The social media casino
I’ve often heard social media compared to a casino. This makes sense. It wants to keep you engaged, give you a false sense of reward and it doesn’t want you to go anywhere else. Ideally, you’ll lose track of where you are, feel comfortable and keep pouring in your time.
I’d like to ask a simple question. What would life be like if you actually lived in a Las Vegas casino? How would it feel?
While it’s likely to be comfortable in the short-term, your hosts will obviously have plans for you. Their intention will be to keep you engaged and do their best to ensure you spend more than you win. They’ll probably want to keep you on the floor of the casino, rather than seeing what the rest of the city has to offer.
They’d also be doing everything they could to make sure you don’t use another casino. With social media, you’re constantly being encouraged to stay in one place.
TikTok wants to be your search engine and store and I’ve seen several tweets from Elon Musk suggesting you can get all your news and information from X. He’s even gone further and suggested you could make calls with it and possibly replace your phone. There are also potential blocks and penalties on a lot of these channels if you try to link to another service.
Let’s go back to that question, what would life be like if you actually lived in a casino, and think about who else might be there. What would happen if you were constantly encouraged to only interact with the other people in the casino? People who were a lot like you.
What if the casino provided their own in-house TV content and printed a newspaper? Do you think they would be objective and act in your interests? Again, just hearing the people around you in the casino reinforce what you’re being told probably won’t help either.
The big question is whether all of this would lead to long term happiness. You probably already know the answer.
I’d think about all of this and carefully consider what apps and services expect you to be exclusive. To wander into their walled garden, feel comfortable and not want to make the effort to leave.
Where can you find balance? What do you need to address?