To what extent is story or storytelling currently used in events, meetings or conferences in your business?
I don’t believe storytelling is used widely as yet. There is a tendency in business to show and tell. With that I mean with the presenter or speaker usually has something to sell, their product or services and therefore they have an agenda. You can’t blame them as this is how any kind of presenting is mostly done, we are conditioned by examples and training in society. When I create whiteboard animation videos for my clients, I often have to coach them and help them to prevent their tendency for using a selling narrative and instead share a story. Here is a fun video I created to explain this message in a memorable way!
iOS only at the moment folks, sorry Android I’m sure it won’t be long.
They’re in their honeymoon period. Being a disrupter and beating the biggest media (social) companies in the world means you have a starter advantage, everyone wants to join you, everyone’s after those elusive invitations, just 2 per user, wow!
Inside Clubhouse
It’s not that it’s exclusive, they are still in a start-up growth process and not ready for the onslaught of trolls and criminals. Here’s their latest blog post;
If I said to you that the Internet was being run by criminals and the only way to stop them is for you to stop using the Internet, you would never do it. The reason you’d never do it is because you can’t do without the Internet. It’s like electricity, gas and oil, you and everyone else couldn’t survive without it.
The same applies with Facebook. Facebook is so much part of society, an eco-system we just can’t do without. Most of us know that it causes untold harm in the world, people post the worst of humankind on the platform and Facebook are struggling to regulate themselves.
When Facebook became mainstream, we were all so overjoyed, apart from email there was nothing, well okay maybe Friends Reunited and MySpace, that allowed us to communicate and befriend almost anyone. In the beginning we would only connect with family and friends, this then grew beyond people we knew and we accepted requests from complete strangers. I wonder why we did this? Maybe we wanted to receive more likes (love) from strangers to makes us feel good about ourselves?
Facebook is like electricity, like gas and oil, maybe even food. We can not live without it, governments know this too and they can not live without it either, so any regulation or the dishing out of fines will always be small, because they need to make use of the platform to enable human surveillance, I know because I’ve heard this from Cyber Security professionals who advice the U.K. government.
Not everyone is staying on the platform though. They have lost users and more people tell me that they don’t do Facebook. They often say they prefer Instagram, haha they don’t realise it’s also Facebook! Some say they don’t do either, they prefer WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends. Oops that’s also Facebook! You see you can’t get away from them. Thousands of small business owners who have your email address and/or mobile phone number are able to add it to Facebook audiences and target you with ads and the latest changes to Facebook, which means you can’t even get your details removed from the advertisers that uploaded them, even if you’re not there. Facebook says nobody can see those details, but Facebook has them!
And what if that actually was true? I was walking Pip the Dog one morning and I was a little later than usual, when often I pass some kids walking on their way to school.
Without fail every single one is holding a smart phone clutched in one hand and sometimes both hands, like some prized possession. And yes they are walking and staring at their phone all at the same time. They definitely can’t see where they are going. I often want to walk directly towards them with my arms open, but then I know that would get me into trouble big time, so I don’t.
I’m sure as a parent you have no idea that your kid is doing this, correct? I’ve even seen several kids walking together all staring at their phones. Wow, that’s a really sad situation.
When mobile phones first came out, we weren’t holding them in our hands whilst walking and staring at them, because there was nothing to stare at. We would get the phone out of our bag or briefcase when we needed to call someone or accept an incoming call. Now with the advent of smart phones they are not just phones, they are addiction devices.
Kids are addicted, adults are addicted, we’re all addicted to our phones.
Oh, by the way, it was a beautiful sunny day, fluffy clouds, birdsong, trees bending in the breeze and they missed all of it. They didn’t have a clue, the day passed them by, never to be experienced again.
I don’t blame the smartphone makers as such, I blame the app makers, the social media tech companies, whose sole objective has and always will be to make us totally addicted to their advertising engines.
