MSTU 4028: Reflection on Ethics and Technology

Dystopian or Utopian?

I registered for my Instagram account in September 2013, and I have stopped using it since April 2019. In retrospect, I had to admit that obsessing deeply over Instagram or any other social media platform was a different version of substance abuse. I used to think most of the episodes of Black Mirror was portrayed as a distant and dystopian future by a cynical writer. After rewatching some of the black mirror episodes recently, I began to realize some of the imagined scenarios in the show were getting closer. Indeed, the episodes in Black Mirror could be too dramatic. On the other hand, we pictured this decade differently in the 90s. 

When I was a kid, I used to dream how robots would be like in thirty years. We have not reached the thirty-year mark now, yet artificial intelligence progressed rapidly; artificial intelligence is simply an adaptation of the advanced technology I once envisioned. We got used to numerous online platforms one by one without realizing the underlying changes engineers made inside the algorithms as well as the constant detailed change in the user interface which were all designed to make users stay longer on the platforms. 

Instagram’s development over the years was an open textbook. For instance, I did not get recommended a lot of quality content when I started using it in 2013. At that time, the community was programmed to be a more private circle. I would spend ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the afternoon only because I had friends in multiple timezones. Plus, I did not need to process that my pictures that much. Uploading your desired pictures and adding a filter was all you needed for the procedure. Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012. After that, Instagram has been assigned new abilities once in a while. When I started using it for a couple of weeks, I discovered that Instagram would display all the names of the people who liked your posts until you got twelve likes. Of course, once you reached twelve likes, you then wanted to get it to fifty. That was when a classmate of mine told me about the “tagging” feature on Instagram. For example, if you posted a picture of your piano and added tags of piano, music, etc. The people who were interested in those tags could see your posts around the world. 

The most important part of the tagging feature was tagging people in your posts. For instance, if you posted a party photo with your friends in it, you’d better tag every one of them. Later I learned the phrase “FoMO” which stands for “fear of missing out.” M.A. Fabris, D. Marengo, C. Longobardi, and M. Settanni (2020) used a sample of 472 Italian adolescents aged 11-19 attending 5 middle schools located in Northern Italy to examine “FoMO” as a major trigger for social media addiction, and eventually cast a negative effect on these adolescents’ psychological well-being. Specifically, FoMO would influence the development of social media addiction through both the fear-driven hypothesis and reward-driven hypothesis. 

From my point of view, teenagers who obsessed over social media platforms knew that they were going through “FoMO” but were too scared to admit, since anything they said against social media could be labeled as cynical or uncool. The neglect showed by peers was at least better than the cyberbullying situation which seemed to become a ubiquitous behavior on every platform. My professor from a psychotherapy course pointed out that Instagram was called “reverse Facebook” in therapists’ and psychologists’ world. Facebook allowed people to express what they would like to say in a bigger text box with chosen pictures. Oppositely, Instagram forced users to focus on the photo with a smaller caption or catchphrase. When the user clicked on the “new post” button on Instagram, it asked for the choice of the picture before processing anything else. 

Fast-forward into 2016, by then, I would spend more than two hours browsing the short but funny memes. The recommendation page provided me with more relevant content which the algorithm thought I would like. Indeed, I got so addicted to them that I could not put my phone down when it was time for bed. At the same time, uploading your own posts became a much more complex procedure. The user would choose another individual photoshop app to make changes to the photos first. Choosing an appropriate filter was also considered to be one of the most difficult jobs while using social media platforms since there were already more than one hundred different filters out there. On the matter of likes, there were already small businesses around the globe that would sell Instagram followers. The interaction between me and my friends got more virtual. One like on a few of each other’s posts would count as saying hi and getting in touch. If someone asked about my opinion on Instagram at that time, I would describe Instagram as an app that connected the world with myself. And I meant it. I could be sitting in a Starbucks in Hong Kong and knew what kind of hamburger my Australian friends were having for lunch.

Right around the end of 2016, when I was a freshman in my undergraduate university, the “short story” feature came online for Instagram. The feature learned what Snapchat had accomplished, easy to record and the clips would only be available for a limited amount of time. And it had intriguing fonts and styles for the captions. In the beginning, the “short story” feature was not a glorious success. When my peers found out that the users could upload dozens of clips at the same time, and the stories would be on top of everyone’s posts, they all got back from their Snapchat journey. I was among that crew as well. My hometown was located in the Southern part of China. There was no snowfall when I grew up. After I entered undergraduate studies in Colorado, there was always snow. So I decided to post a lot of stories about snow, and they attracted countless viewers. However, the more stories I posted, the less they were about the content. I was among the ones who obsessed over the direct messages people would send me after they finished watching my clips. Even when my caring friends confronted me about spending too much time posting, I would not admit my obsession had already inflicted my mental wellbeing.

    The first time I stepped inside my therapist’s office was in April 2019. I had gotten out of a romantic relationship and realized some of my narcissistic behavior. And I desperately wanted to maintain my virtual character which led right to the break-up. There I was, sitting on a comfortable couch facing a therapist in her office chair, holding a notepad. I told my therapist that normally I would check Instagram every five minutes. The truth is that I did not know my exact usage, but I knew that I almost felt terrible and hollow when I missed my friend’s messages and news feeds from Instagram. Unsurprisingly, my therapist told me to leave Instagram. I did, and I filled my life with mediation, gym, and readings. I got more work done in my personal life in 2019 than I ever did before. 

I will never blame Instagram for what I encountered. As someone who majored in computer science, I mostly agreed with cultural determinism. When the scientist invented different languages in coding, they invented the technology that facilitated our world. For instance, advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence became one of the most important support for the manufacture of COVID vaccines. Instagram could bring so much laughter during the dreadful pandemic. Nevertheless, I agreed on certain levels that the companies which ran the social media platform should come up with better regulations and methods to provide a more healthy online environment. While this can be a broad suggestion, there exists a tendency that the average age of catching depression and anxiety are getting younger. Without exaggeration, life-and-death moments may rise in the virtual world as well.

References 

    Fabris, M.A., Marengo, D., Longobardi, C., Settanni, M. (2020). Investigating the links between fear of missing out, social media addiction, and emotional symptoms in adolescence: The role of stress associated with neglect and negative reactions on social media. Addictive Behaviors, 106.