Let’s face it, the world now wants their content delivered in short bursts in a TikTok format…and I’m not so sure how I feel about that.
Who would have thought that many years ago, as I dabbled with Snapchat to use as a working out loud medium and shared its value of providing content in a way that was easy and digestible, that now, I’d be doing everything OPPOSITE to my original methods.
Thing is, a lot has changed in the world since 2014.
In some ways, with hindsight now, I look back and think that I was incredibly naive back then. I had a naive view of how technology could be used to better our connections, community and society.
However, now, I’m seeing these tools and platforms for what they really are.
Their algorithms are designed to keep our eyeballs on them for the longest period so that we can hopefully, (to the platform capitalists) consume more and buy more. At the same time, I see people, family and friends who have internet and screen addictions around me. It’s prevalent and I’m sure that we all know someone – or their children – who are constantly online.
I’m fighting these things myself so that I don’t be the statistic. The statistics that I see – as well as hearing about the damage they do to our interpersonal communication is frightening.
Initially, I saw these as helpful, educational and informative in the early years when they helped me build my professional network and development to assist me in my work. Now, I see them as dangers to society because of the impact they’re having to our family and friendship circles. In fact, the way we are all communicating with each other, with institutions and companies is changing – and I don’t believe it is for the better.
To me, these are ultimately hurting society. If we can’t talk or reason with each other, if we cannot listen to another point of view or express or communicate our thoughts and feelings beyond the self or ego, then this detriments our health and well being which then impacts every aspect of our society.
My thinking has completely changed when it comes to the use of these tools.
I believe that we have somehow “lost” our way when it comes to using these tools in ways that support us positively (which they can be) versus to how we are actually using them and how our behaviours are slowly morphing.
It means that you have to be vigilant where your time is being spent and how much value you get from it.
Deleting YouTube Shorts
With that, I use YouTube as my main educational platform (yes, I know that it is a social medium) however, the Shorts feature is something that is yet another ploy to get our eyeballs continually on the platform. It’s also a copy of TikTok (which I DO NOT have an account).
Although you cannot delete Shorts unless you downgrade to a previous version of YouTube, you can fiddle with the Settings so that you don’t see them at all in your feed.
It’s one way to reduce the time suck on your phone and control what you see. Of course, YouTube has no setting that allows us to permanently delete these.
So this is what I’m doing now to prevent me getting down the rabbit warren of YouTube shorts and spending time mindlessly scrolling when I should be reading War and Peace (I’m onto page 929 already and still about another 300 pages to go).
In some way, I surprise myself at how I’ve gone from one extreme to another in a short period of some years when it comes to using technology rather than have technology use you. Now, I feel as if we really all need a major rethink – a slowing down – taking a breather – putting down our phones – and taking a real, long hard look at ourselves and how we communicate, connect and talk to each other.
We need to modify our behaviours and accept that the platform capitalists are unlikely to change their ways – but we can change ours – which in turn will hurt the platforms. And then maybe we can see things clearly for what they are and get out of our addicted stupor.
Very nice.