Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now Hardcover – May 29, 2018

The author just couldn't resist Trump bashing and leftist politics. He could have got the lessons across without showing his glaring political bend. Total turn off, I couldn't finish the book. Sad. He's part of the problem.

Is It Time to Quit Social Media?Jaron Lanier offers ten arguments for doing just thatBy George P. WoodLike many others, I find it difficult to imagine life without social media. I use Facebook and Twitter at work to share articles from Influence magazine, the Christian leadership magazine which I edit. They account for a large percentage of the traffic on the magazine’s website. I ignore them at professional peril.I use Facebook and Instagram at home to share information and pictures with my family and friends. They help me keep in touch with people who are important to me but don’t live close by. Although I get most of my news from websites, I also click on the links to news articles and op-eds that these people share in Facebook and Twitter.These professional and personal uses of social media sound benign, so why does my wife complain that I’m on my phone too much? Why do I feel compelled to check it compulsively throughout the day? And why do I so often feel negative emotions like sadness, anger and jealousy after spending time on Facebook?Technology always begins as a tool to help us exercise control over nature. After a while, however, it becomes our master, in effect exercising control over us. If you don’t believe me, try replacing your smartphone with a dumbphone, or try giving up social media for Lent. If you can do so, great! If not, then perhaps you have a problem.Jaron Lanier stakes out a radical position on social media in his new book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Here they are in his own words:1. You are losing your free will.2. Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times.3. Social media is making you into a [jerk].4. Social media is undermining truth.5. Social media is making what you say meaningless.6. Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy.7. Social media is making you unhappy.8. Social media doesn’t want you to have economic dignity.9. Social media is making politics impossible.10. Social media hates your soul.Lanier is not an anti-technology Luddite by any stretch of the imagination. He is a computer scientist — a founding father of virtual reality, in fact — and is well regarded throughout Silicon Valley.Nor is he writing from a religious perspective, despite his usage of terms like free will and soul. He’s not religious in any conventional sense, as far as I can tell. His political opinions are far to the left of mine and those of the readers of my magazine. And his occasional use of profanity — I had to come up with a less offensive term for Argument 3 above — can be distracting.So, why would I recommend Christian leaders — pastors, educators, etc. — to read this book? I can think of at least three reasons.First, Lanier is concerned with issues related to the common good. Lanier’s ten arguments are morally fraught. They deal with the character of the individual in relationship to others, especially on matters of public importance. No one wants to live in a society overrun with unempathetic jerks who twist the truth and tell lies, robbing workers of their economic dignity and politics of its effectiveness, all the while making everyone deeply unhappy. Right?Second, Lanier’s sixth arguments is that social media destroys people’s capacity for empathy. It does this by cocooning users in a “filter bubble” where they are increasingly exposed only to others whose viewpoints expressly match their own. This exacerbates the tendency to lump people into “us” and “them,” where “we” are always on the side of righteousness and “they” are always on the side of wickedness. When we break out of that bubble and deal with real people and their actual arguments, we realize that reality is more complex that social media lets on. Because “they” also are concerned with the common good, “we” can make common cause on issues where we agree, even as we realize that we will continue to disagree (strongly, even) on other issues.Third, as a tech “insider,” Lanier has unique insight into the business model that drives social media and leads to such negative results. He calls his explanation “the BUMMER machine,” where BUMMER is an acronym for “Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent.”Think of it this way: Facebook and other social media provide its services free to billions of users. How can it afford to do that? Because its users are not its customers, they are its products. Social media sucks up an enormous amount of data about you — birthdate, address, location, workplace, political interests, searches, friendship networks, etc. — repackages it and sells it to others. Some of these users, social media’s actual customers, have largely benign goals, i.e., marketing and selling affordable products you’re interested in. Others — Lanier cites the Cambridge Analytica particularly — have less benign goals.To make money, social media have to figure out ways to keep you coming back for more, which it does through constant surveillance and subtle manipulation. This is the point of argument 1 about the loss of free will. As Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, once explained it: “We need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever…. It’s a social validation feedback loop…exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology….”Some things, once you see them, cannot be unseen. For me, Lanier’s book had that quality. It made me think about social media, my use of them, and what widespread usage of them are doing to us in a new and disturbing way. I haven’t been fully persuaded to delete my social media accounts, obviously, since you’re reading this on one social medium or another. But perhaps drawing attention to Lanier’s arguments will help in some small way to resist social media’s BUMMER tendencies and contribute to a happier, healthier, and more humane common culture.

A book I could not put down. I read it in two days and marked up with jotted notes and underlines. Jaron Lanier has done society a great favor by exposing the insidious nature of these tools most of us feel locked into due to the network effect.As one of the early internet tech pioneers and father of virtual reality, he is more than qualified to lay out the 10 arguments against BUMMER networks (Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent).I found the book so fascinating and compelling that I plan to keep it for reading again and referencing now and then.Every one of his arguments matched my experience using these tools over the last decade: Facebook, Twitter, instagram, anything google. I knew something was wrong beyond what the popular articles had been saying, but I could never quite put my finger on it. There were a lot of “aha” moments.He was ultimately preaching to the choir with me though, as I deleted most of my accounts last year - and I miss none of them.Most of my friends and family are still attached to the hip with BUMMER networks, like a big fundamentalist church I once belonged to. Maybe having left such churches gave me the understanding that you might leave and everyone still in the cult will look at you like you’re a lost sheep such a thing. But those of us who have left realize the freedom and joy of being a “cat” is a much better life. I have friends who still invite me back to “church” to see their pictures on Facebook. Thanks but no thanks. Life is much better on this side.

