When social media platforms first burst into the scene about a decade and a half ago, it was nothing sort of a revelation enabling people from across the globe to connect in ways unimagined before. It enabled us to connect with our long-lost friends, gave us a sense of belonging as it allowed us to interact with people sharing the same interests regardless of where they are located in the world. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, to name a few accumulated over 100 million users in no time. The early days of social media were days of endless chronological scrolling. However, with the advent of AI, this all changed. The fairy tale days of user-based chronological scrolling was replaced by an AI Algorithm driven model that controlled what we see on our social media feed. And, this is precisely when things started to take an ugly turn. 

To take a more in-depth look into the problems, we need to understand how and why this AI Algorithm based model that dictates our newsfeed regardless of which social media platform we use be it Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube operate upon. At its core, the AI-based algorithms are working to satisfy a business model wherein money is earned via posting advertisements on social networking sites. The longer a person uses a social networking site, more is the revenue that is being generated. The logic is simple, from time to time, social media platforms would bombard the users with advertisements and the longer the user views the adds, the greater is the amount of revenue earned. It is a business operational model that considers the users as the product. 

Selling Our Soul for Money

Since the Social Media platforms nowadays treat the user as the product, it is necessary for the social networking sites to keep us engaged as much as possible. To achieve this, there are many different dark tactics social media companies apply to keep us – the users hooked. They would deliberately hide posts and updates of our relatives and friends to make us keep scrolling for more. Besides, Social media sites would bombard our feed with sponsored pages and adds, all in the name of money. 

The act of manipulating our newsfeed is a play/trick against our primordial biological instinct of desiring social connection. The logic here is also straightforward, delaying our reward centres in our brains would make us scroll for more time – eventually turning minutes into hours. 

This act of deliberately hiding posts has had far greater consequences than one could have ever imagined. It has made people feel aloof at times. A study had revealed that since 2011, the time when AI-based Algorithms first appeared in social media platforms the rate of suicides also increased to more than 150 per cent among teenagers (study limited to the USA). 

Therefore, next time you scroll through any social media platform do keep this in mind that every like, reaction, a comment you post is being sold. Our emotions, desires, wishes are the product that generates revenue. 

Privacy has gone down the drain

AI Algorithms cannot work on their own; they need specialists to supervise upon them. This is where in today’s AI dominated social media platforms privacy has gone down the gutter. There are data analysts out there constantly presiding over the AI-based algorithms that have access to the millions of databases of all the users. Access to these databases gives them the power to know about every activity we recorded via our social media feeds – which restaurant a user had lunch? Where did the user go after lunch? Whose profile was the user stalking? When he/she was stalking? What are the videos and pictures the users liked? Who tagged whom and what was being tagged? And the list could go on and on. 

The scary part is that behavioural experts are working behind the scenes for each major social media platform, who knows every detail about its user. What triggers them the most and what are his/her insecurities. The sad truth is that a bunch of middle-aged data analysts are controlling how millions of users are feeling right now across the globe. 

Many associated problems stem from the above mentioned two issues, such as widespread depression and anxiety across the globe indiscriminating all ages and genders. The constant need to stay online leads to addiction, where we cannot even imagine our lives without phones. Needless to say, there are associated health problems that follow with such a lifestyle such as loss of eyesight, obesity, and loss of general fitness to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. 

Disclaimer: To know more about this topic in detail, watch “The Social Dilemma” documentary available at Netflix.

Tip to fool the AI Algorithm and protect your privacy: Don’t always like and watch pages or videos that interest you. Sometimes go for the things that you don’t usually enjoy. This will give the ones in charge of the algorithms a false model of you.