Why You Won't Find Us on Social Media
Whether you’re a current client, or just getting to know us, you’ve probably noticed that the only place you can find us is, well, here. We know that in today's hyperconnected, digital world … the very one that we actively promote … that might seem a bit counterintuitive, but we don’t think so.
Internal vs External
We believe wholeheartedly in the power of tech for good; it’s truly changing the world in ways that were unimaginable to previous generations. However, it’s really important to acknowledge that not everything that technology has facilitated has been for the best and understanding the risks is paramount to a healthy tech relationship. We think of good tech vs. bad tech as internal vs external.
Internal technology draws you into it, encouraging you to pick up a device more often, login to a platform regularly, has you thinking about it when you’re not using it, or evokes an emotional response either while or after using it. Its purpose is to hook you into its system and keep you there, excluding you from those around you.
At it’s worst it will imperceptibly alter your thinking for the benefit of unknown actors.
External tech by contrast is designed to support you living a better, outward facing, life. Application’s that allow you to be more effective like medical technology, learning platforms, collaborative working and environmental impact assessment tools are all examples of where tech can enhance our lives, exposing us to experiences and opportunities that can help us build more fulfilling and engaging lives.
Social Media
For the Yopla team, we’re firmly in the “social media is internal tech” camp. We’ve experimented with developing healthy relationships with it, but for us, we don’t think it’s possible. With the average social media user clocking up 151 minutes per day (the figures are even higher for Gen-Zer’s) and using 6-7 different platforms, we feel that partaking and contributing to the already huge amount of content out there is not reflective of our values.
We’re conscious of supporting mental wellbeing, and encouraging others to be mindful of what’s good for them too. With around 40% of users now reporting social media addictions, and increases in associated mental wellbeing challenges, it’s incredibly important to recognise the effect online engagement is having on many people.
It’s also crucial to realise that one person’s interpretation of social media is not that of another. Millennials, as an example, report that their primary purpose for using social media is to communicate with family and friends, by contrast Gen-Zer’s primary reason is to ‘kill time’. This has the potential to lead to very different experiences of the same platforms. That’s without getting in to the risks of social contagion, polarisation, echo chambers and doom scrolling.
The Like Button
One click, with oh so much power. Anybody on social media (who’s being honest!) will acknowledge the anxiety around how much interest their posts receive. This can lead to a whole manner of issues, but is the point of that little button really to enable you to show your appreciation for a particular person or organisation?
Research from The University of Cambridge and Stanford University suggests not. They devised an online personality test and posted it to Facebook, requiring the participants to give them access to their Facebook data. Over 80,000 people took part, providing a huge amount of information for the researchers to analyse.
Their findings were staggering. Having devised an algorithm to establish whether the data could predict an individual’s personality more accurately than a fellow human, they found that with access to only 10 likes, the algorithm could out-perform a work colleague. With 150 it out-performed immediate family, and with 300 likes it out-performed a spouse. The scariest part? That data was from 2007. Over 15 years later, with all the advancements those years have brought, how little data does social media require now to ‘know’ you better than you know yourself?
Surely social media being able to predict habits and interests with such accuracy must be good for organisations who use it to advertise and promote? Perhaps. But what about the immense amount of control that hands over to the companies at the helm? Small tweaks in computer algorithms can completely change who sees your posts and when, meaning that overnight you can go from hero to zero. Often, you’ll need to pay for an increased amount of advertising to secure your position in peoples feeds and your competitors (who are also entrenched in the social media game) will be in a financial battle with you for those prized followers and likes. It becomes increasingly (and deliberately) difficult to determine what the real value is in the time and money you spend on developing a ‘successful’ online presence.
This potentially opens the door for bad actors, companies, criminal organisations and people who use the same tools and techniques with ill intent.
Perception
Everything online is infinite, both in time and scale.
When you post something on social media, you’re not just sharing it with your friends and followers. You’re sharing it with the whole world, and perhaps most importantly, with the future. To put that into context, that means that anyone, anywhere, anytime, can see what you posted, and use it as they see fit.
If you post something without thinking about it from every angle, perhaps a joke, a selfie, or a comment which you thought funny or harmless, it can be seen very differently by somebody else. By releasing it in the online world, you’re giving permission for content to be interpreted in ways you didn’t intend, twisted, and at its worst, used against you.
Once you post something online, it's there forever, in the public domain. Even if you delete it, it may have already been saved elsewhere, screen-shotted, or shared; once that happens, no amount of deleting from your end will remove its digital footprint.
What is seen as acceptable and progressive now, may not be viewed in the same light in the future.
Conclusion
Any form of technology that helps you live a better life is a wonderful thing. We spend our days helping other organisations to find ways to make their operations more efficient and effective and that means utilising some of the incredible technology that has been developed over the last few years.
Anything that assists you and your organisations development, growth and learning is a really important tool. We believe that efficiency enables us to balance productivity and sustainable behaviour and a good balance, leads to happier, healthier people, who work collaboratively for the benefit everyone.
We believe that external technology - software, hardware and programmes that facilitate people engaging with one another - are increasingly making the world a better, more equitable place for everybody. For us, that's where our focus lies.
We’re committed to being a business that represents the world we want to see. So, while you won’t find us on social media, you can always come back right here, to this blog, to read about the topics that are important to us, and the ways we’re working to make business better.
Further Reading
Social media and teenage mental health - Statistics and Facts | Statista
Six ways social media negatively affects your mental health | The Independent
How Different Generations Use Social Media [2021 Stats] | Sprout Social
The Power of Likes on Social Media: Friend or Foe? (the-future-of-commerce.com)
