Do you remember the movies The Matrix or Batman Forever? In these dystopian tales, technological devices could read people’s desires, gather that information, and then use it to shape or predict future behavior at their convenience.
In both science fiction stories, the villains managed to lull the citizens into a state of perpetual connection, either to the television or a parallel reality, without any resistance. Anesthetized through entertainment. In these plots, the villains found a source of counter-power in the superheroes, who could reveal the secret and free the citizens with their superpowers.
Would it be possible in the 21st century to create a control device that could lull and dominate the desires, social libido, and identity construction of an entire generation of young people? Could this be a reality outside of science fiction?
The research we have conducted over the past six years (2018-2024), including a pandemic, whose results have been published in the book “Segrestats per les xarxes” (“Kidnapped by the Networks”, Eumo Editorial), shows that science fiction has fallen short.
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In the history of humanity, no power, channel, product, service, or government has ever had the ability to control the information received, the movements made, the messages sent, and the tastes and desires of 99% of an entire generation. Not even religions, the empires of the past, or the global stars of sports or music have had the power that social media holds today.
Young People Trapped in the Networks
Do you know anyone under 30 who isn’t glued to Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, or YouTube day and night? According to our studies, young people spend an average of 9 hours a week on Instagram, another 9 on WhatsApp, over 7 on YouTube, and almost 9 more on TikTok. In total, more than 34 hours a week consuming content they don’t even remember, scrolling endlessly, losing track of time.
34 hours a week! Many believe they spend less time on social media than they actually do. In these platforms, young people do not get properly informed. They themselves declare that their main networks (Instagram, WhatsApp, and TikTok) are not used as information channels. In fact, more than 54% point out that social networks are spaces of misinformation.
They are not spaces for work or academic development either, nor are they platforms to seek social relationships. Young people use social media according to the values imposed by the platforms themselves, which only aim for them to spend more time on them. Instagram is used to share photos and videos with friends and to see what their contacts are doing daily. WhatsApp is used as a communication channel with friends and family, and also to share photos and videos. TikTok and YouTube are platforms for entertainment, personal curiosity, and following famous people.
What’s the Problem?
Share Until You Die
The first problem is the change in social value in the communication universe: if you don’t share it, it doesn’t exist, and therefore, you haven’t lived it. This mechanism is the main vehicle for the attention kidnapping of young people. They are slaves to what their contacts publish and, at the same time, slaves to the publication of their own lives and the reactions it generates.
A life that has to be exposed to be valid. That’s why the main uses are publishing, following, and watching from afar. But doing this exclusively through these channels creates two additional problems (among many others related to mental health, such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, or eating disorders, which we also discuss in the book).
The second problem is the loss of the ability to socialize, dialogue, interact, and empathize with others. The mediation of the screen in social relationships has been shown to deteriorate young people’s communication skills: they are even terrified of making or receiving a phone call.
Adding (Personal) Value to Others’ Networks
The third problem is feeding the system of domination from a servile perspective. Because adding value to social media, with personal content and individual data, only makes the platform’s job easier: knowing its subjects better to maintain the kidnapping. Or slavery, since the youth work for free for the platform.
It is for this logic that young people, when we started our studies in 2018, were still critical of the data cession and the dominance of their privacy by the platforms. According to the group interviews we have conducted in recent years, this cession of autonomy, freedom, and identity is now understood as a quid pro quo relationship. A symbiosis from which both parties benefit.
If this is the widespread stance of young people towards social networks, we are facing the extinction of Matrix’s “red pills,” those that allowed escape from the kidnapping and seeing reality.
By: Nestor Castillo, ForAllTechNews Director