I deleted all my SM accounts a few months ago and was experiencing some regret... until I came across this marvelously insightful book. The funny thing is you only recall the good things about FB, etc on a surface level but after a few months, I have to say my inner and social life have both dramatically improved. I also have actual free time again - i.e. I get my work done and then have time to read, to watch something, to hike, to surf. SM had distracted me soo much over such a long period of time I did not notice how all those 1, 5, 10, 15 minute sessions "just checking" added up.

Oh man, this is such an important, timely book. However, it's rambling and too quirky. Why didn't a good editor help the author polish this book? The writing style will limit its reach.That being said, the information and insights about our relationship to social media and what it's doing to our society are spot on. It's worth working your way through. It will help you understand the treacherous place we've gotten ourselves into as a culture. And it will help you deconstruct your own relationship with social media to decide if you have to draw the line.

Lanier is a clever high-tech scientist who works in Silicon Valley. In this book, and it is long overdue, he warns us of the dangers of social media and why its toxic effects are at the heart of its design. His book gives ten simple but highly persuasive reasons why we need to free ourselves from its coils.So far this year five major works have alerted us to the dangers of the growing and disturbing addiction to social media. For tens of thousands, particularly the under 30s, it has become a drug. It is making us sadder, angrier, less empathetic, more tribal and more isolated. In brief, as the author says it is tearing us apart.Lanier is an expert in this field. Hence, we should take heed of what he says. Unfortunately, the addicted will not want to hear his warnings for they undermine their craving. The effects of social media are cruel, and dangerous particularly for the young. It involves subconscious manipulation. Lanier is witty as well as profound. His ten arguments offer an alternative that provides all the benefits of social media minus the harm. All, particularly those with children, need to read this book.If you want to think for yourself without being manipulated and influenced by wealthy corporations you should delete your social media accounts-now. Lanier is a celebrated pioneer of digital innovation. His previous books about the digital age have received World acclaim: read his ' Dawn of the New Everything'. He has been named by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. His ten arguments are only some of the arguments about social media that demand attention. There are many more. For example he doesn't discuss the pressures on young people, especially young women, or how scammers abuse us, or how social media algorithms can discriminate against you for racist reasons. This important book only scratches the surface. Lanier points out we can survive without social media. The internet is not the problem. Email friends instead of using social media. Read news websites instead of getting news that has been filtered. In short, you control your life. You will save a lot of time by ditching Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter.This is a very important book. It is rich in common sense. Far too many people have become like a zombie. There are several new facts as well as more common ones. The strength of our addiction must not be underestimated. Social media is fundamentally biased. It rewards negative behaviour. It learns about us in order to change us.1984 is here.Lanier warns us that truth is being harmed and twisted daily by thousands of fake Twitter followers. Podcasts he warns are next to be infiltrated. Lanier is a philosopher and seer of the Valley who has turned into a dissident. He deserves our attention.Also strongly recommended are books by : Sherry Turkle, and Cathy O'Neil on this topic.

I first clocked this book in a bookshop in town. It caught my eye as I'd been feeling a bit ambivalent about Social Media for a long time. Having a very quick flick through I put it back thinking it might be a bit "ranty conspiracy theorist". However some weeks later I decided to take the plunge and downloaded it on my Kindle. Firstly this chap is well qualified to discuss the subject intelligently. Secondly it has a just enough humour to make it an engaging read. Thirdly his arguments are very well articulated and based on logic and fact. So much so I took his advice and promptly deleted all my social media accounts. So far, the world hasn't ended, Ive not become a social exile, I get far less irritated by twaddle, and have found hours more time a week. I shan't be going back.

Great book! I've deleted my Facebook and have got back so much time to do other stuff with. You'll be surprised how much better you'll feel cutting out all those crappy status reads, all those rubbish comments, all that pointless stuff you don't need to see. I promise it'll make you feel better. Give the book a read.

Everybody should read this book, very revealing, I have taken Jaron's advice and am not looking back.

I was drawn to this book because I keep hearing that I'm supposed to delete my facebook account, but it doesn't seem to be getting through to me as to why. I am also aware that facebook, twitter etc do make me feel worse & I don't know why.I had to read this book twice. The first time I could tell the points were there, but mixed in with other points so it was unclear. So the second time I made my own notes, making specific examples relating to my own experience & the websites that aren't what he means but I find comparible eg Mail Online (!) that the information relates to as well.I understand now. The websites are free, paid for by adverts. The Mail Online specifically puts horrible articles that generate nasty comments = clicks & your time. Similarly, tv news choose horrible news stories get higher viewing figures. That is just one part I took from the book, it's too much about money for the advertisers.The central & most fascinating point to me was the concept of Facebook etc switching you to Pack-Mode where you find yourself comparing yourself to others and feeling less-than. The author recommends the alternative which is Solitary-Wolf-Mode. In Solitary-Wolf-Mode you are more open to the bigger picture. How he explains the two made me realise that I get such great ideas and am happier in Solitary-Wolf-Mode but I am no good in Pack-Mode, I feel limited & worse. That might not be true for everyone. Being on those websites depletes your energy & ideas.Early in the book the author creates an abbreviation "BUMMER" then used that word in capitals throughout & I couldn't remember what it meant, was slightly offputting. It refers to that type of website.