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Course: Social media literacy > Unit 5
Lesson 5: Take action! Imagine humane technologyWhat will it take to create the conditions for better technology?
Important steps on the road to change
What will it take to create the conditions for better technology?
Because social media is doing so much to distract, divide, and downgrade us, fixing it will help us to solve our other problems.
You can be a powerful advocate for systemic fixes to our broken social media environment. Your voice can:
- Support regulation: As governments around the world wake up to the harms of the attention economy, new regulations are being proposed that can change the way technology is incentivized. Good regulation can make business models less profitable and allow room for new and less destructive models to emerge. Many of the lawmakers considering this legislation are highly motivated by the harms playing out in the lives of their children and grandchildren. Young people speaking authentically about your experiences are able to powerfully move lawmakers in ways that lobbyists and research studies are not. When lawmakers feel pressure from parents and kids, change happens much faster.
- Change the way technology is built: The technologies that dominate our world today, platforms like Facebook and Snapchat and Google, were built by young people. Many of them were engineers with narrow world views operating from harmful extractive paradigms. It doesn't have to be this way. We can build technology that helps us be more focused, balanced, and aligned with our intentions. Technology that gives us the capacity to move from moments of outrage to moments of shared understanding. Technology that helps power and resources flow more fairly across society instead of concentrating on just a few. Organizations like LookUp are supporting young people in making these shifts.
- Keep the pressure on: As we’ve learned, companies respond to financial incentives. When large numbers of people stop using a product, switch to a better product, or request new features, companies respond because losing users can hurt their revenue. This is known as user demand. Platforms also respond to press, to people like you telling your stories about the impact technology is having. You can share your story through MySocialTruth or by getting involved with an advocacy group like Log Off.
The trillion-dollar social media industry is powerful, but when all of us push to change the system in these ways, the tide can turn quickly. Whether you change your social media habits, share your story, or come up with an idea for a healthier technology, your voice will make a difference in this movement.
🧐 REFLECT:
Technology designed to capture as much attention as possible from as many people as possible creates major societal harms. We need deep, systemic reform that will fix our broken technology environment.
- What is one role you might play in bringing about change?
- What’s one step you might take to start?