As a mid-generation Millennial, I am reaching a point in my life where saying that I can remember things like the internet going widespread is avowedly starting to make me feel old—and the same could be said for its second layer of innovation, social media. Much like the internet, social media is something that those of us who are old enough can remember the distinct beginning of, while those that are young simply cannot fathom the world without. While many people may widely agree that 6 Degrees is the first social media website, founded in 1996, let’s be honest: this shit didn’t really start taking off until the days of Zynga, LiveJournal, and MySpace.
Today, however, while many of the core services of social media are very similar, the players that would come along and define the space are materially different—as are the various media focuses of social channels that exist within the marketplace. And over the last two and a half decades between the founding of 6 Degrees in 1996, to where we are today in December of 2021, we have posited the question time and time again: is social media a good thing for a social society?
As one would suspect, this question continues to get asked with increasing volume. I suppose that my voice is really just another to add to the chorus. But the problem is that there are other questions at play as well. Insofar as the last four years of Russian intervention in European and American politics, vaccine denialism, the rise of extremism, fascism, and coordinated acts of treason, I think the answer to this question would likely be a resounding no: social media is not good for us. On this premise, I think there are some pretty clear arguments as to why social media should even be banned. All the same, however, regardless of what should or shouldn’t be banned, social media entities are privately owned businesses that not only generate billions of dollars but also represent a form of soft power for the country that they are based in. In the end, this means that regardless of whether or not banning social media companies would align with the long-term public interest, politicians would never do it because outright bans do not align with the power that social media can provide and maintain. For example, why would American politicians ban Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, when any of these services can be immensely effective at reaching the people that help get them elected? Better yet, why would dictatorial rulers ban these platforms, when they can use them to monitor political opposition, and quash dissent?
Newsflash: they wouldn’t.
Which means that social media, despite its social ills, is a category of services that—for one reason or another—is here to stay. The only solution we have to the problems it provides, is to make social media better. In the end, the question beckons if that challenge is one for good UX design to confront, or if it is even possible. So, let’s talk about that.
To be clear, I don’t know if this piece can even fully confront this question, as the short and long of its answer is simple, yet still unsatisfying nonetheless: it depends. Over the last decade and a half, UX designers have done a great job at branding themselves as problem solvers, while prominent sites such as TopTal have evangelized the field as the quintessence of user problem-solving. Insofar as quality-of-life improvements, accessibility enhancements, intuitive user interfaces—and making private businesses more money—I would say that UX designers have been spot on in describing what they do as “high-level problem-solving.” Furthermore, I’m sure the social media companies that hire them to increase usage metrics—and ultimately earn more ads revenue as a result—see it the same way too.
The problem is that focusing on features that increase user screen time, prioritize microtransactions, or push content engagement has borne out to make social media an experience that is fundamentally at odds with what was promised: People today are increasingly hateful, craven, stubborn, superstitious, and insular. Furthermore, the current feature set in social media has made people comfortable with existing in their own bullshit version of reality: one where the opposing side stole the most recent election, Beyonce is in the Illuminati, and Donald Trump is the long-lost son of JFK—among all of the other crazy fucking shit that gets purported as “reality” and “fact.”
And while outsiders look at these problems of misinformation, disinformation, and their ensuing rage, the real issues that UX designers face in the next era of social media, is finding solutions to the new problems that have come about from old “solutions.” After all, for as much as social media purports itself as being “social,” many of its users are depressed, isolated, and miserable from its overconsumption. Furthermore, the latter sentence does little to assume that any of its users suffering from these conditions are also suffering from experiences relating to sexism, racism, or religious bigotry.
Taking into consideration that many social media companies have attempted to step up their efforts online—with the continued proliferation of these shitty effects—I think it is safe to say that the solutions to the problems aren’t working. Furthermore, I think it is safe to say, that the solution is not adding more moderators, enhanced reporting features—or for that matter, another fucking button. Instead, it is incumbent upon corporations to look deeper than superficial features that their users look at and touch. While that is important, instead, companies should be asking themselves what their preferred form of social interaction is predicated upon—and if this form of interaction is really all that social, to begin with.
