will have for all participants. It will give us a period of time when everyone is free from addictive feeds. Who hasn't wished the person they were with would get off their phone and talk with them, or caught themselves scrolling when they were supposed to be with their loved ones? We can use this time together to focus on the important parts of life.
Our demand for this boycott to end is that a regulatory body with a similar structure to the NRC be instituted to protect digital rights. This model is the main reason the United States leads the world in nuclear safety, and it has been extremely effective at regulating private companies. There is strong reason to believe a proven model like this to stop predatory surveillance and addictive technology will be effective. This organization will be expert-led and non-partisan. Their central focus will be to target and ban addictive technology practices and to create strong data protections. We want to emphasize that this organization will have absolutely no bearing on the speech that occurs online, only on how tech companies serve content.
If this boycott works, we will provide history with another shining example of what it means to work together to overcome exploitative powers. We will look back, be proud of what we did to help, and be grateful to each other.
If you'd like to be a part of this change, please visit our join page to add yourself to the official participant count.