To Zuck,

 Humans should not have access to virtually infinite streams of information. Likewise, humans also should not smoke cigarettes or alcohol, but they have an individual choice (as they should) to make an educated decision to do so or not. One difference, however, is that the latter products come with warning labels, while the former do not. This is of great concern to me, due to the impact it had on me and the imagined impact I can see it having on the younger generation currently, when all the things I talk about are only amplified to the extreme.

 Downloading Instagram when I was in fifth grade seemed like a harmless act that everyone else was doing when it was new and exciting. The only thing the app confirmed was if you were over the age of 13 (for data privacy laws), which as a clever 10-year-old, clicking the checkbox stated “Yes” was not too hard to bypass. And with this sign-up, came a nearly decade-long drought of reading, and other forms of high-quality leisure activity, with an irreplaceable, yet much easier, the alternative of mindless scrolling and consuming low-quality forms of media. During my extended usage of this app, and I would shamelessly say it was likely way over-usage, I came to a realization in my early undergraduate years that I had a problem. This was the hardest and most consistently I was challenged academically, and as a result of this, I had to learn to actually study and focus. Unsurprisingly, I struggled to focus immensely and was hit by this when I received a C or D on my first exam for multi-variable calculus in my first semester. I always excelled at Math my whole life and never had to do any supplementary work to pass with 100s. Admittedly, thinking college was going to be the same way was dumb, nonetheless, I had to start studying. Long story short, I struggled to sit down and study and work deeply with my phone at the back of my mind at all times. This is when I started to question my relationship with social media apps, and technology at large, which finally led up to, ending my second year of college, fully deleting all of my social media accounts, including Instagram and Facebook. Instagram was my app of choice and could scroll for hours on the app. I sound like the perfect “user” of the app for your monetization model of the app: collecting large amounts of ad revenue. But at what cost? Not only was my ability to focus completely massacred from unhealthy usage of the app, but nearly 10 years of doing (literally) anything else was robbed of me. I started reading more after abandoning social media. Due to this, being robbed of 10 years worth of books where I could have gained vast amounts of knowledge or read something that had a profound impact at such a developmental stage of my life, is saddening. Instead, I consumed low-quality media in mass abundance, and looking back, not a single one had even the slightest impact on my life. In fact, there is not a particular post that I can even recall in general, or let alone say that it made me a better person in the slightest way.

 All this came with no warning labels. And, from my knowledge, it still doesn’t. So, on your products at Meta, I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if you would include warnings of the (high) potential things individuals will sacrifice by installing your apps.

Go Fuck Yourself,

 Robby

Background

This was for an assignment for my “professional” writing course, and, specifically, we had to do a complaint letter. I was happy with the outcome and thought I would share.