The Financial Times displays a new and costly view on the introduction of social media to the developed world (here). We have any piece of information that we want to know in our pocket; it can be accessed with a few taps of our thumbs. As we can provide through anecdotal evidence, such simplicity regarding access to information is immensely distracting. Right now I could completely neglect this assignment and decide to watch random Youtube videos, a guilty pleasure that is most harmful to an imperative aspect of modern life, which is productivity. As displayed in the article, it is shown that when global smartphone shipments sharply increased, productivity growth in advanced economies measured in percentage points sharply declined. Although we must keep in mind that correlation does not equal causation, this is an interesting point. Advertising strategies today are near subliminal levels, which bridges to the next point of the article; this attention capturing strategy potentially correlates negatively with a persons true underlying preferences. The "click bait" strategy of the internet age simply does what it is designed for and what the name implies. Since a consumer's utility function is dependent on the goods that a consumer consumes and is maximized with that consumer's budget, this creates an inaccurate demand curve. It seems clear that there are some problems with the way that the modern citizen of a developed country operates due to these theories.
The decrease in productivity growth caused by social media is a negative consumption externality. When an individual engages with social media during work or during a situation in which that person is supposed to be doing something productive, that person's lack of production causes the company or the people around them to bear the cost of their lack of production. That person's coworker's or peers has to make up for their lack of production to cover the dead weight loss or they just bear the cost. Considering this void in the market for productivity, it is unclear who should bear the cost of this externality to reach allocative efficiency. Should that person pay for the value of the production lost due to their social media usage? Should the social media company pay this cost for distracting the worker? If it is assumed that this extenality is happening on a large scale and the the worker is not liable for damages, there is a holdout problem. I imagine, for example, a company blocking websites on their internet network, then the workers becoming fed up with the controlling nature of the company, saying they don't get paid enough to be worked so hard with so few breaks, and finally, those workers taking action and causing more damage to the company. Many companies may say that these workers are lazy and unproductive, but they may neglect the very root of the problem with the unproductive modern worker. This article argues that the "click bait" advertising done on the internet causes people to be less mindful in their decisions, caring less, and in turn making people less empathetic. If we assume that empathy is a desired social characteristic, then we can say that social media is creating a negative production externality in the market for empathy by decreasing the mindfulness of people. This, which is such an abstraction, I find to be most interesting. There is great cost to be paid when on a large scale people are not empathetic; discriminatory laws are passed, businesses act without regard for their people, financial crises happen, greed runs rampant, crimes are committed..., and many others. Considering that this cost is at this point immeasurable, who should bear it? The person who lacks empathy? The causer of this person's lack of empathy? What problems does this new social norm entail?
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