My Algorithmic Stranglehold

Social media was fun at first. For me, way back in 2007 and 2008, I jumped into Facebook and Twitter, reconnecting with old friends on Facebook and making new friends on Twitter. Prior to that, I had joined LinkedIn in 2005. I wasn't a super early adopter, but it was early on.

Later would come Instagram where I loved to share photos I took. And it was fun. Mostly. Communication, connection, sharing, and of course sharing my parenting and personal leadership writing on the sites as well as my pictures. I've had an interesting run of writing online, too, almost quitting it all back in 2021. 

However, since the 2016 election, social media took a dark turn, and it's never turned around. And along the way too many folks got addicted to the clicks. The likes. The attention. And the algorithms' stranglehold continued to strengthen, shaping what we see and hear (and what we want to see and hear). That in turn amplifies the nastiness of human bias and the trolls that say and do horrible denigrating things online. 

More clicks. More likes. More attention. More rage. More hate. More misinformation. More bullying. More trolling. More of a crappy self-defeating mix.

And you may have heard about that Wall Street Journal investigation a few years ago referring to internal Facebook research about how Instagram causes increased levels of anxiety and depression and suicidal thoughts in teenage girls. 

Thankfully that hasn't impacted our kids (can't say 100%, but they've been okay), and we've never denied our daughters using social media. We've always monitored and asked about what they're watching and searching for and seeing and posting (YouTube is their preferred social). Now that they're teens, we also entrust them to use their own discretion and to stay away from inappropriate and dangerous content. In fact, we recently had the social media conversation when the Tik Tok ban was enforced and it was no longer available to download. Our kids didn't really use Tik Tok and were more depressed because another app, a video editing app called CapCut, was no longer available, also from the same parent company ByteDance. 

The good news is that we haven't see increased levels of anxiety or depression from our teen's social media use. The bad news is that I've seen my anxiety spike. Primarily due to the current state of the world and America, plus my addiction of clicks, likes, and attention. That social AI smack ain't playing, that's for sure. I've always struggled with wanting to be liked and social media hasn't helped.

Our kids are always telling us we spend too much time on our phones, that I spend too much time on my phone. I don't think I do, but I've definitely got my wife Amy beat there. Teens average 5+ hours a day online, and my average is 1.5 hours, so there, and even less soon. Our kids are lower than the teen average, too. 

During dinner recently, a time reserved for sharing our days and what we're all grateful for, they both scolded me for having my phone out. I wasn't looking at it, but it was out on the table because I had been looking at the news right before we started to eat (another algorithmic addiction). I literally had to turn it over and then remove it from the table. Both kids do a good job of keeping their phones away at dinner, so they've become the better role models for me. I should probably have a phone pocket at home to put mine in like the kids have at school. 

I'm taking a social break to weaken my algorithmic stranglehold. Kind of. There's still "work" social sharing I will do on LinkedIn, and there's the new BlueSky social network I've joined for those who need a mainstream social break and political refuge. Plus, there's my news and music algorithms to manage and balance (including my drumming channel). 

Ugh. I guess it's not a complete break; social addiction is real and so are the negative impacts. But, the break that I am taking and the positive time I'm getting back is time to reinvest in my family, my friends, my writing, my drumming, and more. Those are the "likes" to be liked every day. 

A Better Bigger Picture

The morning we were to fly home from our holiday vacation, my wife Amy and I went for one last walk in Athens. She suggested that we head up a walkway that we hadn't taken prior. It was the Hill of the Muses, Filopappou Hill, and the wide walkway was made up of stones, clay tiles, and intermittent rectangular stretches of concrete shapes in between. We weren't sure if it was structured this way by necessity or aesthetics, but the rocks were damp from early morning dew and slick to walk on, so we had to walk along the sides and on the concrete strips. 

The walkway wound upward around Filopappou Hill and then it dead-ended. We went beyond the walkway along a dirt trail through some pines and brush until we hit another smaller stone trail that continued upward to another old monument. We didn't have a lot of time to head to that monument, so we continued to where the hill sloped down again, and mercy me, there it was: an amazing few of the Acropolis. What remained and what continues to be excavated and restored was over 2,500 years old. We had already done the Acropolis tour with our family, but this was altogether breathtaking.

We gazed at what's considered the birthplace of modern democracy. Later I would read about how the Greek philosopher Aristotle analyzed the different systems of governance that the Greek city-states had and divided them into three categories based on how many ruled: the many (democracy/polity), the few (oligarchy/aristocracy), a single person (tyranny, or today: autocracy/monarchy). 

