MARKET WATCH: What’s Happening? Facebook is putting new emphasis on getting more users to participate in its private groups, triggering fears that the Internet—and modern life more generally—is turning people inward and hastening the decline of the public square. Eventually, critics say, our nation will become fragmented and ungovernable.
Our Take: History is not linear, and this seemingly indefinite trend toward social entropy is already hitting countercurrents. In fact, today’s rising generation is ushering in platforms and services that bring people together, which may help rebuild the public square. Tech giants, rather than enabling and driving isolation, will increasingly resemble public utilities that help build community and maintain order. If Millennials ever do take America toward a dystopian future, it may feature not too little community—but too much.
New York Times writer Kevin Roose recently delved into the world of private Facebook groups: an endless series of walled gardens for every conceivable interest, whether it’s kayaking, knitting, watching Game of Thrones, or even believing the world is flat.
Why are these groups, which have been around for years, generating press clippings now? Because Facebook clearly thinks that they are the wave of the future. The social media giant recently went so far as to change the lingo in its corporate mission statement. No longer does Facebook want to make the world “more open and connected”; instead, it wants to empower people “to build community and bring the world closer together,” partly through the use of private groups.
A WIDENING EPIDEMIC OF “PRIVATE SPACES”
In the digital age, anyone with an Internet connection can find a micro-community of like-minded souls. What once was limited to local clubs and scattered message boards is now an infinite buffet of options accessible from one place. To join a “closed” Facebook group, users simply send a request to a moderator. For “secret” groups, they need an invitation from a current member.
Roose’s sampling of these groups included forums catering to teachers, parents, cannabis growers, flight attendants, and programmers. There are support groups for the mentally ill, veterans, and partners of unfaithful spouses. More notoriously, there are also less savory groups like Marines United—which came under fire for sharing nude photos of female service members—and the chat thread full of obscene memes that led Harvard to withdraw admission offers from at least 10 prospective students.
Given the proliferation of these walled gardens, enthusiasts may never have to leave their bubbles. Thanks to increasing efforts by brands to cater to passionate fans (see: “The Rise of the Obsessive Consumer”), everyone from CrossFit lovers to aspiring chefs can pursue their interests to the outer limits with stores, products, and events created just for them. Making things even more specialized is the fact that consumers are now targeted at the individual level, often seeing different ads or receiving different prices based on their online shopping history or their zip code. (See: “A Special Price Just for You.”)
WHAT CRITICS FEAR
While private groups do serve a valuable role in connecting like-minded individuals, these rabbit holes amplify an often-raised concern: that our nation is becoming increasingly balkanized as people congregate in their own spaces and are less exposed to divergent views.
We’re already seeing this trend play out in the physical world. Both geographic and political polarization have grown as Americans have clustered in places that are demographically similar (see: “The Divided States of America”), a self-segregation that author Bill Bishop termed The Big Sort. Add other shifts over time such as the widening income gap and the disappearance of public gathering spaces, and it appears as if people are more cordoned-off in their own worlds than ever.
The ultimate fear is that this splintering will create an utterly ungovernable nation. In his new book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, author Kurt Andersen argues that the Web—which has become the primary news source for many Americans—has helped create a post-factual environment where people (including the U.S. president) feel free to believe anything they want. Writes Andersen in The Atlantic: “[Every] tribe and fiefdom and principality and region of Fantasyland…suddenly [has] an unprecedented way to instruct and rile up and mobilize believers, and to recruit more.”
Plenty of critics are blaming the Internet itself for this rising polarization. Yet history teaches that the causal link between technology and social change is typically the other way around. It is not changing technology that shapes generations. It’s changing generations that shapes technology. Boomers and Xers, championing a more individualistic society, employed the “personal” computer and (later) the Internet as a universal solvent in order to break open a lockstep middle class and open up America to a glorious and clashing range of diverse voices. Millennials, champions of a more cohesive society, congregate fish bowl-like on “social media” sites where joining and agreeing are prized. (As for the middle class, Millennials would gladly join it if only they could find it.)
ARE WE HEADING TOWARD INTERNET-ENABLED ANARCHY?
Is it inevitable that things will continue developing this way? Maybe not. In fact, we are already seeing signs of a reversal. Even though balkanization is undeniably happening, other social and generational trends are accelerating in the opposite direction.
It’s older generations, not Millennials, who are driving up polarization. Most importantly, society’s youngest adults are not playing into the script. If growing fragmentation were the endless wave of the future, we would expect the rising generation of Millennials to be at its forefront—especially since they're most involved in the social media sites that many critics claim are driving it.
But in fact the opposite is true. Research indicates that it’s actually older people who are fueling increased political polarization: A March study by researchers from Stanford University and Brown University found that, between 1996 and 2012, political polarization rose most among the oldest age brackets—and was virtually flat among those ages 18 to 39.
A 2015 Pew study, moreover, found that Boomers are the most likely to see political content on Facebook that “always” or “mostly” reflects their own views (31%), compared to 21% of Xers and 18% of Millennials.
