Silicon Valley Applications Have Control Over You

Today, let's visit Silicon Valley.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were the most successful applications produced in Silicon Valley over the last decade.

With the average adult in the world spending two hours a day on social media and the average American teenager spending up to nine hours a day, research predicts that social media addiction now affects about 500,000 people globally.

They have successfully hooked us all after spending the last decade fine-tuning their now incredibly clever algorithms.

The Social Dilemma, a Netflix docudrama, paints a dystopian perspective on social media, claiming that Silicon Valley's omnipresent technology is now an existential threat to mankind.

But how terrible is social media for our physical and mental health?

The present social media is incredibly addicting and manipulatively created using an attention-extraction paradigm to influence our behavior and keep us scrolling and wanting more. In doing so, it plays on people's yearning for connection and validation from others, giving us a dopamine rush every time we get a "like" or "reply" without ever genuinely fulfilling our emotions, which draws us back to social media.

As a result, social media functions as a "digital pacifier" now, a maladaptive coping strategy used whenever we are lonely, uncomfortable, bored, or depressed. This is a major threat to both our physical and mental health, and it will only worsen as a result of these technology companies' greed and lack of supervision.

"I want to see the Internet as the standard, the core of people's online experiences, not dominated by firms like Facebook," said Jaron Lanier, a well-known Silicon Valley genius, “I genuinely hope that the Internet will become the engine that propels economic growth for all, rather than just a few."

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