Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier

constantly prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history, which have no way of making money except by being paid to manipulate your behavior?

Just in the last five or ten years, nearly everyone started to carry a little device called a smartphone on their person all the time that’s suitable for algorithmic behavior modification.

We’re all lab animals now.

What might once have been called advertising must now be understood as continuous behavior modification on a titanic scale.

Using symbols instead of real rewards has become an essential trick in the behavior modification toolbox.

The prime directive to be engaging reinforces itself, and no one even notices that negative emotions are being amplified more than positive ones.

When it became undeniable that lead was harmful, no one declared that houses should never be painted again. Instead, after pressure and legislation, lead-free paints became the new standard.6 Smart people simply waited to buy paint until there was a safe version on sale. Similarly, smart people should delete their accounts until nontoxic varieties are available.

You know the adage that you should choose a partner on the basis of who you become when you’re around the person? That’s a good way to choose technologies, too.

Comment authors were mostly seeking attention for themselves.

Either there’s a total shitstorm of assholes (that’s not a mixed metaphor, right?) or everyone is super careful and artificially nice.

What we need is anything that’s real beyond social pretensions that people can focus on instead of becoming assholes.

If, when you participate in online platforms, you notice a nasty thing inside yourself, an insecurity, a sense of low self-esteem, a yearning to lash out, to swat someone down, then leave that platform. Simple.

Your character is the most precious thing about you. Don’t let it degrade.

The tech companies all do battle with fake accounts, but they also benefit from them.

What if listening to an inner voice or heeding a passion for ethics or beauty were to lead to more important work in the long term, even if it measured as less successful in the moment? What if deeply reaching a small number of people matters more than reaching everybody with nothing?

The cheerful rhetoric from the BUMMER companies is all about friends and making the world more connected. And yet science reveals1 the2 truth.3 Research4 shows a world that is not more connected,5 but instead suffers from a heightened sense of isolation.

The inability to carve out a space in which to invent oneself without constant judgment; that is what makes me unhappy.

The business plan of BUMMER is to sneakily take data from you and make money off it. Look at how rich BUMMER companies are and remember that their wealth is made entirely of the data you gave them.

I won’t have an account on Facebook, Google, or Twitter until I can pay for it—and I unambiguously own and set the price for using my data, and it’s easy and normal to earn money if my data is valuable. I might have to wait a while, but it’ll be worth it.

The best way you can help is not to attack those who would manipulate you from afar, but simply to free yourself. That will redirect them—us—and make us find a better way to do what we do.

To those who have deleted, I send congratulations and warmest wishes. You are the future.

Deleting has become reputable. There have been new studies of deleters; the evidence that deleting is good for you continues to grow.13 Even so, deleters remain a minority. The addiction wave dominates.

We need to find a way back to reality, and the only way to do that is to have conversations that aren’t mediated by technology that is financed and animated by third parties who hope to persuade us. We must fight to speak to each other outside of the persuasion labyrinth.