by Steve Tobak
Finally, a social media pioneer fesses up to the truth in a startling revelation: that Facebook’s founders weren’t just consciously aware of their product’s addictive potential; it was the goal of Mark Zuckerberg and company to “consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.” And they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
The strategy, according to Facebook’s founding president Sean Parker, who spoke at an Axios event yesterday, was to “[exploit] vulnerability in human psychology” by giving users “a little dopamine hit” when someone likes or comments on a post. “It’s a social-validation feedback loop,” said Parker. “The inventors, creators … understood this consciously.”
I explained the biological backstory and sociological implications of the mechanism Parker describes in Chapter 3 of Real Leaders Don’t Follow. Parker’s surprising admission validates one of the book’s key premises, a phenomenon I call the “Idiocracy Effect,” after the cult classic Idiocracy. Here’s an edited excerpt:
Millions of years ago—long before we evolved frontal lobes and the ability to think rationally—we were creatures of instinct and emotion. We were all about survival. And that meant eating when food was available, seeking out shelter and safety in numbers, and, of course, pursuing members of the opposite sex…
