“I am Yahweh; that is My Name!  I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)

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Facebook, Social Media in General, and Ignorance

More than 2/3 of American adults get all of their news from Facebook and other social media.  That’s frightening.

For details, see “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016”.

I know something about Facebook and Twitter because I use them to disseminate information.  Since I use them, I have learned what social media enthusiasts want and expect.

They don’t really want news.  They want pithy sound bites and entertaining images that convey a partisan perspective, something like an editorial cartoon.

In other words, they want something that distills complex issues into childishly simple slogans with which they already agree.  Then, they share those slogans with their friends who also agree.

I’ll be blunt.  That means the majority of people in this country are woefully ignorant.  At best, they are dilettantes—about a mile wide and ¼ of an inch deep.  They know just enough to be dangerous.  Ask them to explain why they believe what they believe, and they are lost.

In a recent Business Insider article titled “Billionaire ex-Facebook president Sean Parker unloads on Mark Zuckerberg and admits he helped build a monster”, Sean Parker explains how that happened from his perspective as Facebook’s first president:

Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, has a disturbing warning about the social network: “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Speaking to the news website Axios, the entrepreneur and executive talked openly about what he perceives as the dangers of social media and how it exploits human “vulnerability.”

“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'” said Parker, who joined Facebook in 2004, when it was less than a year old.

“And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever,” he told Axios. “And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.”

Parker added: “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

“The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously,” he said. “And we did it anyway.”

Facebook did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

Some in tech are growing disillusioned — and worried

Parker isn’t the only tech figure to express disillusionment and worry by what they helped create. Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, has been outspoken in his criticism of how tech companies’ products hijack users’ minds.

“If you’re an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine,” he wrote in a widely shared Medium post in 2016.

“We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first,” he continued. “People’s time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights.”

Is this just a trend?

I don’t think this is just a trend, something we will grow out of when we grow up.  For the masses, I think this is the future.

If I am right, it means that the vast majority of our people will be easy prey for mass manipulators who want to rule the world, and the world they want to create is an abomination.

Anyone, even a smart person, can become a victim because social media is so easy and entertaining.  It requires virtually no knowledge and absolutely no thought.

I’ll give you a personal example.  A few years ago, Katie and I were planning a trip to Israel.  While I was working on details for the trip, my niece called to ask a question.  I don’t remember what it was, but during the conversation, I invited her to join us for the trip.  I expected her to say that she was too busy or to say something like “I’ll think about it”, but she didn’t.  She accepted my invitation immediately and sounded excited about it.

My niece is very smart and hard-working.  At the time, she was a junior in college, and the trip to Israel would take place between her junior and senior years.  It was a great time for her to experience something important without the filters in place at her university.

This is a long story, but I’ll make it short.  When my niece’s mother, Katie’s sister, learned that her daughter was going to Israel with us, she asked if she could come along.  I liked that idea, so I invited her.

They were with us for a week in Jerusalem.  When they arrived, my niece was sick.  She spent a few days in bed before she felt like moving around.  You can’t see much of Jerusalem from a hotel room bed, so my niece’s visit was reduced to probably a couple of days, three at most.

Katie and I have been exploring Israel for two decades.  We’ve been all over the country and seen things that few visitors to Israel ever see.  For the past several years, we have spent most of our time exploring Jerusalem and digging deep to understand as much as we can about people, places, and things.

At this point, we know things about Jerusalem that few Israeli tourist guides know.  As a result, we were able to give my sister-in-law a Jerusalem visit that will have lasting memories full of important facts.  She has seen things that few tourists ever see, especially tourists who have visited Jerusalem only once.

My niece got a “hit the high-points” visit.  On the night they returned to the U.S., we ate dinner in Tel Aviv with a couple of our Israeli friends.  Both of them are smart, knowledgeable, and willing to share what they know.

We ate dinner in the Sarona Market area.  It’s an historic location in Tel Aviv across the street from the IDF headquarters.  During dinner while my niece could have been learning about Israel from people who know a lot about Israel, she was busy texting her friends.

I suppose she was telling them about Israel.  She didn’t have much to share, but she spent most of her time sharing it.

My niece graduated from college last year.  Now, she has a job that requires her to dig deeply.  One day, she will look back on that trip to Israel and regret the time she wasted on social media.  There would have been ample time to text her friends while she was going through security and waiting to board her plane at Ben Gurion International Airport.

As an aside, Katie and I have talked with people all over Israel.  We find the smartest and most knowledgeable people we can, and we ask them lots of questions.  With very few exceptions, they are excited about telling us what they know.  We also read books and articles.  That’s how we learn.

The Conclusion

I’m a realist.  I know that quick and easy is the norm today.  I don’t expect people to know much, and few of them have let me down.

This is the problem: quick and easy learning doesn’t lead to the depth of knowledge that is required to understand complex situations.

Is social media to blame for the problem?

I don’t think so.  Social media is giving most people exactly what they want.  It’s like a dinner of dessert with no meats and no vegetables.  That’s not a healthy diet.

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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)

See “His Name is Yahweh”.