January 24, 2021 - Reclaiming My Time

A while back I noticed that I was getting some strange ads in my Facebook feed. Ads for demographics to which I do not remotely belong: guns, beer, daughters, God/Jesus, horses.... I also see innumerable ads that are blatant copyright and trademark infringements: Star Wars tee shirts, Van Halen sneakers, any variety of posters and apparel with photoshopped images of Paul McCartney, Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Hamill and more appearing to hold the merchandise. For a while it was fun posting comments about how poorly they were photoshopped before reporting the ad as a scam. For the past few days, I've been sharing some of them under #FacebookDoesNotKnowMeAtAll, an attempt at humor to decry their algorithms. 

Then some more tech savvy than I clued me into the fact that what I post is not the primary factor in the ads I see. If it were, I'd be seeing many more ads for baby products. A friend suggested I watch the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, which sheds light on how social media companies market us to their advertisers, and how simply hovering over an ad results in more ads similar to it showing up. It was contrary to everything I'd been trying to do; time spent reporting the ads only served to generate more of them. 

The documentary also explains how advertisers seek to alter my own personal habits by providing my data to those who would exploit it. I'll be honest, I don't completely understand how it works, but it still frightens me. What frightens me most is that I don't know if my behavior has been altered. I don't think so, but I can't say for sure. I'm somewhat heartened by the fact that I only see Facebook ads on my phone; the Facebook Purity extension blocks most of them on my laptop. But the lengths they go to in order to keep me looking does strike a few chords: the dots when someone is typing a comment (it does keep me there a while longer to see what they're writing), the notifications that someone did something related to my feed to trigger that need to see what it is (I turned the notifications off long ago), the "people you might know" function designed to link me to as many as possible which keeps me looking longer, and the god-awful infinite scroll that keeps me looking at posts I've already seen; I do that way too much, and I hate that I do it.

Having been spending so much time at home - partly because of the pandemic and partly because of a new baby - I find myself with my phone in my hand more than usual. I find myself falling prey to the habits I've long railed against. To that end, I have decided to try to purge myself of these behaviors. Part of me would love to take social media off my phone entirely, but I post many pictures from my phone, and I will admit it's much easier to post that way instead of emailing them to myself to post from the laptop. That said, I have taken the step of limiting myself to ten minutes per day on Facebook and Twitter on my phone. The plan is to see what folks are up to in the morning & post what I have to post and to check once more in the evening to see what folks are up to and to get that quick high from the likes and comments on what I posted.

I like Facebook. It keeps me in touch with family and friends from all over the world. I enjoy seeing what they're up to. I appreciate being able to celebrate with them, even if it's via a post. This is especially true during the pandemic when I am unable to see people in person. I like Twitter. I don't follow too many accounts; the majority are work-, book-, or grammar-related who don't tweet too much. I don't want to give them up, but I don't want them to have as much control over my time as they've been having. To that end, I have subscribed to the Boston Globe, so I can get my news from professionals instead of the echo chamber that is my social media feed. I should have plenty of time to read it as I won't be on social media as much anymore. 

I have long encouraged my students to spend more time in the real world and less time on their phones. It's time I practiced what I preach.