Social media and the destruction of civilization as we know it: An old-timer’s lament

The Fosner Family, Easter 1969 - Heidi’s on the left, I’m on the right.*

I became an activist when I was 11 years old. I wasn’t born into it, like the character River Phoenix played in Running on Empty. And I didn’t act alone, my accomplice was my sister, Heidi.

We had just seen an episode of Room 222, “Clothes Make the Boy” which aired on December 3, 1969. It was a series about a racially diverse fictional High School in Los Angeles. This particular episode can be summed up in one sentence, encapsulated in the imdb write-up (linked above).

The principal of the school “…sees that the dress code (adopted in 1940) may need some updating, but isn’t sure how far to go.”

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We lived in a suburb of Seattle at the time. It was cold in December. Our school dress code wasn’t very complicated: boys wore pants, girls didn’t. That changed the morning after we watched episode 12 of Room 222.

I don’t remember exactly how it unfolded, but Heidi and I decided to wear pants to school. We’d worn them to school before, but not in school. On cold days, girls would wear pants under their skirts while walking to school, then hide them away before going to class. We were only eleven and twelve at the time, but we thought that was stupid.

So, on December 4, 1969, after our pre-pubescent activism was triggered, we left the skirts at home. Our parents were fine with it, but when we walked into our respective classrooms still wearing pants, it caused a bit of consternation.

It’s all a bit vague now (would that I could look up my past the way I can Google old TV shows!) but we created quite the buzz. Teachers were pulling each other aside for private conversations. Other kids were pointing at us on the playground during recess. A couple of times we were told to read quietly while the teacher left the room, presumably to discuss this latest development and decide how to proceed.

The upshot was: from that day on, girls got to wear pants. That was it; we won. It just took one day, and two girls inspired by a TV show. From that point on every girl at Horizon View Elementary was putting her pants on, one leg at a time, just like the boys.

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Today, activism is clicking a button. I feel like we’re losing our connection to events because we’re not really participating in them anymore. Everything is words, clicks, likes, and tweets. Granted, Covid hasn’t done us any favors. When social interaction can lead to illness and/or death, it can put a damper on things. But even before Covid, our phones, tablets and laptops had become a substitute for social interaction.

When we strip our relationships of the physical part of interacting, we lose more than the ability to hug and touch — we lose the ability to feel. I’m talking about deep feelings, the kind generated by heartfelt experiences, not the petty emotional outbursts that do little more than give us permission to confuse fact with fiction.

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I am not an expert on Sociology, but I remember learning in 7th grade that the way people learn how to behave is from the feedback they get from others. That used to be a good thing. When we interacted before Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we were accountable in each moment for what we did. There was no anonymity. If we did something, we owned it. And we usually knew right away if what we did was acceptable.

I’m not saying the world was perfect (or that we had to walk ten miles in the snow to get to school — though if we had, isn’t it a good thing that we got to wear pants?) It’s just that the ability to spew venom at strangers simply because we didn’t like what they said wasn’t an option. If we argued with someone, they argued back and right to our faces.

Bullies still existed, but it was a learning experiment, not a way of life. Bullies were punished then. Now they’re rewarded with likes and claps and retweets. Every nutjob who felt like a loner before FB now has a following.

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The other day, the New York Times published a story about how Facebook’s recent quarterly report claimed their most popular posts were filled with “innocuous content like recipes and cute animals .“ But somehow the Times got ahold of a very different report, one Facebook Executives chose not to share.

“In that report, a copy of which was provided to The Times, the most-viewed link was a news article with a headline suggesting that the coronavirus vaccine was at fault for the death of a Florida doctor. The report also showed that a Facebook page for The Epoch Times, an anti-China newspaper that spreads right-wing conspiracy theories, was the 19th-most-popular page on the platform for the first three months of 2021.

The report was nearing public release when some executives, including Alex Schultz, Facebook’s vice president of analytics and chief marketing officer, debated whether it would cause a public relations problem, according to the internal emails. The company decided to shelve it.”

I find it ironic that people complaining of governments that collect taxes without providing adequate infrastructure, jobs, housing, or healthcare have no issue with Facebook generating billions in advertising dollars for spreading misinformation that’s killing us.

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In July of this year, Terry Gross hosted an episode of Fresh Air, titled “Reporters Reveal ‘Ugly Truth’ Of How Facebook Enables Hate Groups And Disinformation. It’s a scary story. Suffice it to say that the algorithms that drive traffic to social media sites (and, apparently, search engines as well) are specifically designed to keep us online as long as possible.

That may not sound like a bad thing, but to me it’s analogous to cigarette manufacturers using habit forming chemicals to keep us hooked on smoking, or food manufacturers using trans fats and salt to make French fries and potato chips addictive.

Facebook is like a vending machine, only it’s filled with junk food and the supply is endless. You don’t even have to pay for it, just push a button.

We once had the good sense to ban trans fats (though per The Body by Bill Bryson, we knew how dangerous they were as far back as the 50s; we didn’t ban them until 2018). We still haven’t banned chemically addictive cigarettes, but at least we’re no longer lying about the danger they pose.

It makes me wonder how many more billions Zuckerberg will accumulate before we decide to do something about that.

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*The family photo is the only one I have of my sister and me at that age. Our house burned down on April Fool’s Day of the following year, and we lost everything. This photo survived, along with a handful of others, that had been sent to our mom (our stepmother is in the photo) who lived in California at the time. And yes, I did cut my own hair. I still do. (Fortunately, it’s a skill that can be developed over time.)

Below is a photo of us taken more recently, in the Haight in San Francisco when Heidi came to California (where I live now) to see the Summer of Love exhibit at the De Young Museum. As before, Heidi’s on the left.