JULIA GREGORY

Cruel optimism is defined by Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus, as: “when you take a really big problem with deep causes in our culture – obesity, or depression, or addiction – and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic individual solution. It sounds optimistic, because you are telling them that the problem can be solved, and soon – but it is, in fact, cruel, because the solution you are offering is so limited, and so blind to the deeper causes, that for most people it will fail.”

So take that and consider me telling you: 

You can easily stop spending so much time on social media – just close the app!

It’s much easier said than done.

I’ve come to understand the toxic relationship between the user and the developer. Social media developers in Silicon Valley are intentionally designing their software to keep us users hooked. Each scroll of our finger turns into a dollar in their pocket. So, this addictive nature we believe we possess toward these platforms isn’t necessarily our fault. In previous works, I’ve reiterated that point: that it’s not necessarily our fault. To prove that, and protect ourselves from facing our own cruel optimism, believing we are the sole issue, we must consider the facts.

It’s Not Your Lack of Willpower

We tend to blame ourselves for our perceived failures. Last week, I did a digital detox, and it didn’t come without a bit of failure. Every time I attempted to open Tik Tok during the detox period, I hadn’t even realized what I was doing, as if it was a trained response. I felt terrible and undisciplined about my perceived lack of strength. What I wasn’t considering was that the app was designed for me to be drawn back, and drawn back unwillingly. Paul Lewis, writer for the Guardian quotes Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, “none of this is an accident. It is all ‘just as their designers intended.’”

There is a fundamental clash between interests that causes this unbalance. Tech companies want to keep you engaged, and by keeping you on their platform, they collect more data about who you are and how to sell to you. With this information, they report to third-party data buyers, sharing your information with them and building consumer profiles; in return they receive compensation.

For vs. Against You

Social media has the ability to be for you, to understand your intentions and help you better yourself. It could have built-in features that limit your daily use or connect you to friends nearby, in the actual world, but instead, it grabs your attention and holds it hostage. As said, more shares, clicks, and stares at the screen generate more time online and another dime in their pockets. Under a system that benefits the money makers, the structure will never change, even when they’re aware of how it hurts us. So, they feed us false optimism to divert the attention away from their unethical practices. 

“It’s the twenty-first century version of Marie Antoinette saying, ‘Let them eat cake.’ Let them be present.”

Every revolutionary movement or policy change starts with one person. The idea isn’t to fight against yourself as an individual. Remember, you are one small piece of a bigger puzzle. We should strive to understand the forces working against us, collectively, rather than continuing to blame ourselves for being affected by them. We can’t be cruel to ourselves for trying, and we can’t deliver false optimism as a source of comfort when reflecting on our addictions.

If we want to reclaim our attention, we have to start being truly optimistic for our future, and begin believing in ourselves to make a change.