Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age

by Felicia Wu Song

The fact that tech companies have knowingly used brain science and behavioral psychology to influence and control consumers’ attention is one thing. It is another problem altogether when we come to realize what tactics and tools they are willing to use in order to achieve these ends. Back in 2012, Facebook engaged in a series of covert experiments on “massive emotion contagion” in order to discover its potential to spread positive or negative sentiments across their network. Teen users as young as fourteen were targeted to receive strategic ads based on the emotional tone of their posts. Users whose posts included words like defeated, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, nervous, useless, or failure were categorized as needing a “confidence boost” and had their data passed to marketers who were interested in targeting teens who are feeling particularly vulnerable. It is these sorts of projects that lead those disenchanted with Silicon Valley to describe social media as a system of behavior modification that preys on us when we are feeling lonely or depressed. Unfortunately, even though such practices have been criticized as social engineering or predatory advertising, such revelations have done little to alter companies’ practices, motivate governmental response, or stem the tide of young people flocking to the latest social media platforms.