Social Media Notifications as a Cause of Conflict & Negativity скачать в хорошем качестве

Social Media Notifications as a Cause of Conflict & Negativity

I grew up with the early days of the internet, before social media was a thing, and I saw a drastic shift in the culture of internet discussions, as traditional forums were replaced by modern social media. Lots of people have talked about the problems with the curated, algorithmic feeds of modern social media, and it's well-documented how these can play into conflict, negativity, and the creation of echo chambers. But I want to explore a different factor that I also think plays this same role: push notifications, specifically from social media websites like Facebook that lump many different activities into a single place and thus a single notification feed. I go into depth about my own personal mindset, including my intentions, thought-processes, and intentions, when using social media and I explore how this plays out different in old-school web forums, vs. on modern social media. I talk about how modern social media gets people into an "addicted" mindset where they are acting impulsively and not thinking or acting mindfully or with intentionality. The constant flood of notifications can also be irritating, as one notification after another demands our attention, asking us to switch gears to topics we were not thinking about and might not want to talk about. In this state, we become irritable. But this irritability feeds into the broken system of incentives: it leads us to act hastily, commenting more. The added drama becomes part of the "engagement" that keeps us on social media and fuels the profits of the companies. They have a vested interest in keeping us in this state, which is why the modern system of push notifications, with its ever-escalating invasiveness, has become so dominant. I call on us to start talking about these issues, and to start pushing back against the practice of notifications. I talk about how I have turned off all notifications on my phone, except for text, and how I have uninstalled almost all social media apps from my phone. I also have disabled all websites from being able to send me notifications, and disabled all desktop apps from pushing notifications to the central notification system. I also talk about how using social media less or even not at all, and instead focusing our online activity on traditional websites, which can include running your own blog, or being webmaster of your own website, is a much healthier way to engage with the web and avoids these problems.