Careful What You Click For
How does one stay connected, informed, and sane in a world where machine learning algorithms feed us the very things that outrage us?
In our forever-on, always-connected world the motto of Silicon Valley has been “Move Fast and Break Things.” This has clearly worked to one degree or another. We’ve gone from staring at newspapers on buses and trains to staring at screens that contain infinitely more knowledge, more than any one of us knows what to do with. Seemingly more connected than ever with a dizzying array of choices at our fingertips. Yet studies show that social media makes us depressed and anxious, and more choice doesn’t make us happier but paralyzes us. We traded keeping up with the Jones ‘s with keeping up with the Kardashians. Instead of looking to our neighbor and feeling like we need to match or outpace their consumption, we’re looking to popular celebrities and social media influencers to gauge where we sit in the socio-economic strata. No one can meet the expectations being set, because the expectation is a perfect moment that somehow equates to a perfect life - even airbrushed Instagram models have bad days where they feel bloated and ugly, why shouldn’t you?
How does one stay connected, informed, and sane in a world where machine learning algorithms feed us the very things that outrage us? Some would argue you disconnect, but I’d recommend a healthy dose of mindfulness. Much like our conscious and unconscious minds, Google’s, YouTube’s, Facebooks, and Twitter’s algorithms are black boxes that their creators only understand on the most surface of levels. What do these algorithms tell us about our society and ourselves? They tell us we’re angry and not only that, but that we like to be angry. As it turns out we’re most likely to click on something that outrages us. It doesn’t matter your race, age, gender, or political affiliation, everyone will take the chance to read incredulously and then howl into the void that is the comments section.
Not being conscious and mindful of what you click on the internet is the same as not paying attention to what you eat or the kind of company you keep. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet – seriously, don’t. People have said that the internet isn’t “real”, that the things you do on the internet aren’t “real.” Terrorists, domestic and foreign, are radicalized on the internet, children and teenagers are bullied on the internet, sometimes taking their own lives instead of putting up with the abuse that can now follow them home from school. Billions of dollars are exchanged for goods and services over the internet. As much nonsense, falsehoods, lies and propaganda that exists on the internet, the reaction to that information takes place in our physical reality. Watch enough of one kind of video and eventually that’s all the algorithms will feed you. If you’ve been mindful and conscious of what you’ve been clicking then those videos will be of puppies playing and hopefully not an angry dude yelling into a camera.
Mindfulness may be a buzzword right now, but it’s truly the key to avoid being psychically scarred by the internet. All mindfulness really is, is being aware of your thoughts. Possessing the capability to observe them without judgement and let them fly out of your mind with the same swiftness they appeared. Consider your browsing history the same way you might consider a catalog of all the thoughts you might have in a week. What thoughts/clicks brought you anger, jealousy, fear, or hate? These emotions can be useful in specific circumstances but are often harmful to your mental well-being. Now what thoughts/clicks expanded your horizons, made you smile, brought you closer to friends, family, or strangers? These are the thoughts and clicks you should pursue, because much like the mental pathways we carve out of the gray matter that makes up our brain, our clicks carve out the pathways that the algorithms will take us down. Just like a bad habit forms, the algorithms can lead us down a path we don’t want to be on before we’ve even realized it. Thankfully, like the neuroplasticity of our brains, we can change what the algorithm gives us. Just keep clicking on those puppy videos.
-Peter T. Belies