Is Facebook making us miserable?

Several months ago I heard man called 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 says 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 on which children will be able to learn to programme – cost £16); only that we pay attention to whether the activities that lie behind the complex programmes that dominate our lives are in our best interests.

He ended his talk with a dark warning to watch Facebook’s next move which will be colluding with you to sell them your friends. Which of course, is now what more or less happens.  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 Fracebook’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 Face book?

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 Face book.  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 Face book 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) are 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, a hand help gizmo using face-recognition technology, that you point at  people which  records 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.