Most Social Media feeds have become a feed littered with adverts and I’m not even talking about the paid adverts that appear there, although there are of course millions.
As Social Media Marketing World winds up it’s series of keynotes, its highfiving, the back slapping, littered with sound bites and good vibes towards everything Social, the objective of it all was really to learn about how to get more money out of consumers.
I feel like being sick in my porridge. Denial is the key word here, every Social Media Marketer is in denial of the damage Social Media is doing to humankind, the exploitation of our democracy and our choice to choose our own consumerism.
Not only will they be coming back to their communities with new ideas on how to con their connections, they will be delivering their workshops to teach others how to do the same and charge handsomely for the privilege.
I used to be a huge proponent of Social Media when it all appeared dubbed as Web 2.0. I spent many hours learning this skill and teaching others too. I’m totally guilty and was taken in by it all. However little did they know how they were going to use it to grow their gold reserves. It took a while for them to realise where they were heading towards themselves and then they discovered that our desire to be able to communicate with friends and loved ones via a digital medium meant that we were very very happy to share our most intimate details, thoughts and desires, including our anger and frustrations.
Global mental health is a rising epidemic and we already know that Social Media has a massive part to play in this rise. I first wrote about this in 2013 in the non-significant journal of psychology, an article titled ‘Do Social Networks Sell Drugs?’.
We also know that Social Media has been used to manipulate voters to elect Donald Trump as president, possibly the biggest abuser of democracy the free world has ever seen. It has also been used to deliver ‘Brexit’, the Social Media mastermind that came up with the slogan ‘Take back control’, Dominic Cummings, portrayed by the brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch in ‘Brexit: The Uncivil War’.
Molly Russell’s father Ian says he believes Instagram is partly responsible for his daughter’s death. Molly Russell committed suicide whilst being active on Instagram and she is just one of the reported cases we know of.
Whilst I appreciate that Social Media has also been responsible for much good in the world. The Ice Bucket challenge, that went viral on Social Media to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). It raised a lot of money for the charity, which supports the sufferers of this disease. There are I am sure thousands of examples where Social Media has been beneficial for many.
However, there is a huge underlying motive for the owners of these platforms and that is to make money for it’s shareholders.
Printing money from your content, your discussions, your fears, your mental health. If you knew the extent of the exploitation that’s taking place you would leave these platforms overnight. But you don’t, even though you realise at some level that this is happening, we are in fear of missing out (FOMO) and the platform owners know this all too well. They’ve built their technology to ensure that this is the case constantly.
As a result most business owners now believe that Social Media is the ONLY way now to promote their products and services and they are spending billions in doing so.
But not everyone has millions to spend on advertising and they are using the newsfeed to post their adverts for free and that’s why the newsfeed has become the advertfeed.
In years to come the newsfeed will disappear completely, it doesn’t have the value it once had. Community discussions will grow and replace it, I call it the ‘Group Chat’. These aren’t that new, they have been emerging on messaging apps, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Snapchat and Instagram.
But we don’t need to be beholden to these platforms, you can look to create your own community chat forums, just like the ones we used to have in the good old days. We may have to pay a small amount for them, but I promise it will be worth it in the long run.
It no longer makes any sense to post on Social Media. What purpose is it serving you? Are you advertising or are you showing off? At some level it meets a need in you to be recognised, looking for affirmation or even looking for attention. But all the content you have posted in the past 10 years has been lost, you are not able to retrieve it, unless you are writing on a site like this or on your own blog. This will be my strategy going forward. Writing in places where a permanent record is kept, where I can download my writings, which after all are precious and I have invested time, effort and thinking time towards.
Mmmm, not sure actually. They’re getting a fair amount of stick at the moment and probably justified. When a big tech company who is making billions of dollars and has been found to lack integrity, the house of cards starts falling down pretty quick.
A couple of people I respect highly, Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher are definitely doubling down on Facebook and especially Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook’s board of directors.
