Readings

This learning unit is entiraly based on Shoshana Zuboff’s book:

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

with focus on following chapters:

• Chapter 16: Of Life in the Hive
• Chapter 17: The Right to Sanctuary

Introduction

Erving Goffman, in his classic “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” (1956), explains how humans lead a double life: the onstage and the backstage life.

The onstage existence is the one that we carry through in the public spheres where our life takes place.

The backstage life in the sacred sphere of our intimacy and privacy.

In this learning unit, we study the importance of this private sanctuary for our mental health and safety. We also explain how new digital communication technologies may threaten our private sphere. Finally, the focus of the learning unit is the analysis of how the shrinking public sphere may impact our democratic system.

Social Control

We will define “Social Control” as the means any society develops to ensure that the individual behavior do not deviate from the group’s expectations.

Edward Alsworth Ross, a pioneer in the fields of sociology in the U.S., distinguishes two basic categories of social control: formal and informal.

In this section, we focus on the “informal social control”. In order to be effective, informal means of social control must exert an isolation threat for those who breaks the established and unwritten rules of public opinion.

Social Media Addiction

Numerous studies show the deep penetration of social media in the lives of college students. The presence of social media in their life seems to be a necessary reference in every single hour of their existence. This incredible penetration comes with the obvious decline of the conventional media. This is particularly worrying in the case of the information that those students may have available to function as responsible citizens. Those well-established media, even though they are not free of biases, at least had some professional and ethical standards in dealing with information. Plus, they were subject to a close control on the side of the administration of law. The new digital platforms have no transparency with regards to sources, no apparent standards in terms of profession and occupy a gray legal area.

There is also a good number of studies who investigate the addiction generated by the uncontrolled use of social media. The psychological and emotional effects of social media abuse have attracted most attention in the scientific community. The abuse of social media has been related to clinical depression, the rise of narcissism, the decline of self-esteem, or the feelings of loneliness. Evidence that links an addiction to social media to more or less severe psychiatric disorders starts piling up.

Social Media and Social Control

As a consequence of the compulsive nature of social media usage, Shoshana Zuboff considers these popular platforms an effective means of social control.

We learned in the previous video that public opinion uses our delicate social natures to exert social control. Isolation is the punishment for those who deviate from the expectations of the group.

This type of social punishment is especially effective in the formative years of the adolescence.

And it is not a coincidence that the risk of addiction to social media is especially acute during the same formative period of life.

The Right to Sanctuary

A sanctuary is a place where protection for the individual is granted against the powers that be.

Historically, institutions have accumulated enormous amount of power that threatened to crush the individual. Societies have always provided sacred places to protect the individual against the unbalanced institutional power.

In contemporary democratic societies, there is no need for those protected spaces. Our private sphere should have the status of a sanctuary.

In the last video of this learning unit, we discuss how the surveillances strategies of the Big Tech might jeopardize the sacrality of our private sphere.