Is there a dark side to technology and social media?
Keith Weed, The Chief Marketing Officer for Unilever, this week outlined how he wants the big social media players, including Facebook and Twitter, to clean up their act or face losing their huge advertising revenues.
For the world’s second biggest advertiser to take such symbolic stand publicly is unprecedented; it means we’re in the midst of something really big. This wasn’t a presentation behind closed doors, he wanted to make a statement of intent and released presentation transcripts the day before to the media. He wanted to generate the most media coverage that he could and to start a really important debate. Unilever has made a stand on online safety and pledged not to invest in any platforms which "create divisions in society" and said that the tech companies need to win back the trust of the public.
As a mum of a soon to be three-year-old, I am seeing first-hand the mood inducing power that technology and the digital world has on my son. When I pick him up from childcare the first word he often utters is "IPad" and when we’re home a battle often ensues if I try to prise him away from it. To me, for one so young to already be experiencing the addictive highs and lows of technology is a major concern and something that I will need to navigate my way through. This is an issue that society must wake up to address now. Just imagine how this will increase ten-fold once young people are in total control of their own gadgets and when even more advanced technology comes on-stream.
What I really find interesting is how many of the founders of the big social media and tech companies such as Bill Gates from Microsoft and Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive from Apple have all stated publicly that they all gave very limited or no social media and tech access to their own children. Is it me or is there something very, very telling in this? They themselves must know the negative effects that their sites and apps are having on the development of creativity and young minds and didn’t want this to happen to their own children. The companies themselves have done very little to look into this phenomenon or to police themselves. So it’s now left to major companies like Unilever to take an outward facing stance to force them take responsibility – ultimately ad revenue money counts.
Former Facebook and Google employees in the US who became so disillusioned have even gone so far to launch their own campaign “The Truth About Tech” this year. The campaign aims to raise awareness and highlight the addictive qualities of social media along with the negative impact that they are having on the younger generation. They are also working with charities to push through more legislation on the impact of technology on young people and another limiting the use of BOTS.
As a marketing and communications professional, I appreciate the significant benefits of technology and social media. It’s brought in a whole new world of knowledge sharing, relationships, enterprise and quite frankly fun to all our lives. However, we have to all acknowledge that yes, there is a dark undercurrent that does need to be addressed.
Technology that is highly addictive will have major negative ramifications on society in the future and people and companies alike must start to push for these platforms and technology to be more accountable and responsible. The next question for us all is what we as society should be doing now to address these challenges, what do you think?