Money and greed allows many misdoings to be buried in deep graves, however there are many journalists who love digging and digging deep. Couple that with disgruntled ex employees and you have a rich recipe for the truth to be exposed.
How do you deal with that truth? Well, Mark calls it ‘BS’ and Sheryl, well Sheryl is just hiding, because she managed to make a few million dollars from her books and her books are all about authenticity and integrity. To just say ‘we should have done better’ doesn’t cut it any longer when it gets repeated over and over. By the 3rd time you get a bit sick of it and wonder, actually what’s going on? What is the truth? We really want to know.
Why?
Because Facebook has made billions from our data, we kinda want to know what’s going on, especially as our data gets stolen on a regular basis. It’s serious stuff actually.
I was a massive fan of Facebook back when they started but in February 2018 I decided to uncouple myself and stopped posting, stopped being active, deleted the app from my phone, adjusted all the advertising preferences and minimised my personal details on my profile, basically deleted most of it. But not everything and didn’t close my account and that’s because my wife wants me there, so she can tag me!
I also decided to delete Instagram and WhatsApp, both Facebook products now.
Those actions has improved my emotional wellbeing significantly, I stop seeing all the fake news and adverts that my network posts, because that’s in the main what happens. Our lives have never been as good as they appear on social media. It’s sad actually very sad, I have compassion for our need for love.
Of course it does some good too, I get that, but the bad far outweighs the good. Remember you heard it here first. I give them 5 years, tops and although they may still exist as I really don’t believe they will completely disappear, I do believe it will be a totally different experience, reduced, more private and less adverts with maybe even paid profiles to stop the ads.
Actually they didn’t, but I heard someone say this. They were so surprised that they were stopped on the street when recognised by a complete stranger (stalker).
Is that what we’re looking for?
Plastering our happy face all over the web, so someone will walk up to us and say; ‘Hey, aren’t you the girl/guy who talks rubbish on YouTube?’
Surely not? Surely yes!
Most of us on Social would love to achieve that recognition at some level. It’s an endorsement of all the hard work you’ve been putting in day in and day out, just so that a random person somewhere points at you (I’d be quite scared actually) and shouts out to you that they actually know you. And of course they have no idea who you are, all they’ve seen is an alter ego of you on the web, very likely talking complete non-sense.
Those of us that are digitally active, dream of the day when our content goes viral. But what does viral actually mean? Does it mean our desire for fame, fortune and celebrity status or does it mean getting noticed by your prospects and achieving more sales for your business?
The dream could also be about how can you make people’s lives better by sharing your content, so it potentially could make a difference in their lives?
We are all the same, we have a need to be loved and that need shows up in many places. It could be that you desire love from your parents, your spouse, your kids or your friends and colleagues and then in the past 9 years we’ve moved that desire to the digital world.
Now we desire love from total strangers, in some way wishing to reach celebrity status in our own world, believing it will makes us happy. Have you witnessed what happens on social media with famous people? They get trolled, abused, harassed by those complete strangers that we wish to be loved by.
There is another word for this, it’s called ‘suffering’.
We’ve become obsessed with self. Our self wants to be loved by complete strangers and social media has made us believe that it’s the only route to achieve that love from strangers.
Wrong!
As everyone is doing exactly the same thing as us, it means the love that we believe we receive via likes, comments, hearts, shares or whatever the new trendy term is that’s being invented by new platforms. We have to conclude that none of it is actually real.
It’s fake!
When we respond to people on social media when people are desperate for our attention, the dopamine hit doesn’t last very long at all. It may not even occur when our last post doesn’t achieve the same amount of interaction as the previous one. We could even conclude that if it hasn’t performed as well, we wonder what’s wrong with us and a small depression hit might actually occur instead of a dopamine hit.
