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Watch This Before You Start Using Social Media

Presenter:

Cal Newport

Time:

13:26

Summary

This might be one of the most important videos I've edited in 2018. After everything that has been going on with the privacy crisis and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg going to Washington to speak with members of Congress, I felt that this video was timely.

Transcript

We're dealing with an addicted generation. This is a big time bomb ticking. This is no accident. Indeed it is by design. I mean, seriously, it was my mistake. And I think we can all feel it to try to make these products as addictive as spike in dopamine.


We now know that many of the major social media companies hire individuals called attention engineers, who borrow principles from Las Vegas casino gambling, among other places, to try to make these products as addictive as possible. That is the desired use case of these products is that you use it in an addictive fashion because that maximizes the profit that can be extracted from your attention and data. It literally is a point now, where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is truly where we are.

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