Chapter 18: Media Part I – How to Think About Communication Technology
18.4 Addiction and Frustration
I ended that last list with personalization because it brings us back to the intersection of the personal and the commercial, and the reminder that while we may use communication technology to enrich our personal lives, at the end of the day, it’s still a business. As businesses, media companies want their customers to be happy, so they want to design products with features that suit their customers’ needs. In the early days, it was difficult to get precise feedback about what those needs were — it was hard enough just to find out how many people were watching your television show, let alone identify their reactions to it. Some media scholars tackled the question: what do people get out of watching television? This led to a field of media research known as “Uses and Gratifications” studies, which identified several distinct reasons people watch TV (or consume any other kind of media). Some people watch TV news, for instance, to find out what’s going on in the world, others to give them something to talk about with their coworkers over lunch the next day, others because they feel a personal connection to the newscasters, others just to “veg out” after a long day. Equivalent studies have been done on social media, revealing a similar set of motivations. The take-away message is that media companies need to pay attention to what their customers are using their products for, and what customers want out of those products.
You might think research like this will lead companies to make products that perfectly meet their customers’ desires, but that isn’t quite what happens. Media users are often frustrated, unhappy, and disgruntled with the media they use. Take the topic of advertising: if you ask people if they would rather watch content without having to wade through ads, most would say an enthusiastic yes — they think of ads as the junk between show segments. But radio and television were supported by advertising right from the start: the reason daytime dramas are called “soap operas” is because companies like soap manufacturers paid for it all in exchange for ad time. What advertisers want, of course, is “eyeballs”: to gain as many viewers as possible for their commercials. From their point of view, then, the show is the junk between ads. When television remote controls became available, the “mute” button was the advertiser’s worst nightmare: a way for the viewer to avoid the very thing that made the shows free to watch. Viewers could also surf other channels until their show returned. Cable television suggested the promise of ad-free channels (what are you paying those monthly fees for, if not to avoid ads?), but many cable channels actually carried more ads than broadcast channels. The only other option for ad haters was shelling out extra for a few premium channels that were paid for entirely with subscription fees.
The internet at first looked like a haven from advertisements. There was a time when you could watch videos on YouTube or Vimeo, browse Facebook to check up on your friends, and read postings on Reddit without encountering any ads. Early websites may have been built on an altruistic model of people posting things for the good of humankind, but as websites grew or were bought by corporations, the quest was to figure out how to monetize the sites. They had their expenses, and were providing something of value to the world, so it was only fair and reasonable to make a profit. The basic options were to charge fees for things that used to be free, set up paywalls, or accept advertising, none of which the public wanted. Writer Cory Doctorow called this “platform decay” or, more crudely, “enshittification,”[1] explaining:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.[2] and left some users in a state of constant jealousy: social media was showing them on a daily basis what a fabulous life everybody else was living. FOMO is ironic: a growing body of research shows that the more time you spend on social media to cure feelings of social isolation, the worse those feelings of loneliness and isolation get.[3]
Right about the time COVID-19 hit, the term “doomscrolling” entered the lexicon, representing the idea that the more time you spent reading or watching news stories, the worse you felt about life. This is largely due to the negativity bias in news stories, represented by the old saying “If it bleeds, it leads” (as in: a nightly newscast should lead off with its most violent story to grab the viewer’s attention). Digital news sources could experiment with different headlines for the same story, experiments which proved that the more alarming the headline, the more people clicked on the story. News channels started to give more air time to commentators and pundits rather than just presenting news stories, and it was clear what kind of personalities hooked the most viewers: the ones who were perpetually upset. Books such as Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobiaraj’s The Outrage Industry (2016) and Tobias Rose-Stockwell’s Outrage Machine: How Tech Amplifies Discontent, Disrupts Democracy — And What We Can Do About It (2023) pinpoint the issue: a lot of media personalities wake up in the morning asking the question “What shall I get outraged about today?” and never seem to have trouble finding fuel for that fire. This leaves their followers with the feeling that the world is falling apart at a rapid rate.
