Is Facebook making us miserable? Asks Judie Lannon
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Judie Lannon, editor of The Marketing Society’s quarterly journal Market Leader, asks do you really know what’s happening with Facebook?
Everyone is telling you that the future of marketing communications is in social media.
You read that Diageo has just signed a big ‘deal’ with Facebook. Your boss nags. But do you really know what’s happening with Facebook? And who exactly is in control?
Several months ago I heard Douglas Rushkoff – originator of the terms ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’ – speaking at conference making a point I’d never considered. Computers are thought of as tools, he said, but not value-free tools like spades or pencils. Computers are programmed by human beings reflecting the value systems of the people paying their salaries.
He wasn’t suggesting we all become programmers – although that may soon be possible following the launch of Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized simple computer costing £16, on which children will be able to learn to programme – only that we pay attention to whether the activities that lie behind the complex programmes dominating our lives are in our best interests.
He ended his talk with a dark warning to watch Facebook’s next move – colluding with you to sell them your friends – which, of course, is more or less what happens now. As is beginning to be more widely noted, clicking the ‘like’ button commits you to more than you bargained for. You may find ads on your page, you may be connected to people you have no interest in; in any case you will somehow get caught up in the Facebook algorithm and find it all but impossible to get out.
After all, we are not Facebook’s customers; we are their product, and they are highly motivated to hang on to every last bit of us.
Here’s what John Naughton, who probably knows more about this than anyone, had to say in a recent Observer column: “The truth is that companies such as Facebook are the corporate world’s equivalent of sociopaths; that is to say individuals completely lacking in conscience and respect for others … Welcome to the Facebook mindset.”
So how do we feel about Facebook?
It really depends on who you are – or more accurately, what ‘mode’ you are in. As a Jack or Jill in the marketing department, you are probably hysterically anxious to know how you can use it since everyone is telling you that the future of marketing communications is in social media. You read that Diageo has just signed a big ‘deal’ with Facebook. Your boss nags. Do you know what you think? Do you even know how the analytics work? Companies are now in the business of measuring Facebook ‘likes’ and relating them to brand equity. Have you kept up with this?
If, on the other hand, you happen to be caught in a riot, fomenting a revolution, or just telling your friends and family that your new baby is a girl, 8lbs and healthy, Facebook is brilliant form of one-to-many instant communication.
But at this personal level, there are darker sides. One that fascinated me was a blog in the Harvard Business Review by Daniel Gulati who has been researching a book about high achievers. In the course of his interviewing he came to the conclusion that Facebook was making people, or at least the high achieving types he was interviewing, miserable. Three reasons:
The first reminded me of the famous Gore Vidal quip: “Every time I hear of a friend’s success, a little something in me dies.” It’s one thing to have a friend tell you over lunch that he has just bought a Lamborghini, been promoted to a mega job or sold his business for millions, but it’s quite another to see this piece of ‘status updating’ (bragging) broadcast to all and sundry. Unworthy thoughts though these are, we must face the reality of the competitive instincts that have got us where we are and recognise that the kind of ‘positioning’ details, never mind the vast numbers of ‘friends’ that people list, can be teeth-grinding.
The second reason was the sheer time-wastingness of it all. I think people lie about time spent on Facebook the way they lie about how much they drink. And all that nosing around, thinking up clever ripostes can at first be fun but eventually unhealthily addictive. Unsurprisingly, there are now addiction clinics being formed to treat ‘Facebook addiction’.
The third reason requires more psychological attention and it is probably too easy to generalise, but Gulati sees it as a decline in real friendships. I’m not sure about this but there most certainly is the illusion of friendship that I instinctively feel is unhealthy for teenagers in particular. Facebook conversations are an easy way to ‘keep up’ without ever having to expend much effort. But whether these are ‘replacement’ friendships (unhealthy) or additional ‘keeping in touch’ friendships (quite nice) is difficult to judge.
The IPO will have an impact but no one knows quite what. Maybe, as an ex-Amazon employee speculated recently in The Times, it will be a hand-held gizmo using face-recognition technology that you point at people to record their data for you. Maybe it will be the moment when something else comes over the hill to replace it. But I expect we will be trapped in a web of someone else’s superior (and probably malign) programming skills until the Raspberry Pi generation comes to free us.
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Posted: February 22nd, 2012 | Author: Leah.Latimer | Filed under: Market Leader | Tags: Douglas Rushkoff, Facebook, John Naughton, Judie Lannon, Marketing Blog, Marketing Society blog | 1 Comment »
I think facebook could face a backlash in a few years.
Who would have thought three years ago that the Murdochs would be in retreat having overplayed their hands. The Schadenfreude has given pleasure to many especially members of the political class.
People will start to realise that the facebook experience is not truly personalised but yet another form of data driven DM in which marketing is something that is “done to” people. The IPO will make it worse-FB was a place for people to connect to their friends when it started and that is why it has been so successfully. But now the drive to monitize it (ghastly phrase) will undermine this-once people realise that the corporates are buying up the action the joy that Facebook brought us at first will be dissipated. Especially as they are, as John Naughton has pointed out,corporate sociopaths.It is bred in the bone-FB is essentially the product of arrogant elitists from Harvard whose true nature is being progressively revealed.