One in every
13 people on the planet check Facebook the moment they wake up -
leading to reports of Facebook addiction and social anxiety.
And,
according to one researcher, the fault lies with the little red
notification icons and the numbers that litter the social network.
Software
expert Benjamin Grosser recently created a plug-in to remove all
metrics, including likes and share numbers, from the site – and
discovered that their removal improved a user’s enjoyment.
The browser plug-in can be installed to Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
It
automatically removes all metrics from the site, including likes,
shares, comments, number of events, group notifications, friend requests
and numbers, message count and more.
Over the
last few decades, we have become increasingly subject to mechanisms of
measurement, a constant push to assess performance from a quantitative
perspective,’ said Mr Grosser from the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Grosser.
‘Within the context of Facebook, however, this culture of audit plays out differently.
FACEBOOK AND GRAPHOPTICON
Mr Grosser said that over the past decade, web users have become increasingly measured and audited.
Typically,
this self-surveillance involved either a few watching the many, known
as panoptic surveillance, or the many watching the few, dubbed
synopticon.
Instead
today’s social network-based culture of audit is more similar to ‘the
many watching the many,’ where everyone watches everyone else.’
Mr Grosser said this creates a new mode of surveillance known as graphopticon.
‘While
one Facebook user can’t know if their friend count is being observed at
any one moment, they know that any number of users could be looking at
any moment,’ said Mr Grosser.
‘Their Timeline is open to all of their friends, and in many cases to all of the world.
Therefore, he said users need to appear to have multiple likes, shares and friends to look more popular.
‘It is no longer a form of self-surveillance where the few watch the many, or the many watching the few.
Instead,
today’s social network-based culture of audit is more similar to ‘the
many watching the many,’ where everyone watches everyone else.’
Mr Grosser said that this creates a new mode of surveillance known as graphopticon.
‘While
one Facebook user can’t know if their friend count is being observed at
any one moment, they know that any number of users could be looking at
any moment,’ continued Mr Grosser.
‘Their Timeline is open to all of their friends, and in many cases to all of the world.
Therefore, he said users need to appear to have multiple likes, shares and friends to look more popular.
This need for numbers is also influenced by how Facebook’s News Feed is organised.
The
more a user interacts with likes, comments, and other objects, the
higher the News Feed algorithm rates those posts, and thus shows them on
the news feeds of their friends.
More interaction leads to more visibility.
Visibility therefore becomes a prerequisite for getting more likes, shares, and friends.
Mr
Grosser discovered that Facebook is designed as an ‘endless interaction
loop’ which draws on the user’s need for more likes, shares and
comments.
A user clicks the red number to read the notification, but this causes the metric to disappear.
The
left-hand image shows how likes and share metrics appear. The right-hand
image reveals how the site looks after the Demetricator plug-in has
been enabled. Research has revealed metrics create an 'interaction loop
of checking', similar to compulsive behaviour, but this is manageable
when numbers are removed
Similarly, this image reveals how the
site looks when the metrics are removed, without removing the names or
other details from posts. By removing the metrics, Mr Grosser found that
people were less competitive, anxious and preoccupied with the numbers
The quickest way to then get new notifications is to post statuses or comments that attract attention, or by adding friends.
And the more content and posts a user makes, the higher the potential for likes, shares and comments.
‘This
interaction loop of checking, reading, and generating resembles
compulsive behaviour in the way that it sets up a cycle that can never
be satisfied,’ said Mr Grosser.
HOMOGENISATION OF FACEBOOK
Mr
Grosser said metrics on the social network end up homogenising Facebook
users because individual thoughts and ideas are combined into a single
number, and whole groups of friends are reduced into a value.
Equally, individuals become lumped together as a group, because they Liked the same product or page.
And by making people all appear the same, they strive to stand out from the crowd by posting more statuses and comments.
‘The
user’s desire for more craves higher notification metrics, but the
system’s design clears those metrics every time the user checks them.
‘In the case of notifications, metrics want more attention from the site’s users.’
He
continued that these numbers also homogenise Facebook users because
individual thoughts and ideas are combined into a single number, and
whole groups of friends are reduced into a value.
Equally, individuals become lumped together as a group, because they liked the same product or page.
And by making people all appear the same, they strive to stand out from the crowd by posting more statuses and comments.
By removing the metrics, Mr Grosser found that people were less competitive, anxious and preoccupied with the numbers.
One
user said: ‘[Facebook is] so much more enjoyable without constant
(subconscious) pressure to compare when numbers are involved,’ while
another said ‘[Notifications] simply became a nervous addiction for me,
inadvertently.
‘But, that all changed when I downloaded the add-on.
‘No more ridiculous liking stats, no more mounds of notifications or the number of comments on other’s statuses.
'It added a Zen element to the entire format, and I finally feel at ease.’
Mr
Grosser’s paper ‘What do metrics want? How quantification prescribes
social interaction on Facebook’, is published in the journal Computational Culture.
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