OK, I can't stop thinking about @SocialDilemma_ and @shoshanazuboff's #SurveillanceCapitalism. Here are some more thoughts and provocations for those interested in debating and discussing these issues. 1/17

We live in a time when there are myriad public health issues in need of urgent attention. Many of these issues are even spoken of in existential terms. It is hard to imagine a more pressing public health issue than our species' long-term viability on this planet. 2/17

Yet, we also seem to be growing more pessimistic about our collective ability to address the interwoven crises of climate change, political polarization, racial injustice, economic inequality, and the increases in deaths of despair. 3/17

However, the question is rarely asked, how do we become the kind of humans who can repair and thrive in this world? The answer must begin with examining the shaping of human perception and behavior by our technologies toward ways of being that undermine democratic processes. 4/17

The latest work in the social/health sciences and humanities is just beginning to conceptualize the power that our tech has to subtly shift how we think and act on an individual scale, and the massive repercussions these changes have on larger group and societal processes. 5/17

On a psychological scale, we see increases in depression symptoms, anxiety, and suicide, potentially driven by increased exposure to social disapproval and a simultaneous decrease in distress tolerance. 6/17

This increased sense of vulnerability and threat has social consequences as interpersonal connections deteriorate, allowing for increased polarization and dehumanization of those deemed "other," which become activated in political rhetoric and the public discourse. 7/17

This shift is the social discourse, in turn, exacerbates the perceived sense of vulnerability and threat, which reinvigorates the cycle anew. While these effects are beginning to be studied, documented, and explored, less attention has been paid to potential solutions. 8/17

Policy level proposals for regulations on tech companies, advertising, and data privacy are urgently needed, but they fail to account for how the effects of these perceptual and behavioral nudges make the democratic processes needed to advance such protections less likely. 9/17

We need solutions that acknowledge that the technological power to shape whole populations' psychological development now exists and is unlikely to go away. 10/17

Rather than shrink from this responsibility, or continue to allow this shaping to be determined simply by the goal of creating people who spend more time on devices and buy more things, we can develop processes for setting a new goal, a collective teleology. 11/17

We might ask, "what type of human creatures do we want to become?" and "how do we develop a process for setting these goals that are open to revision through democratic principles?" 12/17

Doing so may allow us to develop and change who we are in ways that allow us to grow toward greater population health and wellbeing rather than continue to have our psychologies shaped in service of the current economic and ideological systems leading to widespread despair. 13/17

The question of how influential technological products can be realigned toward new goals of collective population health and wellbeing raises a number of profound philosophical and ethical questions. 14/17

For one, in setting a goal for the types of humans we might become, there is a risk of centering culturally specific standards of health based on entrenched assumptions concerning the boundaries between self/other, mind/body, and "normal"/"abnormal" psychology. 15/17

As a result, we need to explore these complexities in ways that explicitly make space for indigenous psychologies, expertise from lived experience/psychosocial disabilities, cultural variation in the experience of emotion, among others. 16/17

What if we consciously tried to turn this power toward the goals of improved abilities to recognize the complexities of vital policies, critically analyze & synthesize discrepant info, and practice humility and genuine dialogue as well as the confidence to stand on principle? END