An increasing number of tech industry personalities have begun voicing their opinions about the impact of social media. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is the latest. Benioff compares social media to cigarettes and tobacco saying it is an addictive drug and needs to be regulated. Benioff joins other tech industry giants like Sean Parker who has admitted to helping Mark Zuckerberg “build a monster.” There has been a lot of research done concerning the effects of social media and it’s not all good news. Benioff had this to say on the matter:
Social networks would be regulated “exactly the same way that you regulated the cigarette industry,” said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “Here’s a product – cigarettes – they’re addictive, they’re not good for you, maybe there are all kinds of different forces trying to get you to do certain things. There’s a lot of parallels.”
“Technology has addictive qualities that we have to address, and that product designers are working to make those products more addictive, and we need to rein that back as much as possible,” he said. “Financial services, consumer product goods, food — in technology, the government’s going to have to be involved.”
Roger McNamee was an investor in Facebook in the early days and has said the company would have to “address the harm the platform has caused through addiction and exploitation by bad actors.”
“I was once Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor, but I have not been able to speak to him about this. Unfortunately, all the internet platforms are deflecting criticism and leaving their users in peril,” McNamee wrote.
While social media has given us the ability to reach tens of millions more people we would never have reached. It has arguably also closed many people off to real-world relationships and closed them off from reality.
I’m sure there’s going to have to be a long discussion about these matters. We’re interested in what you think about social media in 2018. Is it addictive? Let us know by leaving your comments down below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
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