Social media addiction is real but not hopeless, technologist tells Rider audience

You’re addicted to social media, but what’s worse, you probably don’t even know it.

Jaron Lanier delivered that message to more than 300 students, staff, faculty and community members during the annual Business of Media Lecture at Rider University on Nov. 13. 

His talk built upon his latest bestselling book, Ten Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Now. Lanier — a technologist who made major contributions to our digitally saturated world before sounding the alarm about its effects — has written four other books that, like his latest, explore the social impact of technology, internet politics, and business and technology.

Lanier compared the harmful role of social media to the destructive wildfires currently wreaking havoc in his home state of California. "There are these horrible clouds of dust covering everything," he said, "and that's how it feels all over the place today."

A recurring theme that Lanier returned to several times was to focus not just on the immediate experience of using social media, but the total package — including the algorithms operating unseen for purposes that are not readily known. “You don’t have an ability to understand what’s happening to you,” Lanier said. “You have to accept that. You can do good things with (social media), but you have no influence on the machine in the back room.” He added later, “The harm floods out the good.”

Before his public presentation, Lanier met privately with a small group of Rider students and others from campus. A week before the event, students from Rider's master's program in business communication led a group discussion around the themes of Lanier's work. A focus of the master's program is teaching the ethics of responsible communication practices, including on social media.

Lanier has been associated with modern technological innovation from its infancy to the present. He founded the first company to sell virtual reality products, and he has been a founder or principal of startups that were later acquired by Google, Adobe, Oracle and Pfizer. He’s currently an interdisciplinary scientist at Microsoft Research. He does not operate social media accounts of his own.

His appearance at Rider was made possible through the generous support of Rob Hagedorn ’81 and presented in conjunction with Rider’s Department of Communication and Journalism. Previous iterations of the annual Business of Media Lecture at Rider University have included appearances by Comcast Senior Executive Vice President David Cohen and Kevin Maney of Newsweek.

Lanier acknowledged during his presentation that his perspective was unlikely to persuade the vast majority of users to delete their accounts. He hopes, though, that raising awareness of the harmful ways social media affects behavior, emotions, politics and the economy could eventually result in positive change.

Toward the end of the lecture, Lanier expressed optimism that Silicon Valley may be turning a corner in acknowledging the negative effects of some of their products. “Ultimately we have to shut down the manipulation machine and turn it into a normal business,” he said.