When I first saw adverts on TV, when I was a young boy in Amsterdam, I thought they were magical. Those short stories advertising usually food and stuff you’d like to own were mesmerising and actually very memorable. Well they repeated them over and over, day after day, many times during an evening and therefore they just stuck in your mind, potentially, forever.
I still remember that in between each advert they presented a lion character and he did strange things in between each advert. I was also very interested in seeing what he would do in between the adverts as well as the adverts themselves. Here is an example of a Dutch advert, advertising Dutch Peanut Butter. Notice the Lion’s antics before and after. I now realise that the Lion, played a massive part in getting you to stay watching and locking in a massive hook into your brain.
[embed]https://youtu.be/iy6AhWkSKo8[/embed]
After all, adverts are short interventions in your brain, they get lodged into your memory banks for recall at a later date. Have you ever found yourself walking around a shop and noticing a product that you actually didn’t need, but you still bought it? You may not have been able to make the association in that moment, you may not make any association to the advert ever, but the signal was still there without you even noticing, the signal to buy something you actually didn’t need.
Zuckerberg in front of the EU Parliament — Michael & Josh #weeklycartoon
Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by the EU Parliament. They bizarrely insisted to ask all questions upfront. They basically made fools of themselves, because they wanted to be sure all their voices were heard, this is not untypical of the EU. It inspired this short story and a cartoon to accompany it.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a young and ruthless officer in the Facebook, General Zuckerberg has complete confidence in his troops, training methods and weapons. Zuckerberg eagerly awaits the day when Facebook’s technological innovations will help bring down the hated New Republic and the European Resistance, and considers it his destiny to rule the galaxy.
After the destruction of Cambridge Analytica, Zuckerberg led Facebook forces that drove the Resistance from Europe — and assured Supreme Leader Sandberg that one of his latest technological innovations would soon deliver victory for their regime. After the demise of Cambridge Analytica, Zuckerberg accompanied Sandberg to Europe, helping oversee Facebook’s assault on the remnants of the European Resistance.
There are so many ways to communicate with people via the web these days, that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to decide which method to use.
Most of our contacts are in at least 3 different locations. Probably Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then there’s also Instagram and Snapchat. That last one depends on how old you are, so forget that one for the purpose of this article.
Do you send them a) an old-fashioned text message b) a Facebook messenger c) direct message them on twitter or message them on LinkedIn. Not sure we do many on instagram at all, I’m just the wrong age group.
Well it all depends if you have their phone number or not.
So here’s my approach these days.
a) if I have their number and they are in the UK, send them a text message. It’s likely that this service is always left on in terms of notifications. b) if you don’t have their number and you are connected on LinkedIn, message them there. The chances are that they haven’t switched off notifications for that. c) failing that use normal email or phone/Skype them!
It still doesn’t sound simple does it.
To be honest all I want is a simple life and all those social networks have made it increasingly cumbersome and not efficient. Remember when they said that technology would make our life’s simpler and we would be able to spend more time with our families and friends? Well the opposite has actually happened. If you haven’t already lost your teenage son in his online gaming and your teenage daughter in snapchat world then you probably will lose them in a different platform that hasn’t been invented yet.
The world is angry with Facebook and rightly so. It may not happen straight away, but we may have seen the gradual and ultimate demise of Facebook over the next few years. It’s not just the Cambridge Analytica story that’s causing it.
Most people are realising that Facebook is a total time-suck. You lose yourself in the Rabbit Hole, never to come out. You stop speaking to people and avoid having real conversations that matter.
I stopped on Facebook, I haven’t deleted my profile, but maybe one day I will. My mind is so much better off as a result.
Down the Rabbithole — Michael & Josh
What gets to me now is not only the manipulation of the social media platforms, also the manipulation of marketers using those platforms.
I can now see the wording, the language, the videos, the NLP, basically the brainwash that’s taking place across the board. I’m worried for us all. Capitalism, consumerism, growth, GDP’s, nationalism, plastics, money, all of it is making us greedy, corrupt and wish to take rather then give.
