The Digital Self Is Not the Real You (and how two technological revolutions created a void that social media was designed to fill).

Two hundred years ago, your life was given purpose and meaning by your blood and geography.

Sex and kin.

Rank and religion.

You didn’t have to figure out who you were.

The world told you.

Then everything changed.

The first modernity.

Shoshana Zuboff defined two modernities in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism that she described as the two technological innovations directly responsible for the world we live in today.

The first was when Henry Ford’s mass production of affordable cars expanded the world and the possibilities of ordinary people.

It separated people from being determined by traditional norms, meanings, and rules.

And let them loose on the road of self-creation and exploration.

That was liberation.

But liberation created a problem.

The second modernity.

The second modernity came when Apple produced and released the first iPod.

It gave the Western individual the first taste of true individualisation.

Communication, information, consumption, and travel stimulated individual self-consciousness in ways that could no longer be contained by predefined roles or group identity.

The floodgates opened. And so did the crisis of self and meaning that we swim in today.

Freedom became the problem.

This absurd amount of freedom to freely live and decide the possibilities of our own lives created its own issues.

We now suffer from not knowing:

• What we should believe.

• Who we should be.

• Who we might become.

Our ancestors suffered from what prevented them from becoming who they thought they were.

We suffer from having too many options and no compass.

And that void, where we are continually anxious about the gap between who we currently are and who we could become, is exactly what the largest technology companies swooped in to fill.

They presented us with the most alluring forms of entertainment.

Content that endlessly shows us:

• All the things we could be.

• All the things we could do.

• All the ways we’re currently failing in comparison to everyone else.

And once we were hooked, they modified every detail to keep us coming back for more.

The digital self replaced the real one.

In our pursuit of success, value, and meaning, we became addicted to metrics that indicate our worth.

We believe our existence only has value if we accumulate:

• Thousands of likes.

• Brand deals.

• A significant number of followers.

But research has shown that those who have achieved what everyone else is striving for are no happier than those who haven’t.

And those same people often find themselves in a state of emptiness and disillusionment.

We think we’re being authentic.

We think we’re expressing our ideal self by telling our own stories in creative ways.

But in reality, we’re copying what others have done.

That’s why it’s called trending.

By definition, by living this way, we’re doing the opposite of living authentically.

We’re presenting an idealised digital self that conforms to the cultural ideal.

And neglecting the authentic self in the process.

Do you use social media, or does social media use you?

The reason these platforms are free is that your attention is the currency that sustains them.

With everyone looking for meaning in the same place for ever-increasing periods of time:

• More ads are clicked.

• More addictive technologies are funded.

• More brand deals flow to the most successful influencers.

All to get you to keep watching, keep wanting, keep buying, and keep copying.

Social media was supposed to serve us, but somewhere along the way, we started serving it.

- Mike