This is Farhad Manjoo’s resulting conclusion on an experiment he ran in the past two months, only consuming printed newspapers. Like Michael Pollan’s advice on eating, it distills down the lessons he learned from getting “slow news”. If anything happened in the world, he would only read about it the next morning. Even when the school shooting in Parkland, Florida broke through this veil for a moment, he was able to avoid a lot of the misinformation that was spread right afterwards.

When he learned the details about the shooting the next day from the newspapers, he was not only able to avoid all the misinformation, ending up better informed. He also didn’t spend the preceding 24h glued to a screen, instead spending less than an hour to learn everything there was to know about the shooting and its perpetrator.

Breaking News is Breaking Us

We, as a society, have accepted online news and social media into our lives, even embracing it. It gives us a feeling of being even better informed, since we can get minute-by-minute accounts of whatever is happening in the world, and better connected to our friends and family, since they’re always just a tap and a message away from us.

It’s how the news and media is treating us, invading our lives with our tacit permission, that is causing the problems. If someone behaved like them in real life, we would never accept it. Since their interruptions are seemingly constrained to a small box with a glass cover, we don’t perceive them that way, instead blaming the human. After all, who wants to admit that their pocket computer is running their lives?

Instead, we allow the constant interruptions into our lives, increasing our anxiety, fear of the world around us, and even given rise to a new fear, the fear of missing out. And that’s just how Facebook wants it, you coming back to it every time they interrupt you. A scared, anxious user is one that is easy to keep on the platform, and easy to keep showing ads to.

Eyeball Incentive

It’s all about the incentives. Facebook’s incentive is getting people on its platform, so it can show them ads, which companies pay for. Facebook does not like people not being on its platform, and it does not like others making money off of ads without Facebook taking a cut.

That is how Facebook is killing comedy. Or why they want newspapers to publish their articles via Facebook, telling them it’s the only way to reach their audience. If Facebook doesn’t manage to insert themselves into everything you do online, they can’t make money off of you, negating the entire purpose of Facebook.

It’s why Facebook has gotten so good at tracking you, it sometimes appears that they’re spying on you. In truth, it’s not worth to Facebook to listen in on you — after all, you’re already using Facebook to get your news, you’re using WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family, and you’re posting your photos on Instagram. And outside that, everyone is using Facebook’s tracking software via their like or share buttons, so Facebook already knows what you’re doing on the web anyway.

Taking Control

In the end, and with the current climate, it is up to ourselves to take control over how much control we allow Facebook and others to exert over our lives. And even though the deck is currently stacked against us, there are ways to improve it, and not let the internet completely take over your life.

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