I found this talk by Derek Thompson very interesting. Thompson brought a very unique perspective to the digital age and the unique relationship technology and the economy have. His main point throughout the talk was that the way that digital apps, that actually make money, work is through advertising and how detrimental that is to the society. The first point that he made was the apps that we use that we pay them to provide us a service such as, Spotify, Uber, Lyft, Doordash, etc. are all losing billions of dollars a year; where the apps who charge you nothing to use them, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc. are raking in the money. This is all due to the fact that for the social media platforms that do not charge us any money they are selling our attention to advertisers.
Thompson said that the reason the advertising in these apps are detrimental is because it is in the economy of attention grabbing, saying that people will do whatever to grab your attention so they can then sell it to people who want your information. I thought that the example he used of the newspaper The Sun in the early 1800’s published a story about a scientist seeing ape looking people on the moon. This was a very fitting example because it was the first known example of fake news in the media. I thought that it was very interesting how Thompson explained that the economics of why that worked back then is the exact same reason as to why it works today.
I found his last point to be the most touching to me in the end, he was discussing how due to the fact that today’s youth has so much access to so much around the world- so people have so much to look at and figure out who they want to be. Thompson was saying that there is much more anxiety to be perfect because that is what other people are perceived as online, but in reality, people are more anxious because today it is much more possible to become your true self than in any other time.
I also hung onto Thompson’s last point because while our generation can see the detrimental effects of social media, many of us have experienced it firsthand, we are unwilling to give it up. I think that a lot of this comes from a fear of being left out or falling behind. The only way to change this is if a majority of society agrees to ditch these social media sites, but I find this very unlikely.
Wait we aren’t supposed to comment on external event posts. Whoops sorry (PS – I thought this talk was very well done)
I think the comment about striving for perfection is also very sad and is not unique to just a few people within the generation. The influence of technology has been beneficial but also has had psychological damage on the generation that has grown up with a dependency on electronics.