Aristotle wrote: 

Now a fundamental principle of the democratic form of constitution is liberty—that is what is usually asserted, implying that only under this constitution do men participate in liberty, for they assert this as the aim of every democracy. But one factor of liberty is to govern and be governed in turn; for the popular principle of justice is to have equality according to number, not worth, and if this is the principle of justice prevailing, the multitude must of necessity be sovereign and the decision of the majority must be final and must constitute justice, for they say that each of the citizens ought to have an equal share...

Sounds familiar for those of us who know anything of U.S. history. The Preamble to the Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

A lot more came from Athenian philosophers and democratic politics that impacted our own U.S. Constitution (and many other democracies around the world). But as I stood there with my wife and took in the physical history of the Acropolis from afar, my thoughts turned bittersweet. What will the world look like for our children when they're adults? And will they be able to keep democracy alive?

Representative democracies are hard to maintain and the conflicting wills of everyday people and the powerfully rich can change the political landscape from democracy to oligarchy and autocracy in seemingly a blink of an eye. And history has blinked again and again for thousands of years. 

So, if you feel like you're treading water to take care of yourself and your family, and the big picture around you today is blinking yet again, get involved locally. Yes, I'm serious. Get involved locally. Volunteer for your kids' school. Better yet, run for your local school board (I did), a cornerstone of democracy. Volunteer for a city commission. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. Become an immigrant and an LGBTQ+ advocate. Volunteer at a senior center. Help out and advocate for those displaced by fires and other natural disasters. The list is endless, and the impacts endless as well. Little differences always make for a better bigger picture. 

And for God's sake, hold your elected officials accountable and keep voting. Blessings to you all. 

More Heaven Than Hell

It feels like everyone and everything has gone darker than ever. Meaning, things that are dark and evil have more gravitas than things that are light and good. Yes, there are many dark things happening in the world today, that I will not argue, but I do wonder if we aren't manifesting some of that directly ourselves. (A remake of an old horror story, Nosferatu, about an obsessive vampire opened on Christmas Day 2024, for God's sake.)

Whatever the case, the darkness sells, and has throughout the history of humanity (we are a violent lot). An older example is one of my favorite books I read in college -- The Divine Comedy by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri. Actually a narrative poem finished around 1321, it's divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. 

Ultimately, the poem is about the soul's journey toward God and is heavily grounded in medieval Catholic theology and philosophy. Dante makes the journey through hell, purgatory, and then paradise (heaven). But the Inferno (hell) has been referenced much more over the 700+ years since than the other two poems about purgatory or paradise. In fact, I've made the mistake multiple times of referencing Dante's Inferno as the entire work, when it's made up of the three parts above. 

The Roman poet Virgil guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory. But it's Beatrice, Dante's ideal woman, who guides him through Heaven. Beatrice was a Florentine woman he admired after meeting her in childhood. She was his muse, and it's that part of the story that I aggregate to, because my wife Amy became my muse from the moment we met. She's been guiding me toward heaven ever since.

I know, kinda sappy, and while the world today prefers more hell than heaven, we don't want to live that way. I've had plenty of hell in my lifetime to know I want muses who aim for paradise, not those who wallow in darkness. This is why when we decided to have children, that if she was a girl, her name would be Beatrice. And she was and that became her namesake; our guide through parenthood and beyond. 

We always wanted the opportunity to take both our kids to visit their namesakes, but to date, have only done that for Bryce, our second child. Back in May 2007 we had taken a Southwest road trip that became the tipping point to changing our minds about having children, especially after visiting Bryce Canyon. We went again in 2021 and that's when Bryce met their origin story.

When we planned for our current winter break trip to Rome and Athens, we knew we'd have to go to Florence, the birthplace of Dante Alighieri and where Dante first met his muse, Beatrice. And that's exactly what we did. That's when Beatrice met her origin story. 

Bryce claims that the dirty old Bryce Canyon in Utah isn't as glamorous as Florence in Italy, but we reminded both kids that there would be no origin stories without that Southwest road trip back in 2007 (Beatrice arrived in September 2008).

That's why we're super grateful. Not only to have taken both kids to visit their namesakes, and learn the what and why of them, but also to remind them they're the reasons why we'll always revel in more heaven than hell. Amen.