Social media firms like Facebook want us addicted to popularity & status:
"...When humans evolved in small bands of 20 to 100 people, standing within the tribe was vitally important.
Your reproductive success, access to resources, and even your children’s future, depended a lot on your popularity.
It’s not surprising, then, that people who experienced a rush of pleasure when they received social validation — a “dopamine hit,” in today’s popular language of neurochemistry — were more likely to survive, leaving a strong evolutionary bias toward people with a desire to receive social approval. (
And a fear of social disapproval, which is why speaking in public is one of the greatest phobias.)
Social media companies know this, and take advantage of it.
There’s even a company called
Dopamine Labs that specializes in making apps more addictive.
(And “more addictive” is a fair way of putting it, given that “dopamine hits” in the brain are also a key mechanism for addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling and the like.)
...Regulation is a blunt instrument, and I don’t like it.
But if
the tech industry is seen as being in the business of addiction, regulation is likely to take place."
Of course, to do that, you’ve got to get beyond political correctness to ask the basic questions -- questions that are deemed racist, sexist, fascistic, etc., etc., as part of an effort to shut down necessary conversations...Breitbart learned this lesson after becoming the primary target for an economic pressure campaign by the left-wing group Sleeping Giants. The conservative news outlet reportedly lost 90 percent of its advertisers due to this campaign.
