6 steps to break social dilemma

Like it or not, we live in an internet era. We had to admit people, families, communities, industries, nations and the whole world are experiencing drastic changes, good and bad, brought by this new species. Most of us blindly take what it created during the last two decades. Naming a few, Youtube , Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, Wechat, Taobao, TikTok, the list goes on. Reasons that people adopt to those apps/services varies but mostly lie in several categories: they are mostly free, they are attracting, many of my friends and families are using them, they benefits my lives.

To some extent, all reasons listed here are "true". For example, most of daily app are "free" like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Wechat, TikTok. You don't pay money to those companies and you are indeed using their services connecting to the world, isn't that amazing? I mean, you could say that depending on how you are using them. I saw many people including younger myself spent hours and hours on those apps watching videos, checking status of friends and the people I am following. Screen time per day would be easily exceeding two hours. We actually pay our time to those apps and services. And that's the main goal of all of those "free" apps because more time you spend on those apps, more data they can collect, more chances they can make predictions of what you like and send you "personalized" ads so you can click or even spend money on. That's just how it works: if you are not paying them money, you are paying your time. Or put it in the more well-known saying: if you are not paying the product, you are the product.

Another aspect is those apps are attracting. People can't help themselves but continue spending time. The magic sauce is the recommendation engine. For example, Amazon shows you products similar to or complementary to what you viewed, purchased; Netflix recommends TV shows, movies that are exactly your taste based on your view history and what users similar to you are watching. Here I want to raise the killer app: TikTok, the most popular short video app in the world, is excelling at its recommendation engine. Once you use it for a few days, it evolves to a state that you are addicted to the app, and can't stop using it anytime you are “free”. People are fed with what they like and avoid what they don't like with main goal of keeping you on the app as long as possible. There is also a side effect which diverges the world and we are gradually losing the ability and chance to appreciate the things, ideas that are fundamentally different.

The apps/services are not set out to be evil. It's the business model of online ads industry which perfectly fits in the large scale customer app powered by internet natural scalability and the playbook of promoting an app: send invitation to 10 people within 7 days. From paper-based ads to TV commercials, ads industry is evolving towards spending more money on people shown high potential purchasing their products, and remove all barriers from making the actual purchase. The internet ads design is the state of art which can not only gather signals from their users such as social networks, online footprint, preferences etc via direct or indirect data collection but also make the purchase as easy as just one click. Every parameters of user experience can be tuned to meet certain goals e.g. user engagement, ads revenue, even perceptions towards certain things. Without laws, regulations, companies are lacking of motivation to protect users. Even with laws and protections, certain things are still outreached such as how to tell certain things are misinformation or untrue.

I don't see anytime soon this circumstance can be drastically changed by making new lays and regulations. Meanwhile, I know most of app users won't be able to change their pattern since they are confronting the fine tuned AI backed by thousands of computers figuring out how to be more attractive for each individual. However, there are still ways to win this battle. Just as any other addictions and habits, we can put effort cutting off the links. More concrete ways are as follows:

1. Scrutinize all apps on your phone, and websites in your browser
2. Keep asking if this apps/websites deliver any significant benefits/drawbacks towards your work or life
3. Only keep the apps/websites that benefits far outweigh drawbacks. Delete all other apps. For some of apps/websites, there are parts of it are necessary and bringing benefits. Figure out ways to limit yourself only to those parts.
4. As most other habits, it takes time and willpower to change routines. Stick to it as much as you can and do it one by one.
5. For the retained apps, turn off most of notifications on your phone/browser unless that's crucial to you.
6. Periodically repeat 1 to 5. Since sometimes you will find some apps you thought it's useful no longer the case.

Breaking the habits is toughest thing one can experience. However, over the long run, breaking bad habits will pay the long-term dividend such as gaining control of your life back, which is invaluable and gives you a time to invest in yourself, valuable relationships and meaningful work. 

To balance myself a bit, I am not trying to sell the idea that all internet companies' products are "bad". It really depends on what their goals behind the scene and whether they brings more benefits/harms to your personal life. For example, people invest their time in social media, gaining popularity, becomes influencer who can bring people together doing meaningful works which benefit the society; people use messaging apps like WhatsApp are able to chat to their friends and families face to face during COVID-19. There are tons of other positive examples of those products bringing to the world and people more or less benefits from them.

 

At the end of day, what you do decides who you are. Hope we can all wisely adapt to new products and thrive in this internet era.