Creating A Better Online Life By Asking "Why?"

The childhood skill most have forgotten but that can change the way we engage online

I have often wondered why the level of online engagement many people seem to feel has never really been my experience. I have always loved stories, creative media, engaging with people and participating in discourse, but most recent online content has not caused me to feel the sense of immediacy to engage that I see in those around me.

Upon reflection, I realized that it is connected to the way I approach the content and the questions I ask myself before feeling the personal need to engage. It really ties back to the way I have always seen the online experience and the effect it has on our lives:

The social internet is essentially a huge engagement machine.

No big revelation there, but it is important. The aspects of marketing and engagement that are tied to psychology have always fascinated me, and my curiosity about the mechanisms involved in that relationship have always afforded me some protection from the allure of its output. Having some understanding of the underlying mechanisms and triggers that drive the engagement have made me much more likely to ask questions than to see answers in what is there. This has affected the way I engage with content nowadays more than ever.

In these times of information overload, clickbait and anger farming, I think that it is important to go back to a skill we learned and used as toddlers:

To question “Why?”

It can be much better to ask yourself “Why would they want to cause a reaction?”, “Why is this targeting people like me?”, “Why am I doomscrolling right now?”, “Why…?” as a first step rather than engage with the content itself without question. Understanding the why of it, and only engaging if appropriate after working that out, can help to reduce the incentive for those pushing negative and unhealthy content to continue. This is true of advertising, emotionally charged content and all manners of content by humans or bots, any of which can come to you organically or be fed to you by an algorithm.

If you first ask the important why questions, you can start to sort out what is actually of value to you and what is being pushed on you as being of value. These can be very different things. By determining what is of value to you it is possible to regain more perspective, and maintain control of how you spend your time online as well as how you engage while there.

Perhaps following this method can eliminate and unhealthy realtionship with content for you personally, but what of the rest of the online world? How can things ever get better?

Less clicks, views and engagement means less incentive for those online who benefit from those things.

Even if you cannot influence others to be more critical of what they consume online, an individual contribution to the shape of the discourse is the only first step one can realistically take to promote change. This is true for pretty much any positive change on a large scale: it starts with the individuals taking responsibility for their actions and then doing what they can to encourage others to do so. Each of us doing a small part is the only way to bring change.

I wouldn’t presume to be the arbiter of what has value online: we all have our our interests, personalities and passions. That being said, if we are more careful to shape our engagment with online content and not be shaped by it, I feel that it is more likely to result in an ecosystem that is more reflective of who we are and not who someone else thinks we should be as a society.

Maybe we still end up in the same place. That is a possibility, and that is fine if that occurs, but wouldn’t it be nice to know if that is really the way of the world and not just the way someone else wants our world to be?