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Gemma Hutchinson

August 6th, 2020

We lost the connection! Building a better social media

1 comment

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Gemma Hutchinson

August 6th, 2020

We lost the connection! Building a better social media

1 comment

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Why are some of the biggest mental health issues of a generation, from anxiety to low-mood, so often connected to social media? Is this what the founders of our biggest social platforms intended and could they do more to nudge users to more meaningful interactions? Sasha Veliko-Shapko (currently completing an MSc in Psychology of Economic Life) has contemplated what a better social media platform might look like, one that truly connects people, using behavioural insights as a guide*.

There’s something very noble and definitive of humankind to project our social desires onto technology. Perhaps the founders of social media companies believed they were curing loneliness by simulating social interaction.

What would be needed to build a better social media platform that prioritized meaningful connection over likes, followers and influencers? Here are some of Sasha’s proposals:

  1. Keep your circle of contacts small or ‘quality over quantity’. Research suggests that people can only sustain up to 150 meaningful social relationships. Our dream social media platform would enable and encourage users to connect with their closest acquaintances.
  2. Make it routine, with a helping nudge. When we repeat a behaviour enough times it becomes more ingrained in our day-to-day lives. Our social media platform could use nudge to encourage regular connections with our (as seen above) closest friends.
  3. Say no to brands, influencers and celebrities. Our species thrived by navigating complex social structures yes, but our obsession with celebrity means many of the social structures we build are not based on real or meaningful human connection. A dream social media platform could take away access to what it means to be “successful”.
  4. Stop the scroll, or at least make it useful. While it may fill up a void in our time, the endless scroll potentially prevents us from making informed choices about what we want to see and read. One way to tackle this would be to curate engaging content that is easy (and limited) to navigate, as online newspapers do, giving users more freedom of choice without the temptation to keep scrolling.

 

Removing access to “successful” individuals will re-focus users on making themselves happy, rather than tallying as many likes as possible.

This platform may not be a money spinner but perhaps the idea will help us to think more about the connections we have, especially in the time we are in when the quality of our relationships and our mental health are more important than ever.

*This article is based on We Built a Better Social Media (Infinite Scrolling but Better) by Sasha Veliko-Shapko, published on Medium; referenced and quoted here with the author’s consent. Read the original article for more insight and information on Medium here

Notes:

  • This post represents the views of the author/s and not those of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science or LSE.
  • Feature image courtesy of Camilo Jimenez on Unsplash
  • Find out more about MSc Psychology of Economic Life at LSE here.

 

About the author

Gemma Hutchinson

Gemma is the Editor of the PsychologyLSE blog and Communications Manager in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science.

Posted In: Behavioural Science

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