Meanwhile, individual users on social media platforms scrambled to increase their personal followings. This may seem like it’s just about getting “likes,” but it’s really about engagement — getting any kind of response at all — and, once again, negativity usually works. Calm and rational discourse might not get as much attention as ridiculous opinions and conspiracy theories, and posting clearly inaccurate information may get a lot of people to pounce on you to tell you you’re wrong — but pouncing is engagement, so some online posters concluded that being attacked is far better than being ignored. These days, I see a lot of headlines about politicians who say something dumb and get “eviscerated” or “humiliated” or “destroyed” for it, implying that the politician must regret saying that dumb thing. I suspect, however, that they are glad for the attention, and not bothered that so much of it is negative.
Perhaps the most valuable take-away from all of this is that individual media users should take a deep look at whether the platforms they use are actually meeting their needs. I have seen some online games proudly described as “addictive,” which is apparently meant to make you want to download those games, but it’s worth asking yourself if you feel better or worse after an hour of playing them. Same for scrolling through social media, or reading too many news stories. News sources brag about being “up to the second” about what’s going on in the world, a self-imposed pressure that makes them more motivated to “scoop” (be the first to report something) than to ensure accuracy. That’s how news channels deal with competition, which is a legitimate business concern. On your side of the equation, though, it might make you start wondering why you are so impatient; why are you in a state of urgent curiosity about things that, on reflection, you really don’t have to know right this second?
You might also feel the need to document every aspect of your life, without stopping to think why. At a concert, do you hold up your phone to get a poor quality recording instead of just enjoying the music in the moment? If you visit the Louvre Museum in Paris, do you feel like you have to take a picture of the Mona Lisa yourself? Why? You’re afraid you’ll never get another chance to see that picture? (I wouldn’t worry about that). Or just to prove to others that you were there?
Perhaps it’s so you can post a picture on social media in hopes of getting a satisfying number of likes. If your goal is to someday post something that goes viral, what happens if you succeed? I don’t mean to impose any particular values system or lifestyle choices on you, or criticize anyone whose life revolves around media, nor do I want to attack media companies for doing what serves their goals best. But I do see value in asking yourself those questions, and perhaps revisiting your media habits as a result.
- A term I might avoid due to its potential offensiveness, except that the American Dialect Society named “enshittification” the 2023 Word of the Year, and Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary did the same in 2024. ↵
- https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/[footnote] In regard to Facebook, for example, Doctorow appreciates that it was originally appealing enough to attract millions of users to sign up. “Then, it started to cram your feed full of posts from accounts you didn’t follow,” such as other media companies encouraging you to click on articles that took you to their sites. As it became friendlier toward advertisers, it became less appealing to users. And then it raised the rates for advertising, until Facebook became “a terrible place to be whether you’re a user, a media company, or an advertiser.” Declarations of the death of Facebook, or any other media platform, are probably as premature as similar declarations about the demise of vinyl records, and there are still millions of happy (or not too unhappy) followers of any major social media site. But Doctorow’s model does explain why once-promising sounding new media spaces lose their luster over time, and why so many sites feel like they are urging you to do things you don’t want to do. Do you have as many friends as you like on a social media site? They want you to invite more. Lost interest in posting anything? They will nudge you to repost something old, or celebrate an anniversary. Just want to buy a product or read a book in peace? They will beg you to write a review. To some, that pressure never seems to let up. It is good to remind yourself that the reason these sites have these habits is not to suit your needs, but to suit their own.
This is not to say that media sources don’t try to provide content that serves the public’s needs. But nothing is more profitable than addiction (ask a heroin dealer), so the question tends to shift from “What does the public like?” to “What keeps the public addicted?” This may encourage harmless television techniques such as the cliffhanger (we won’t tell you who shot the lead character until next season) or the news teaser (“One of the candidates for governor was just arrested; tune in tonight to find out who”). Websites might rely on clickbait techniques get you to wade through long lists that may or may not be worth your time, often promising that “#13 will make you gasp!” even though it rarely does. The emotional costs of social media, however, can be far from harmless. The birth of social media brought with it an increase in “FOMO” (fear of missing out),[footnote]"Social Media and FOMO". Social Media Victims Law Center. December 4, 2023. Retrieved March 28, 2024. ↵
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9817115/. Bonsaksen, T., Ruffolo, M., Price, D., Leung, J., Thygesen, H., Lamph, G., Kabelenga, I., & Geirdal, A. Ø. (2023). Associations between social media use and loneliness in a cross-national population: do motives for social media use matter? Health psychology and behavioral medicine, 11(1), 2158089. ↵
