If Karl Marx was alive today I am sure he would agree that social media and the internet are now the opiate of the masses. What if I asked you to never go on insta, snap, yikyak, reddit, 4chan, etc ever again? You would say easy, those are recreational and can be done away with. What if I asked you to never go on Facebook again, that might be a bit harder because it is more of a tool that gives you the choice of whether it is useful or recreational. What if I asked you to give up your cell phone, your house phone, or even technology all together? That would be absurd because you would clearly put yourself at a competitive disadvantage to give those up. The issue is that Facebook is either a tool that you can use to project your best self or some fucked up dopamine release bonsai tree that people constantly care for.

I’ve only been in social media for 4 years, but there is a generation coming that will have grown up on it. Like with cigarettes we are in a period where the long term effects of this new technology that hacks into our evolutionary process is unknown. This would lead me to exercise caution to avoid pitfalls.

As technology gets better we will find more ways to fuck with ourselves. Right now people already use it to isolate themselves from social situations or sedate themselves. In the past I have been guilty of whipping out my phone in the elevator so I don’t have to interact with people or wasting a few hours browsing forgettable content on reddit.

I put it to you that you should not abandon social media but take the minimal approach. For me this came down to the fact that I spent maybe 2% of my time generating content and 98% browsing aimlessly. For me the minimal approach is based on trickle down logic in that you can only increase your SMV marginally through using fb. I believe you should lead an interesting social life and let that reflect on fb. Let other people put up pictures of you, and only occasionally curate your tags/profile. I never browse the news feed anymore, have disabled most notifications, and only use the website for messaging people and getting information on groups that I am in (athletics, societies, etc).

TL;DR; I think the leaders of tomorrow will not be slaves to social media, but is it morally justifiable to use social media to control the masses. On a smaller scale, how much should you use social media to project yourself to your social circles and I'm hesitant to use the term but "manipulate" or influence people's perception of you?