This is a great conversation. I'm so excited about this important documentary and feel inspired that your generation is so thoughtfully discussing the matter in an effort to stay connected to what strengthens our ability to live a purposeful life with vitality and more clarity.🙌🙌🙌
Great interview on both ends! Looking forward to how the documentary shakes out. Best of luck, Sara! I've definitely had the feeling of "something isn't right" with phones and social media since its beginnings, hence how I eventually came across Ella's videos and digital minimalism in general. I'm in my exploratory phase right now of how it might work for me in my life, an older millennial web designer stuck online all day for work. I don't want to give up the genuinely helpful aspects of technology I've experienced over the years but definitely want to take a step back from the addictive aspects. One thing I've struggled with are attempts to curate my social media, Twitter mainly, to be just the things I want to see that aren't anxiety enducing. It's obvious theses apps are not built to limit discovery of new and useless things to keep you hooked. Just about the time my Twitter feed starts to feel good and filled with art and delight and some genuine connection, the algorithm changes and I'm plunged back into doom scrolling without realizing it at first. So, I suppose a feature request of these apps and the internet in general would be better curation tools. Mainly so I can purposefully create a useful and positive environment that supports my life and interests.
I think the question is wrong, because the problem is misunderstood. It needs to be reframed. If you examine the origin stories of most of the social media apps, hardly any were created for users. The founders didn't seek to solve problems, they sought to make something that will "move fast, break things" or "disrupt" and just scale like crazy & make a lot of money by hijacking attention. Its always been about using humans as batteries for their machine. There is no real need to ask "how could social media serve us instead of us serving it" or anything of the like. These things weren't created to serve us to begin with.
This is a great conversation. I'm so excited about this important documentary and feel inspired that your generation is so thoughtfully discussing the matter in an effort to stay connected to what strengthens our ability to live a purposeful life with vitality and more clarity.🙌🙌🙌
Thank you for this! Hope this gets more attention
Great interview on both ends! Looking forward to how the documentary shakes out. Best of luck, Sara!
I've definitely had the feeling of "something isn't right" with phones and social media since its beginnings, hence how I eventually came across Ella's videos and digital minimalism in general. I'm in my exploratory phase right now of how it might work for me in my life, an older millennial web designer stuck online all day for work. I don't want to give up the genuinely helpful aspects of technology I've experienced over the years but definitely want to take a step back from the addictive aspects.
One thing I've struggled with are attempts to curate my social media, Twitter mainly, to be just the things I want to see that aren't anxiety enducing. It's obvious theses apps are not built to limit discovery of new and useless things to keep you hooked. Just about the time my Twitter feed starts to feel good and filled with art and delight and some genuine connection, the algorithm changes and I'm plunged back into doom scrolling without realizing it at first. So, I suppose a feature request of these apps and the internet in general would be better curation tools. Mainly so I can purposefully create a useful and positive environment that supports my life and interests.
Thanks Steve!
Love this❤️
Nice one
I think the question is wrong, because the problem is misunderstood. It needs to be reframed. If you examine the origin stories of most of the social media apps, hardly any were created for users. The founders didn't seek to solve problems, they sought to make something that will "move fast, break things" or "disrupt" and just scale like crazy & make a lot of money by hijacking attention. Its always been about using humans as batteries for their machine. There is no real need to ask "how could social media serve us instead of us serving it" or anything of the like. These things weren't created to serve us to begin with.