Something that I find myself questioning more regularly when thinking about social media, is how does sharing pictures, video, or written text make someone really all that social at all? The truth of the matter is that it doesn’t. Social media is not so much predicated on people acting socially, so much as it is predicated on the assumption that people will act socially: that everybody has something to say worth responding to, that quality content is enough of a conversation starter, and that having the ability to casually stop in and check on a long lost friend’s updates—regardless of whether or not that long lost friend’s updates are even fucking interesting, or whether that long lost friend even fucking cares—are all that people need to be “social” in the 21st century.
Of course, however, we know that this is a lie… After all, people need human interaction too.
To be clear, I think it might be possible for good UX to help handle these problems. But I think that in part of assessing the problems that UX can solve, it is incumbent on designers to take an inventory of the things that good UX design simply cannot solve—or are simply problems that are too great to be solved with the addition of “another button.” For example, while designers and coders can develop UX features that have the effect of, say, curbing online harassment, it is not the UX designer’s job to correct the things that contribute to a person deciding to harass another user online—and to take it a step further, it never will be. That is the job of a therapist. All the same, just as much as good UX design can help curb certain racial stereotypes through the incorporation of racially diverse imagery, good UX design alone will not do the work of correcting the conscious bigotry in a racist.
I think the point I am trying to make is that for as much as good UX design can contribute to many great experiences, and solve many complex problems even, good UX design is not the end-all, be-all of complex problem-solving… This means that good UX design cannot be the only thing that can save us from the increasing burdens of social media.
Now, before you go off and cry in a corner, I probably should add that I think it can help—immensely, in fact. I think that if we were to look at what the last 15 years of social media have brought us in particular, Social Media’s content-intensive focus has done more to make people jealous, depressed, angry and fill the average user’s head with utter-fucking-bullshit than it actually has done anything to make anyone any more social… And to be honest, none of us should be surprised: Content isn’t something that is intrinsically social by its nature. It is consumptive, and that is really it.
But you know what is social? Getting outside and meeting someone new.
I think if we were to take a step back and consider what the next—rather obvious—frontier for social media to chase is, it is that social media should be a clear conduit for meeting new, like-minded, people in real life. Social media today, per the Facebook model, is really just a tool for keeping an inventory of current friends that you have met in the real world, humble bragging and sharing garbage opinions to an audience that is materially larger than should ever be appropriate for the average human being. The revolutionary thing—in my mind, at least—is a social media network that places a premium on face-to-face human interactions. Of course, since an interaction-focused social media network would have to avoid many of the pitfalls of conventional social media services—as well as a few that are unique to meeting people face to face—such a network could not be the product of lazy planning, and devolve back into a set of comfort features that are there just to “compete” with larger services.
I think that the job of social media today is to remind us that we are a part of our own collection of “tribes,” and within them, there are other people who are also part of their own collection of tribes too. It is one of my deepest beliefs that in discovering overlapping interests with those who live differently than us, and believe different things than us, social media can be a productive tool for building a happier, healthier, more interactive, social, and tolerant, society.
I think the problem with the model I present, however, is that the question of how such a network makes money becomes its own problem. After all, if a social media site is designed to de-prioritize screen time while prioritizing human interaction, then the advertising-dependent business structure that has become so traditional in the social media space, would be knee-capped out of the gate. And while those sentences alone may very well be an explanation for why users around the world have not yet seen a service that prioritizes making real-world friends, the problem that I present is of the kind that can be solved with good UX—or fuck it, even just a solid business model that thinks outside of the box. Considerably, many UI improvements on social media websites over the last decade, have in some way or another been connected back to the profit motive. The problem with only focusing on the profit motive, however, is that it ignores the fact that true UX design is about reconciling the profit motive with the user motive.
The truth of the matter is sentences like my last one will never make a designer like me sound all that attractive to, say, a Facebook. The reality is that user-focused features on many of these sites do correspond to lower profit margins. But if that is what the result is, then perhaps this is where the creativity of UX designers is best spent. Nonetheless, any problem associated with keeping users front of mind is a good problem to have—at least it is in my book.
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