Social is Powerful: Setting the Scene

The State of Social Pt2

I was once asked by a coworker what motivated me the most in our job: the money or the network. The question was a fair one and I appreciated its forthrightness. I think there’s a finite set of motivators that guide most of us day to day: money, pleasure, influence, status, fame, etc.

There is only one tool in existence whose mastery compounds all of the above, and that tool is social media. Not only can success on social help achieve any of those primary motivators, its use compounds into many other areas as well. If you succeed on social you’re not just reaching one of those goals, you’re reaching all of them. You’re earning money, unlocking opportunities, expanding your influence, etc.

This makes social media the singular most powerful tool in existence today.

It also helps explain why Elon Musk placed an unsolicited bid to buy Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. Why else would a futurist billionaire be interested in a social media platform?

Because shaping public opinion gives you control.

I appreciate Naval’s words on this here. He states that the most powerful people alive today are those controlling social media algorithms. After all, they are the ones controlling the spread of information, re-wiring people’s brains and programming culture.

How did we get here?

This is what we’ll examine in the first few articles of this series, but it’s impossible to fully grasp the power social media has over us without placing it in the wider context of media history. When I was in graduate school for media studies & journalism (which is less impressive than it sounds given I dropped out), a lot of what I spent my time doing was reading works by media theorists like Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Heidi Campbell, and placing them in conversation with sociologists like Jurgen Habermas, Max Weber, or Michel Foucault.

I became fascinated by people who talk about technology, media and society. The more I read, the more convinced I became that we don’t fully comprehend how powerful social media is or how powerful it was about to become.

Two primary schools of thought exist when it comes to evaluating the relationship between technology and society. One of these is technological determinism. Determinists believe that technology is a driver for social change, that it’s a force that affects how people exist in the world. The other is social constructivism. Constructivists believe that the influence primarily goes the other way around: that technology doesn’t emerge from a vacuum, rather human values and desires shape it through societal forces.

I think reality is somewhere in between these views, that technology and society have a symbiotic relationship. Social media is a prime example of this. On one hand, we are incredibly affected by what we do and see online. On the other hand hand, our human drivers condition the ways social media is being built. The reason there are algorithms on social media is because they make us doomscroll, and the more time we spend on social media platforms the more money social media companies make. Technology is rarely built for the common good and more often/accurately it is built in ways that help its creators achieve whatever their primary motivators are - money, status, fame, etc.

Another important way to contextualize the question of social media’s power is to place it within the context of mass adoption. Ever since the first social media platform Six Degrees launched back in 1997, adoption of social has been relentless. Over 60% of the world’s population is now on some sort of social media platform. The only other technology that has seen a steeper adoption curve is cell phone adoption. But phones are a form a traditional media, like televisions or the radio, where adoption is binary - you either have one or you don’t. Alternatively, social media is new media and adoption can be measured in both binary and gradual terms, ie, the goal of social as a technology isn’t just for you to be on it, it’s also for you to spend as much time on it as possible.

And that’s exactly what is happening. People are spending lots and lots (and lots and lots) of time on social media. And yet we’re lonelier, further apart and more ill-informed than ever before. But before we try and regulate social media, build alternative platforms, or create guidelines on us to use it wisely, we need to really understand what is at play - starting with the power of social media.

When I think about power and social media, three primary characteristics come to mind : the power of information-sharing, the power of coordination, and the power of control. We’ll tackle these in the next articles.