This week an old Jeremy Paxman interview came up on my feed of David Bowie speaking about the impact of the Internet on society. The year was 1999, and his words were eerily prophetic.   So much so, it is worth reproducing the short excerpt here. 

Bowie: “I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg, I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.” 

Paxman: “It’s just a tool though, isn’t it?”

Bowie: “No it’s not, no. No it’s an alien life form…is there life on Mars? Yes it’s just landed here.”

Paxman: “It’s simply a different delivery system there. You’re arguing about something more profound.” 

Bowie:  “Oh yeah I’m talking abut the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything we can envisage at the moment. Where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so simpatico it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.”

Listening to this 26 years later, his Nostradamus-like predication is so accurate that I wonder whether this rock ’n’ roll legend was looking into a crystal ball. 

By the time Bowie passed away in 2016, he had lived long enough to see his prognosis come true. Facebook launched in 2004, changing the way we connect with friends and family and how much private information we choose to share about ourselves.  It has connected but paradoxically also isolated us, as we are constantly peeping into what others are doing even while we are supposed to be living in the moment and being present in our own lives. 

Twitter (now known as X) arrived on the scene in 2006 and was used to broadcast short posts known as tweets containing text, videos, photos or links.  Politicians quickly jumped on board and made it their communication tool of choice with whole departments built around managing their election campaigns online. 

Instagram launched in 2010 leading people to share photos and videos of practically every aspect of their life as it happens.  

Snapchat in 2011 took this further, allowing users to send edited, filtered content which disappears once it has been viewed.

TikTok in 2016 led to the creation of short videos and the surge of dance trends. 

The impact which all these platforms have had on young lives is a well-known fact, with the dark side of social media amply demonstrated by the hard-hitting TV series Adolescence which has already been analysed and discussed numerous times.   

The exhilarating but terrifying scenario painted by Bowie is well and truly our reality and is now the subject of a documentary called “Can’t Look Away: The case against social media”.  Based on investigative reporting by Bloomberg News’ Olivia Carville, the film follows the Social Media Victims Law Center fighting for justice for families whose children suffered tragic consequences linked to social media use.   The documentary takes viewers inside the high-stakes legal battle to hold tech companies accountable for the harm caused by their negligence and dangerous algorithms. However, the perennial question remains: should the onus of what children are being exposed to be put on parents or on tech companies?   After all, who is handing young children their first phone?

Meanwhile, if people have been paying attention, they will have noticed that a number of Hollywood celebrities have publicly stated that their children do not have access to social media, irrespective of how badly they want to be ‘like everyone else’. Matthew McConaughey put the age limit for his kids at 15, Penelope Cruz will not allow it until 16, while Kelly Clarkson has gone even further, drawing the line at 18. The reason for their decision is obvious; if anyone knows about the bottomless pit of ugly, derogatory comments which are found on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, it is someone who is famous.  These celebrities all agree that the mental health of their children comes first.

But sometimes we forget that even adults have changed the way they interact with one another, not only on a personal level, but even on a professional one. 

To take one example: social media content has completely changed the traditional advertising landscape.  If we take a look at the way marketing and PR has changed within the last 15 years, the difference is stark. When I worked with a major newspaper, advertising campaigns involved numerous events and elaborate launches by various companies eager to showcase their new product or service and establish a good working relationship with sales executives who sold print ads, as well as feature editors who wrote the content. Face to face networking was vital not only to establish personal relationships but for the crucial purpose of making contacts which are the lifeline of any media organisation.  The more pragmatic purpose, of course, was to rope in much needed revenue in the form of full page adverts in newspapers and their monthly glossy magazines.  If you see the Sunday papers and the slimmed-down magazines these days it is hard to imagine that not so long ago people used to queue to grab their copy, while stacks of the different newspapers were lined up at the newsagents, and would all be gone by mid-day.

Those days are well and truly over, with the advent of influencers who are paid to endorse and market a brand using their own social media platforms.  It is by now common knowledge that every time you see your favourite local celebrity talking about a product online it is because they are being paid to do so.  Some have even become ‘famous’ within the local context not because they were already well-known, but purely because they have developed a skill for promoting various brands.  

But it must also be pointed out that influencers are on a tiring hamster wheel which demands churning out continuous content, otherwise their profile will not be as visible and their fickle followers will quickly become bored and switch their attention to someone else. 

The short attention span induced by mindless scrolling of headlines and the snippets of information we passively receive on our feed, means that even articles such as this one give readers a heads up such as “7 minute read”.  It is as if there is a silent parental figure urging the reader not to give up on seeing so much text: go on, read the whole thing, I know you can do it!   I am not one to talk because I too have felt my attention span being short-circuited and frazzled by my iPhone scrolling addiction. In fact, I have been trying to get through an actual book for ages now, forcing myself to read at least ten pages at a time, whereas before I would devour book after book, immersing myself for hours and barely stopping to do anything else. 

We have, to a degree, created a monster which seems out of control. Yet in reality, it is still in our hands to tame it if we really want to.  

As a parting thought to mull over, here are the signs that you are too dependent on social media: 

• Feeling unsettled when there is no access to the internet, the social network is down, or it is slower than usual.
• Checking social media first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
• Feeling stressed when the smartphone isn’t to hand.
• Using social media while walking.
• Feeling bad when not getting likes, retweets or views.
• Using social media when driving.
• Preferring to communicate with friends and family through social media rather than face-to-face.
• Feeling the need to share everyday things all the time.
• Thinking that everyone else’s life is better than ours, depending on what we see on the networks.
• Checking in wherever we go.