Checked my Twitter, YouTube channel and of course, my beloved blog first thing this morning, while munching away on my breakfast. I used to read in bed, before I had a smartphone, but those days are a distant memory, and although I usually do a half an hour of meditation after breakfast, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to drag myself away from my beloved social media platforms, as I circle like a rat in a maze that’s leading nowhere, and I run back to where I’ve already been, to see if anything new has happened. This morning, in my YouTube Recommended feeds, this video caught my attention, as it was about the topic of social media’s addictive qualities, and I’ve been noticing how hard it is to fight the addiction which seems to leave one wanting more, the more one engages in it.

Now, I’m a bit leery of guys like Jaron, when they tell us how bad for us social media is, and how we should think of it as a wild Tiger that’s going to gobble us up from the knees down, if we don’t run like billy-o to safety, and fast, if only ‘cos they are so engaged in developing the tools that they say they hate, so where is their personal morality at, then, if they are still in the biz? The fact that he’s spouting his political opinions, under the cover of talking about social media addiction, makes me think he’s not too different in outlook from the big businesses that write his paycheck at the end of each month.

My advice, for what it’s worth, is to take the channel 4 clip, as you should all media you use,  with a very large pinch of salt, and a sceptical mind, rather than watching in the passive way that the media loves. Remember, the media is excellent at packaging propaganda in a very covert, and persuasive way, to get under your critical thinking radar, or bypass critical thinking altogether.
That being said, he makes a few points which are worth looking at in relation to other people’s work, like the Behaviourist School of psychology.  These psychologists broke human behaviour down to a perhaps over-simplified view of behaviour, positing a reward/punishment model, saying that animals like ourselves can learn to peck through all sorts of tasks if they think they might be getting some nice birdseed at the end of it.

I did a short livestream on the topic, while still wiping the sleep out of my eyes, discussing what I found interesting about the ideas raised by my morning viewing. In other words I went back to the screen for another shot of the drug. Please, please, give this post a like (bites nails in anticipation).