Facebook Founding President Sean Parker Worried About Power
Sean Parker, Napster co-creator and Facebook founding President, says he’s worried about the power & reach of Facebook & society’s future.
By kmvq on November 10, 2017
Sean Parker, no, not Justin Timberlake from the movie, the actual Sean Parker, says that he’s now a sort of “conscientious objector” of social media after witnessing the way it’s grown, and how it affects people.
Sean is worried about the power and effects of the social media platform, and how massive it’s become, and how big of a “star” it is, considering everything these days seems to revolve around social media. He also said it was basically designed to work just the way it does from the beginning. It works because we as people need that social-validation. We like to be liked, we like to see people come to us to talk, and we like popularity. “And that means that 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. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments,” Sean says.
Social networking did exist before Facebook, but Facebook and its creators sort of found a way to make it really press all our buttons, and have designed something that people literally become addicted to. He’s feeling a sort of concerned about how much it’s really altering peoples’ personalities now, rather than just appealing to them. Specifically, he says “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.” He says these are all problems of “unintended consequences.”
It’s still a “new” media (compared to how long people have been socializing in general), so it’s still a learning process, but this might mean a sort of change on the platform might be coming, or at least some sort of education about how to “handle” social media. We’re going to follow this story, this is going to be interesting in years to come.
