The interesting fact about choosing TBR lists randomly from the shelves is that you are as likely to get a great read as you are to get a not-so-great read. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts is firmly in one of those two groups. For a while, I have been intrigued by the destructive impact of social media. By destructive, I mean how it sucks you in, brings out the worst in even the best of humans, spreads misinformation, creates echo chambers and exacerbates hate. More importantly, I have always been intrigued by how social media enables seemingly well-adjusted humans to crave validation and attention to an unhealthy level. In a bid to understand all these, I got a recommendation to read Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts. It has been my first read of 2024.
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts is a book written by a Silicon Valley scientist who has grown disillusioned with the intrusive processes that social media use in managing users’ data. While the title is melodramatic, the crux of the short book is about highlighting how social media giants manipulate users’ data and rent it out to 3rd parties whose desires are not aligned with the user. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts explores how the behaviour of users is modified and made into empires for rent, and how it negates empathy, obfuscates the truth, creates assholes and makes users unhappy.
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts has a noble premise but the delivery is pretty poor. What I needed and still need is an exploration of the subject matter from a psychological perspective; Why do humans behave the way they do on social media? Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts reads like a long blog post with an amusingly clumsy tone. The writing style and structure are pedestrian at best and it is not engaging for what should be a vital topic. Even for a slim volume, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts is not what the doctor prescribed. For anyone interested in such topics, The Attention Merchants is a much better book and a better investment of the reader’s time. I remain on the lookout for a worthy addition to it.
2.3/5
