A Generation Gone Missing. A Future Meek. Thank You, Kara Swisher.

I’m Andrew and I have a social media addiction (and damn am I spiraling).

You all respond, Hi Andrew.

Wow, that was liberating. I’m really starting to gather that sense of freedom from the sentence alone.

Really feeling that high of public admittance. Now time to start the journey to recovery…WAIT, oohh, [EYES LOCK] [flashy red button]..Facebook. Again.

But I don’t have Facebook messenger.

I deleted it off my phone. Again.

For the fourth time. Oh well, what if it’s important.

Email? Okay. Access to contacts? Alright. Push Notifcations? I guess. I can always shut those off later.

And so it goes.

It feels like a lifetime of interconnectedness.

I was spiraling in a cavernous moment of angst and detachment over a glass of Canoe Ridge Horse Heaven Hills out of a plastic cup in Seat 7B as I scrolled aimlessly through Facebook, Strava, Instagram (Oh, you’re all caught up), Snapchat. Rinse and Repeat.

I remember a time when my social network was just that, my social network. A group of my closest friends, confidants, and girls I thought were cute, just kidding, I’m a married man now though.

Anyways, thanks Tom. This is your fault.

No wait, it’s not Tom’s fault. It’s the models fault. The model is broken. Platforms, just like apps in and of themselves, succeed around growth. Every metric. Every feature. Every indivdual user. They all win with growth. With the increase of follower counts.

Hey, Andrew, your friend that you met in high school on that weekend trip to Bend’s cousin’s new girlfriend has just joined Instagram, you should say Hi and make them feel welcome. Oh damn, she has some cool pictures. Wow, I love Italy too. Natasha we should go back to Italy. Yeah, Amalfi coast this time.

Oh wait, where was I?

Right, growth optimization. The result is that networks are constantly telling you who from your contacts has joined and recommends new follows. Which is a lot.

The concept of social media platforms has always been, scratch that, initally was to create light frameworks from which humans could reach others and connect in, GASP, real life. When groups got too big, you could split, ensuring that the experience was kept local. 

Tech created a local experience. Made me feel closer to MY social network. More access to those I loved in a meaningful way.

I and the generations before myself can at least recognize and care about these things. But the window is narrowing and it’s as though many are too busy scrolling aimlessly to care. Take a walk around the city and see for yourself.

Parents have either gotten stricter or the younger generations have gone missing. Glued to the screen. They have been stolen.

I have friends that still leverage Twitter and Foursquare to meet people. To build the local experience. To build closer relationships and neighbors. And funny enough, those are the friends who are building these things.

The terrifying thing is that the next generation of connection focused builders and growers won’t understand these things. They didn’t play in culd-a-sacs. They didn’t scrape their knees on cement. They didn’t have sleepovers and build forts. They played the latest-and-greatest mobile gaming app.

And for anybody that builds. They know that a product is built, influenced and biased by those who build.

If somebody finds the.. WAIT, new insta story from Tommy. What? He’s in Hawaii. It’s going to be good.