A human wants to help her fellow human, but not at any cost, not telling her that I’m better than anyone else, surely?
That is what’s happening at the moment. When I read LinkedIn profiles I am astounded how people promote themselves as the biggest this the best at that, showing off awards, so-called corporates to have worked with, testimonials and also sorts of gimmicks, tricks and magic. It’s making me feel quite nauseous when I read them.
As I said in a previous article I call myself a straight talking Dutchman and often find myself giving feedback to members on LinkedIn who ask to connect to me. It’s always meant with the greatest intention and often it can come across as being critical. So I’m sticking with the theme and want to go a little bit more in depth on this.
By far what I witness on social is self-congratulatory language, especially LinkedIn.
‘The contributors are smug. It’s like Facebook without the jokes. It’s a breeding ground for envy. It isn’t healthy to spend your whole life comparing yourself to other people.’
Initially I felt like he might be attacking me and I because his language was quite direct and very very honest, maybe it wasn’t a good thing to approve the comment to be shown on my blog.
“A black-and-white shot of people sitting on stools at a long table” by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
Seeing as I hardly receive any comments on my blog and after reading his comments a few times, I concluded that actually there is a lot of truth in his statement. People are smug on LinkedIn, it is a breeding ground for envy and people do compare themselves with others.
One of the bits of feedback I give is on people’s profile photos. See, I believe they need to look professional, a head and shoulders shot, produced by a professional photographer and when I see folks with their kids, drinking alcohol, being on holiday, on a stage, showing off with a headset microphone or anything else equally at home on Facebook I say NO! Sort out your profile photo, you look ridiculous. Judging again!
Often people come back to me and say, well I’m not doing so bad and I have more connections then you after all’s who are you to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. Not exactly those words, but pretty much the same.
I do believe social has become all about ‘look at me’, look how great I am, look at my achievements, if you don’t hire me either as an employee or as someone to solve your business issues then you are off your head, because actually I am the best thing you will ever find on here. I see no humbleness any more and don’t even get me started on the videos and adverts people post. Yuk!
We love belonging to tribes. It all starts with your family tribe, then your school tribe and continues into your educational tribes as you progress through to the sports tribe, the political tribe and your workplace tribe.
And you enjoy belonging to these tribes because it allows you to view those folks as like minded individuals. They may be from different families and backgrounds but when you arrive in their tribe, you are basically the same as them. You look at these people through rose-tinted spectacles, believing that they own the same values as you.
You probably have no idea about this person and quite possibly have never met them ever and truly no idea what they stand for, their values and habits. But because they belong to the same tribe, well that means they are like you? This is especially true of Facebook. Belong to the same group around just one idea and bang, you are now the best buddies forever.
Wrong!
This can also be understood as ‘confirmation bias’.
We believe certain things about ourselves and others and if there’s a match then we believe we’ve arrived in our tribe.
But belonging to a tribe can have many positive benefits. I recently listened to an episode of a podcast series on the BBC, titled ‘Digital Human’. The episode was indeed called ‘Tribe’.
In their research they were able to uncover that Facebook was hugely beneficial for extended families to keep in touch with each other, especially if they have been apart for long periods of time. Their meeting up after a long period apart was stronger because they could keep in touch with their family tribe.
I use a regular excuse to give direct feedback to people that connect with me on LinkedIn by saying that I’m a straight talking Dutchman. The Dutch have a reputation for that, right?
I give feedback because I’d like to help them. I also give it because I see so many dreadful profiles and after having been a LinkedIn trainer for 5 years, I can spot the rubbish instantly.
Why do so many folks write such nonsense on their profiles? What makes them rush the process so much? Is it to just get their profile published quickly? Many then never go back to it to improve it. We are so distracted in our lives that it shows through in the way that we present ourselves online as well.
“Black and white photograph of the back view of street protesters in a rally in Washington.” by Jerry Kiesewetter on Unsplash
Just take a few moments, maybe a few hours to improve what you write about yourself on LinkedIn. It’s not a CV or an advert, it’s an opportunity to present who you are, what your passion is, how you got to where you are now and what vision you have for yourself. Be personal, your story is the most important thing about you.
Whether you’re looking for a job, wishing to further your career or looking for new business relationships, people always buy from people. The way you write about yourself tells us a thousand times more about who you truly are.
The LinkedIn summary is probably THE most important piece of content you can write about yourself.
This is what I witness on a regular basis in LinkedIn summaries.
No summary at all!
Writing in the 3rd person like you’re some sort of celebrity.
Writing one sentence, which says nothing.
Writing an advert.
Writing a list of skills.
Professing that you are some sort of Super(wo)man
Using jargon that nobody understands unless they have intimate knowledge of your industry/sector.
Telling us how many connections you have and how popular you are.
Not writing about yourself only about the company.
And you actually believe it’s good enough?
We must all have higher standards for ourselves and show the world that we care about coming across coherently and that we’ve taken the time to express our intimate world to others.
In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have sought to study and measure the impact of social networks (social media).
The world has been surrounded by Social Media
A 2010 study by the University of Maryland suggested that social networks may be addictive, and that using social networks may lead to a “fear of missing out”, also known by the acronym “FOMO” by many students.
It has been observed that Facebook is now the primary method for communication by college students in the U.S.
According to Nielsen, global consumers spend more than six hours on social networking sites.
Consumers continue to spend more time on social networks than on any other category of sites — roughly 20% of their total time online via personal computer (PC), and 30% of total time online via mobile.
Tim Berners-Lee contends that the danger of social networking sites is that most are silos and do not allow users to port data from one site to another. He also cautions against social networks that grow too big and become a monopoly as this tends to limit innovation.
According to several clinics in the UK, social media addiction is a certifiable medical condition. One psychiatric consultant claims he treats as many as one hundred cases a year.
Introduction
Networks are not new; they have existed since the very first existence of cells on planet earth. It’s quite amazing to know that our cells work together in networks to achieve tasks together. One such example is wound healing. For wound healing to occur, white blood cells and cells that ingest bacteria move to the wound site to kill the microorganisms that cause infection. At the same time fibroblasts (connective tissue cells) move there to remodel damaged structures. This is a wonderful example of how cells behave together in networks.
Even our brain neurons wire together in associative networks to create our memories and skills. Cell division even mirrors the way that networks grow.
We humans are no exception in nature. We exist and flourish as part of networks. We seem to have some inborn instinct to behave in this way, actively involving ourselves in many different systems of connections.
We long for likes
The first network we experience in our lives is the immediate family, where we learn how to be social by watching our parents and siblings. Beyond that, we soon learn how to ‘network’ with other groups of adults and children. We then start our social journey by joining many different networks, the nursery, primary and secondary school, the college and university and then our work and leisure networks.
The size, membership and complexity of these networks may grow or contract during our lifetime, but they always remain an important part of our experience. There are several theories put forward to explain this networking phenomenon, from Social Comparison Theory,Role Theory,Homogeneous Theory and the Social Identity approach. The evidence seems to point to the conclusion that networking is in part driven by our genetic make-up.
Tribes
These networks have a major impact on our lives. They determine how we see the world and how we see ourselves; we constantly monitor how we are accepted in our various networks.
Perhaps another word for these networks could be ‘tribes’.
Belonging to a ‘tribe’, gives us the feeling that we are part of ‘something bigger’ then we are. It helps to give our lives more meaning and significance. The belief that you belong to a ’tribe’ is reinforcing, as it encourages you to relate more strongly with the other individuals in that ’tribe’. It helps with the identity that you have given yourself as you became an adult.
