How Truth Disintegrates
This is another installment in our popular “Why Cultural Education Matters” category.
Facebook knows Instagram is addictive to young adults, and can be especially harmful to young girls. They tune the app to emphasise celebrity lifestyles & looks. This creates a digital ecosystem where young girls & women get addicted to an atmosphere that promoters physical comparison.
“When I went on Instagram, all I saw were images of chiseled bodies, perfect abs and women doing 100 burpees in 10 minutes,” said Ms. Vlasova, now 18, who lives in Reston, Va. Around that time researchers inside Instagram, which is owned by Facebook Inc., were studying this kind of experience and asking whether it was part of a broader phenomenon. Their findings confirmed some serious problems.” (WSJ)
“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse ... Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.” (WSJ)
More than 40% of Instagram users are 22 and younger. The company views this demographic as vital to its economic growth, now valued at over $100 billion.
Facebook routinely downplays the negative effects of the app in public discourse and has done nothing to address these issues.
But how do they target the young or any of us for that matter? Each person connected to Facebook's apps represents monetary value in the form of personal data.
But data mining is no longer unique to tech companies. This new economy, which focuses on collecting and selling personal data, is now used by a myriad of companies; from insurance companies to political groups.
But what is their desired outcome?
To predict and even determine your behaviour as it relates to commerce and consumption.
What is the connection between this broader act of data collection and Instagram's negative addictive effects on the young?
Control.
By isolating the young (and old, alike) with rising hours of screen time, Facebook affects their behaviour: spending habits, content consumption by way of algorithmic direction, and personal identity.
"But Tim," you say, "what does this have to do with beauty and truth?"
"Ah yes," I reply, "I thought you'd never ask."
In the postmodern surveillance state, Truth is controlled by the powers that dictate the content consumed. Users feel they act and speak freely, forgetting their phones, profiles, and "likes" enable Producers to surveil and target them for various outcomes.
Truth dictated in such a way removes any traditional objectivity and forms the Truth of the powerful. In this case, the powerful are tech companies and those who align themselves with them.
Beauty suffers the penalty it has endured for much of the modern era: desecration.
When those in power reduce objective reality to a Truth of their own concoction, they invite desecration on the sacred.
But Tim, you just posted about hope! What is our hope in light of all this?
A holy pursuit
Hope lies in the pursuit of The Beauty Chasers. The great foil of tech companies and their minions is a simple walk in the woods or around your neighborhood. It's limiting your phone's influence in your life. It's getting outside and reminding yourself and others of the reality facing us each day in the created wonder.
Beauty nourishes. It does not tear down with addictive qualities.
Let's stay vigilant, friends, and find new ways to spread the glory of Beauty and Truth to a world desperately in need of a walkabout.
To read the rest of this article join The Beauty Chasers Community.
Sources for the curious
Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, Sir Roger Scruton
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean-Francois Lyotard
The Crisis of Modernity, Del Noce
The Way of the Modern World, Craig M. Gay
The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
Postmodernism: A Reader, Thomas Docherty
The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt
