Ep. 590: The Social Media Warning Paradox
Guest: Iman Goodarzi, Concordia University
“How much time do you spend on social media? Be honest now, because the answer will surprise you,” says Yash Gupta of Lognormal Analytics. “Social media hooks the average person for at least 5 hours a day.” And everything you do is being recorded and analyzed. Algorithms retrieve psychographics from your online purchases, reviews, likes, shares, comments, emails, blog posts, tweets, posts saved, and more – all powered by A.I.
“It’s easy to understand the urge to slap a warning label on social media,” says Iman Goodarzi, a public scholar and PhD candidate in marketing at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business. “The challenge,” Goodarzi points out, “unlike cigarettes or alcohol – which contain specific chemical payloads – social media is far more complex, coupled with a series of dopamine hits. It is a mirror of society. It’s a dynamic algorithm-driven marketplace and a void all at the same time.”
Goodarzi is responding to calls by the U.S. Surgeon General, the Governor of New York and Quebec’s all-party legislative committee’s report on screen time. In Quebec, the all-party committee recommends: “No screen time for children under two, one hour a day for children two to five, and no more than two hours for children six to 12” – a recommendation that Goodarzi says “is well-meaning but won’t work because it suggests overuse is mainly a youth problem.”
We invited Iman Goodarzi of Concordia University to join us for a Conversation That Matters on practical ways to use, understand, and curtail the mental health threats that social media presents.
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