When your ’tribe’ behaves in the same way that you do, you will consider them the same as ’you’ and somehow feel a connection. It triggers an automatic approval, telling yourself that they are OK as they behave in a similar way to you.
The way that this translates in social networks is that individuals will follow people on twitter, send each other friends’ requests on Facebook or ask to be connected inside professional networks, like LinkedIn. We may have never met the person but for some reason we want to share intimate details of our lives with them.
We have become addicted
Never in the world have we seen this kind of behaviour before. It did not exist before social networks appeared on the worldwide web. You could not have imagined walking up to strangers, people you have never met and suddenly start sharing your personal life with them. It just didn’t happen. We as humans need to trust someone first before we will share personal details. In social networks personal details are being shared all the time without any apparent shyness or reservation.
And the only reason this happens is because we have connected at some level with this stranger in a social network where their behaviour mirrors our own. In social networks we behave for around 80% of the time exactly the same way as everybody else. Just the act of being in a social network together, posting updates, sharing content means you are doing the same as everyone else and that makes you part of that tribe.
Significance
Social networks give us a platform for significance. According to Anthony Robbins, significance is one of the 6 human needs as per his Human Needs Psychology model. We all have a need to be significant in our lives and when family and friends, like, comment or respond to our activity inside social networks, we feel good, we feel loved, we feel significant.
Dopamine is closely associated with reward-seeking behaviours, such as approach, consumption, and addiction. Recent research suggests that the firing of dopaminergic neurons is motivational as a consequence of reward-anticipation. This hypothesis is based on the evidence that, when a reward is greater than expected, the firing of certain dopaminergic neurons increases, which consequently increases desire or motivation towards the reward. This is why social networks are so addictive and why games inside social networks (e.g. Farmville) are so popular. Equally though, aggression is also evident in social networks and recent studies indicate that aggression may also stimulate the release of dopamine.
Why do humans enjoy social networks?
Humans are social beings, they thrive around other humans and other humans make them thrive. Without human interaction we have no reason to exist. Compassion and love is a ready built-in operating system, which we are born with. Without the love we experience on the day of our birth we would probably die. Throughout our lives we crave that love and connection with other humans. Especially as those humans are the same as us or expressed in another way, exist in the same tribe as us.
Anthony Robbins’ Human Need Psychology says that one of our 6 human needs is love and connection.
Physical social networks, whether it’s the family unit, our workplace unit or other tribal social networks, which we belong to for our sport, hobbies and political activities, all exist because there is some love and connection that takes place.
Virtual social networks via the web also exist for the same reason. The creators of these networks have been able to create certain activities to allow us to feel love and connection with a connection or a tribe that exists inside these networks. Whether it is ’liking’, ’commenting’, ’sharing’, ’re-tweeting’, ’favouriting’, ’re-posting’, the user feels good when this takes place or in other words they do feel loved. This is very addictive and when dopamine is released in the brain, we want to experience more of this feeling.
As human beings we also want to give out love and this is another one of the human needs and is called ’contribution’. And therefore in social networks we also like to contribute to our fellow human beings.
The way that this translates inside of virtual social networks is no different. For example by actively ’liking’, ’sharing’, ’commenting’, it makes us feel good and drives us to do more of it, whenever the recipient rewards us in some way for taking this selfless action. And guess what happens more dopamine is released and the more addictive it becomes.
and ’ding, ding, woof, woof’, every time our mobile device makes that familiar notification noise, we know that this could mean more dopamine and more love, so we’ll react instantly to the need of that possibility.
How social learning grows networks
In 1961 Albert Bandura conducted a controversial experiment known as the ‘Bobo-Doll ‘experiment, to study patterns of behaviour associated with aggression. Bandura hoped that the experiment would prove that aggression can be explained, at least in part, by social learning theory, and that similar behaviours were learned by individuals modelling their own behaviour after the actions of others. The experiment was criticised by some on ethical grounds, for training children towards aggression.