Millennials want to play by the rules. Another trend pushing us toward social splintering is an extreme libertarianism with regard to self-expression and public decorum. Well, once again, this trend was initiated and continues to be pushed by today’s older generations—mainly Boomers and Xers, whose in-your-face and deal-with-it pugnacity has done much to close down the public square.
Millennials, on the other hand, are less interested than their elders in unabridged freedom of expression. In a recent survey of college students, 21% said that the First Amendment “can no longer apply in today’s society and should be changed.” Fully 35% of respondents believed that hate speech isn’t protected under the First Amendment—a misconception indicating they don’t see this right as important. According to a Pew study, 40% of 18- to 34-year-olds agree that the government should be able to prevent people from making statements that are offensive to minorities, by far the highest share of any generation.
These data line up with research showing that young people are less invested in liberal democracy and more open to authoritarian governance. (See: “Are Millennials Giving Up on Democracy?”) They suggest that Millennials, more than older generations, would be open to a set of ground rules enabling people to gather and interact more peaceably. Presumably, these rules would be enforced by some combination of social stigma, public policy, and law. At the very least, the findings indicate that Millennials would most favor a safer and more curated and regulated Internet.
What’s behind this attitudinal shift? For one, Millennials trust large institutions (government, influential leaders, and in this case tech giants) to set the rules. But it’s more than that. At their core, Millennials are a positive, non-confrontational bunch that want everyone to get along by going along. We see this all-inclusive optimism reflected in everything from late-night standup to corporate branding. (See: “All Aboard the Smile Train.”) It is not a trend that encourages loners to disagree with the majority. To the contrary. But it could pave the way for the reconstruction of the public square—and thereby undo much of the damage caused by older generations.
Of course, as long as Boomers and Xers are in power, the protection of free speech and privacy rights reigns supreme. They would never dream of homogenizing online content in order to get users to play nice or prevent offense. In their eyes, every splinter group possesses its own legitimate truth and gets to speak its “truthiness” to power.
But Millennials come at the Internet from a different point of view. They prioritize community over diversity. Truth is a public construct designed to serve the group rather than disrupt it. Young people see Facebook and Google as closer to utilities that should be managed. To them, something like Harvard’s response to the meme-posting students—which unsettled many faculty because the punished individuals were acting in private—is perfectly acceptable. Indeed, members of the Harvard Class of 2021 applauded the Administrations Office, writing that the barred students’ actions were “indefensible.”
MILLENNIALS PUT SILICON VALLEY IN A BIND
Ironically, this rules-based, caretaker perspective puts Millennials at odds with the services they consider so vital. Silicon Valley, home to the enablers of our fragmentation, is feeling squeezed as the government begins to flex its regulatory muscles and society becomes less enamored of the direction America is heading. As Millennial influence grows, that squeeze will tighten.
Once upon a time, Facebook and Google executives figured that their “we don’t curate information, we just host it” credo was enough to ward off any political interference. No longer. Both at home and abroad, they are scurrying to respond to charges of violating antitrust laws, intruding on privacy, abetting terrorists and hate groups, empowering cyber bullies and cyber attackers, and (most recently) purveying “fake news.” In the wake of the 2016 election cycle, tech companies were roundly criticized for their complacency in the fake news epidemic. This criticism has been loud enough that both Google and Facebook have hired fact-checkers and introduced initiatives to clamp down on misinformation.
Yet these companies are reluctant to go further and edit results. As private firms, they are in the uneasy position of being asked to determine standards of truth. They can see down the road and understand that this role will inevitably bring them under the supervision of a public regulatory authority.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
With their gargantuan userbases and sweeping social agendas, Silicon Valley giants have come to embody the rising generation’s hopes and dreams—which probably include some rebuilt 21st-century version of the public square.
Perhaps the Internet will come to resemble the physical world, which is already getting a Millennial facelift in the name of togetherness. The same generation that is congregating on social media is trying hard to congregate more in person. Millennials have triggered a strong in-migration to central cities and are opting for living arrangements (micro apartments, group homes, co-living) that prioritize collective lifestyles. Commercial spaces, like abandoned malls, are being reinvented as communal hubs focused on dining and entertainment. Upscale retailers are turning themselves into day-trip destinations that host events. Meanwhile, the runaway success of New York’s High Line has cities from Chicago to Tokyo to Moscow racing to create similar parks.
Where are current trends likely to take America longer term? Twenty years ago, back when Xers were still coming of age, linear extrapolations in the popular culture led to nightmarish Mad Max fantasies in which the collapse of collective institutions left only lone individuals to fend for themselves.
Some still see us heading toward this future of utter fragmentation. But in response to generational change, a new rival fantasy is emerging. In The Circle (sci fi novel and movie), Dave Eggers lays out a dystopian vision in which a Millennial-friendly IT monopoly succeeds in connecting everyone with everyone 24/7 in the name of social responsibility. (“Sharing is caring,” “secrets are lies,” and “privacy is theft” are among Eggers’ neo-Orwellian mantras.) Of course, Eggers’ picture is fictional. He takes a few salient trends in the coming-of-age generation and puts them on endless fast forward—an extreme hypothesis no more likely to forecast the future today than it would have in any earlier decade. But at least the direction makes sense. Twenty years ago, it would have made no sense at all.
