Wednesday , March 27 2024

Former Facebook Employees Form Coalition Against Social Media Addiction

Former Google and Facebook execs are planning to challenge their ex-companies over the harmful effect of social media. A group of former Facebook and Google employees have come together to form an anti-tech addiction coalition called the Center for Humane Technology to campaign against the ill-effects of tech addiction.

A report from New York Times states that the group will work along with a non-profit media organistaion named Common Sense Media to plan an anti-tech addiction campaign across 55,000 public schools in the US.

Titled The Truth About Tech , the campaign will be funded by Common Sense Media and Center for Humane Technology. The campaign is designed to inform parents, teachers and students about the harmful effects of technology and the depression that comes from the heavy use of social media.

The center has been co-founded and headed by Tristan Harris who earlier worked with Google as design ethicist. Apart from him, center includes former Facebook executives Sandy Parakilas and Dave Morin, former Apple and Google communications executive Lynn Fox, early investor in Facebook Roger McNamee, and Asana co-founder Justin Rosenstein, who created Facebook’s Like button.

The website of the Center for Humane Technology reads “Reversing the digital attention crisis and realigning technology with humanity’s best interests.”
The website talks about the ill effects of social media elaborately. “Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google have produced amazing products that have benefited the world enormously. But these companies are also caught in a zero-sum race for our finite attention, which they need to make money. Constantly forced to outperform their competitors, they must use increasingly persuasive techniques to keep us glued. They point AI-driven news feeds, content, and notifications at our minds, continually learning how to hook us more deeply-from our own behavior.”

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It goes on to claim that Snapchat turn ‘conversations into streaks’ , changing the real value of friendship for children. Instagram destroys your ‘self-worth ‘ by glorifying picture-perfect life, Facebook fragments communities, and YouTube even eats away our sleep. The website claims that these social media platform have been designed in a way to addict us.

The concern about the harmful effect of social media has increased after the launch of children-focussed apps like YouTube Kids and Messenger Kids.

(India Today)

About Chinenye Nwabueze

Nwabueze is a writer with passion for cutting-edge news

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2 comments

  1. wow…nice one…keep it up

  2. Its of note that social media has done more harm than good in our modern society..Nudity is now the trend in a bid to attract the celebrity status and social vices and cyber crimes are on the increase..All these can be attributed to social media..

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