Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier

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

Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward.

The better analogy is paint that contains lead. 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.

Comment authors were mostly seeking attention for themselves.

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.

Speaking through social media isn’t really speaking at all. Context is applied to what you say after you say it, for someone else’s purposes and profit. This changes what can be expressed. When context is surrendered to the platform, communication and culture become petty, shallow, and predictable. You have to become crazy extreme if you want to say something that will survive even briefly in an unpredictable context.

Content is chosen and ads are customized to you, and you don’t know how much has been changed for you, or why.

Another way to see the problem is to think about public spaces. If you share a space with people who aren’t looking at their smartphones, you are all in that space together. You have a common base of experience. It can be an amazing feeling, and it’s a big reason why people go to clubs, sports events, and houses of worship. But when everyone is on their phone, you have less of a feeling for what’s going on with them. Their experiences are curated by faraway algorithms. You and they can’t build unmolested commonality unless the phones are put away.

A common and correct criticism of BUMMER is that it creates “filter bubbles.”3 Your own views are soothingly reinforced, except when you are presented with the most irritating versions of opposing views, as calculated by algorithms. Soothe or savage: whatever best keeps your attention.

The version of the world you are seeing is invisible to the people who misunderstand you, and vice versa.