Bandura’s results from the Bobo Doll Experiment changed the course of modern psychology, and were widely credited for helping shift the focus in academic psychology from pure behaviourism to cognitive psychology. The experiment is among the most lauded and celebrated of psychological experiments.
Bobo Doll likeness
This study can be viewed as quite significant and why social networks grow so fast. When we see the activities of others in social networks, we start to wonder if we’re missing out on something and whether we need to start involving ourselves. When we then discover that our tribe, (whether family, work, hobby or other tribe), is doing the same, we will stay and investigate it further. And that is when we start enjoying shots of dopamine in our brain and when the addiction of this social network interaction starts working.
[embed]https://youtu.be/Pr0OTCVtHbU[/embed]
Conclusion
Social networks are here to stay, they’ve always existed and whether they are physical or virtual they are an important piece of our human make-up. My personal view too is that back in the times when humans went through war and terror they would draw closer to each other and grow closer socially. For example, during World War II, it was easier to connect with our fellow humans as we were all going through the same terror and strife. We would look out for one and other and support each other.
Basically we were giving each other a lot of love.
Twitter Love
As the human population has grown and spread across the globe, some of the physical connections may have been lost. Virtual social networks have allowed us to make that re-connection with each other and in fact get in touch with people who we may not have seen for many years.
Of course this makes us feel loved and appreciated too.
And now, because these virtual networks show us how many fans, followers, and friends we have, this is proof to the world and ourselves how popular we are. We take this metric as an important measure of how many people approve of us or rather love us, a kind of ‘love-o-meter’!
This article was originally published in 2013. I purposely have not updated the stats and I’m sure you’ll appreciate that the stats have just increased two-fold. My attempt was to wake people up. I failed…
Update September 2020
Over 7 years on and things haven’t really got any better, in fact they’ve gotten a lot worse. We’ve experienced Cambridge Analytica and their dirt tricks campaigns. The whole story (The Great Hack) can be seen on Netflix. (https://www.netflix.com/watch/80117542)
Many youngsters and adults alike are being affected, brainwashed and even nations, governments and its armies have reacted to fake news and propaganda being spread by bad actors trolling the social media airwaves.
And now Netflix have released their latest instalment The Social Dilemma, where Tristan Harris and others walks us through the unbelievable issues those creators have contributed to the world. It is quite ironic that Tristan and the others being interviewed were actually part of creating the problem and they are having to live with the legacy of death and destruction they have created for the world. I feel for them but have no pity, they have their millions in the bank, so they are okay.
Tristan now runs the Center for Humane Tech for a number of years, I’ve been following him ever since I saw his Ted Talk in 2017. I’ve embedded his Ted Talk below, “How a Handful of Tech Companies control Billions of Minds every day!”
The Center for Humane Tech presented their New Agenda for Tech, see video below.
[embed]https://youtu.be/09Jeyu4-Fcc[/embed]
One aspect of the Center for Humane Tech’s work I am particularly impressed with and that’s their ‘Ledge of Harms’.
After watching those two documentaries and these talks you should be well versed to make some decisions for you, your family and especially your kids.
I’m not being anti-social, maybe just anti-Facebook. I’ve decided to put Facebook on pause for a while. How long? I have no idea. I had already removed the app from my mobile devices and I can truly say I haven’t missed it.
I’m not rage quitting or culling my connections. I value all of them hugely and hope they will continue to benefit from their activities on Facebook. I know some of them have managed to be hugely successful as a result, long may it continue.
My decision to put things on pause here have not been decided overnight, I reflected on it for a quite a while. Basically I no longer enjoy the experience here and by learning more about Facebook’s practices to program us has meant that I don’t value the organisation and what they stand for.
Therefore instead of moaning about it, I prefer to move away from them for a while. My views may change, who knows, for now though, cheerio to my Facebook connections and some, maybe half a dozen, friends.
You can catch me on LinkedIn and Medium for any meaningful conversations.
