I’m A Digital Anthropologist Who is Rubbish at Social Media

I have spent 3 ½ years of my life researching how young people use digital media to create, share and maintain their memories. Yet, I have never been good at adapting social media – not even as a form of auto-ethnography.

Whether we like it or not, social media is quite central in making and maintaining friendships these days. To many, who are looking for community and are otherwise facing isolation and alienation from social life where they live, social media can establish a profound a sense of belonging. Also, in more simpler ways it can be fun. Sending around silly videos and catching up with the latest news and gossip is a form of entertainment, in a world where obsessions over productivity and efficiency create intense pressures on individuals of all ages.

Nevertheless, as we have all heard and maybe even experienced social media has a issues – many of them – and it is probably only a matter of time until they are further exacerbated the growing integration of LLMs and other forms of generative AI. With tech companies controlling and orchestrating many of the digital infrastructures that have become vital to our everyday life, an end to the exploitation of personal data for profits appears to currently be a pipe dream. Frankly, the majority of tech companies is interested as marketing themselves as innovators who shoot out products without any consideration for how their products will affect society and social issues.

Social media is part and parcel of the capitalist hellscape we find ourselves in the 21st century. Self-help books, YouTube videos and newspaper articles continue to blame individuals for poor will power and a neglectful approach to using these technologies. Yet, there is a whole generation now dependent on producing constant and labour-intensive self-promotion to find employment, as the “right” qualifications and experiences are further devalued on the labour market.

So, maybe, after all it is no surprise that my own online presence has rarely moved beyond lurking in the background. From time to time, I have forced myself to send out a tweet or two and to interact with posts on Instagram. But motivation soon left me. Setting up a Mastodon account, which promises to escape the chokehold of tech billionaires who can change platforms at whim. No matter which platform, social media has been difficult to master for me. I don’t really want to talk about my family, what I had for lunch, where I go for my afternoon walks or send post pics of the dog that I don’t own. I just can’t figure it out. What is there to say that hasn’t been said yet?

I don’t think it is hypocritical to use social media like Instagram or Twitter (yes, Twitter. I refuse to use the poor rebranding) and critique it. On the contrary, I believe it is important to voice the dismay in these spaces while building alternative infrastructures. Being a critical voice in these spaces is of importance. I think much of it goes back to a personal issue of being a serial perfectionist who can’t share a simple thought without editing it into oblivion and then deciding not to share it in the end. (Guess how long it took me to write and post this blog).

In these complexly intertwined paradoxes and with any article that comes out claiming that social media alone is responsible for the desolate state of young people’s mental health - without mentioning the traumatic experience of going through nearly two years of a global pandemic or acknowledging the ever-darker prospects of today’s youth - it appears that our hate for social media is a distraction from the underlying issues that rule the tech industry.

As a writer and researcher, I am not immune to the self-promotion trap. And as an a digital anthropologist who is bad at social media, I think, that maybe, I should give it another go.