Vox’s Ezra Klein recently sat down with technology critic Tristan Harris to discuss the profoundly negative impact of social media on our everyday lives. Harris, a former tech entrepreneur himself, became Google’s design ethicist before leaving the company to co-found the Center for Humane Technology. According to Harris, social media systems are designed to distract us, to highlight negative emotions, and to provoke anxiety. Because emotions like outrage are more likely to keep us scrolling through Facebook, the algorithm caters to content that is least healthy for our well-being. “We actually have to change the thing that we are exporting the world, which is distraction, outrage, slot machine-style rewards, constant stimulation, social validation, making it harder for people to tell what’s true,” Harris told Vox.
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