“Hearts and thumbs? My kids aren’t allowed to use that crap”
Things are not going well for the “benefactors of humanity” of Silicon Valley. Last month (Newsletter 1), we discussed how two Apple investors expressed their concerns, citing research suggesting that intensive use of digital devices, such as Apple laptops, tablets and smartphones, could have a negative impact on children. They are not alone. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 as vice-president for user growth and later left it, said he felt “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped create1. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he said, before recommending that people take a break from social media. Palihapitiya’s criticism was in fact aimed not only at Facebook, but more broadly at the online ecosystem and the whole Silicon Valley system. He said that investors pour money into “dumb, crappy, useless companies” rather than tackling real problems such as climate change and disease. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to interactions limited to exchanging “hearts and thumbs”. He added that he tries to use Facebook as little as possible, and that his children “aren’t allowed to use that crap.”
One might therefore think that Palihapitiya had decided to drop everything and give his work new meaning by supporting the creation of companies with a social mission. But since he has just launched his own company, we cannot rule out that at least part of his indignation is meant to draw attention to himself… Moreover, the amount of swearing he uses seems to show that he remains a pure product of social media: one of the main criticisms levelled at it is that it encourages a discourse of narcissistic self-assertion at the expense of social conventions. Is Palihapitiya skilfully using the buzz dynamics of the spaces he denounces? It is not easy to understand the strategies of these great wolves of Silicon Valley, of whom he is one. But all the better if this is the beginning of a little more lucidity about the hidden truth of social media!
S.T.
Serge Tisseron is a psychiatrist, doctor of psychology with accreditation to supervise research, a member of the Academy of Technologies, and an associate researcher at Paris VII Denis Diderot University (CRPMS).
