Someone recently left a comment on one of my notes where I was talking about the insidiousness of addictive design. A compadre, another social media manager, who shared that although big tech be bad, we have still created something that had never existed before, a connection between worlds, cultures, identities. Their very good point was to say that although it’s become a bit of a shit show, we still need to be honest about how incredible and useful it is.
And they are right! And it’s funny because I have been sharing a lot recently about the shadow side to social media - and I have been thinking about how I need to write something a bit more positive!
So here I am remembering what I fell in love with back in the 90’s, why I set up a social media agency in the 2000’s and why I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread until around 2018, whilst wondering what the future might look like too.
In 1996, aged sixteen, I wrote an article for my school magazine called “Surfing the Internet.” It ended with the question: “How far will the Internet go? And how long before it not only takes over the business world but the social world as well?” Which is basically what the government are debating right now, thirty years later. (I have always been ahead of my time ;)
I’ve had a front-row seat from the very beginning, from building an early social network as a university student in 1999, with some of my friends, where our strapline was “Friends Forever — Don’t Lose Touch.” To using MySpace to promote a Sony Radio Academy Award winning podcast in 2007… To running my own social media agency before Instagram even existed, to writing a book almost a decade ago about how to use these platforms with soul.
I’ve been there in the thick of it through it all and I always saw social media as a force for good. I always believed that the magic is real. Even now!
I’ve made friends for life through Instagram. I have learned things, I have watched people find their voice and create incredible businesses. I’ve seen movements spread awareness at speeds that was been unthinkable even twenty years ago.
We all have.
Social media is a place of connection between friends, family, businesses and communities of all kind.
Yet it feels like in recent times this has really started change and mainly because of the algorithms!
In my first book, Social Media for a New Age I talk about social media soul versus social media ego and how there are two sides to our online experience. My social media soul wants community, connection, engagement with like-minded people, to make friends, to meet clients I can support and serve. And my social media ego, she wants the likes, the follower numbers, the dopamine.
Both are real.
Both are part of the experience.
It is a web of community and connection that supports me every day. As I wrote back then, it’s such an amazing and wonderful tool, it’s like having a magical device from the future in our hands, a modern day scrying tablet.
But I also want to stop check check checking my bloody phone all the time and hunting for dopamine.
It’s exhausting.
The problem is not social media.
The problem is the business model that has been built on top of it.
Surveillance advertising and algorithmic manipulation specifically engineered to keep us scrolling, comparing, and coming back for more again and again and again.
These platforms took something beautiful, our desire to connect and create, and built an extraction machine on top of it.
People like Zuckerberg, Musk, and other big tech billionaires controlling the digital public square and shaping it for profit, not for people.
I’ve spent thirty years watching this technology evolve.
So I am not anti-social media, even though it may sometimes seem that way these days.
My business coach Matt Thomas said to me recently that I am poacher turned gamekeeper.
Yet I am fiercely pro what social media is supposed to be.
We should not lose the pure fun and joy of digital creativity and connection.
I fell in love with the internet and all its possibilities in 1996.
My sixteen-year-old self believed in something that’s special, that still exists.
And now I want to fight for it.
I’m right there with ya on this!!