I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Terms of Service by Chris Martin

The subtitle of Chris Martin’s Terms of Service is “The Real Cost of Social Media.” A lot of people know there’s something dark about social media—that it’s doing something to us. Yet, how many of us have really taken the time to determine what social media and that seemingly harmless habit is truly costing us in productivity, relationships, and personal mental health? In Terms of Service, Martin helps us figure out the true cost.

Part of the Culture
The social internet, as Martin calls it, is with us to stay for the foreseeable future. It has ingrained itself as part of human culture. Martin says that even if we delete all of our social media accounts, we’d still hear about social media and what’s happening on it. He’s right.

I was recently in a week long training for my job, and met several people who have never had social media accounts. However, that fact itself brought up social media and its place in our culture. Conversation often turned to “I saw this thing on Facebook that said…” There’s no escaping it, but we can better understand it. Like harmful emotions, if we can label what it’s doing to us, perhaps we can limit the damage.

In the Beginning
Before diving into what social media is doing to us, Martin gives a brief history of the social internet and social media, which I found fascinating. Martin writes, “Man made social media to serve man, but man has come to serve social media.” How did that happen? Terms of Service concisely shows how social media evolved into a billion dollar machine.

Martin writes:

The social internet is designed with addiction in mind. The systems are designed to enslave our eyes. We’ve been set up. We’re being played.

Martin guides us through his personal experiences and the research today to clearly show how we are being experimented on in order to make billions for social media companies and advertisers. The most interesting part of it is he gives us the designers and programmers admitting to this in their own words.

For example, Sean Parker the first president of Facebook stated in an interview with Axios stated:

It’s a social validation feedback loop…exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators—it’s me, it’s Mark Zuckerberg, it’s Kevin System on Instagram, it’a all of these people—understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.

You may say, “I never gave anyone permission to experiment on me. They can’t do that!” Ah, well that’s where the Terms of Service come in. You know, those pesky things no one reads when they download an app or sign up for a service? We’ve all agreed to it.

Hit Me One More Time
Martin digs into the effects of social media use, not just on an individual basis but on society as a whole. He looks at everything. How does social media affect teenagers by making them feel like they have to be constantly performing for their phones? How does it affect political polarization? How does it affect the spread of information and disinformation?

Terms of Service
Thankfully, Martin gives some suggestions on how we can protect ourselves and manage the social internet, rather than have it manage us. I was honestly surprised at his suggestions. They aren’t the usual “delete your accounts” or “lock your phone away.”

My only criticism with the book is that there were some repetitive phrases and ideas starting in the middle and going to the end. I did read an advanced copy, so that may have been cleaned up in final editing. Overall, I found Terms of Service eye-opening and helpful. I plan to have my teenagers read it. You can get a copy here.

I have been reading lots on screen time and social media use and was thankful to add this book to that list. Social media is not neutral. It is important to think through that as we continue to be in the world of social media. This book will give you those helpful things to think through.

Social media is so prevalent in our world today that it is rare to meet someone who doesn’t have an online presence. Because it is a cultural norm, we take for granted what it actually is. We use it mindlessly and aren’t aware of how much it is changing us, our worldviews, and our relationships. “We only ever think about the mark we are making on social media, but do we ever think about the mark social media is making on us?“ One of the things I knew but was impacted by in Martin's book is how personalized the Internet is today. Tailor-made for me and my beliefs, I see what the social media algorithms think I want to see -- which takes away most views that differ from mine. This is eye-opening and important for all of us to grasp. We can't understand "the other side" if we don't know what that is! I can't say I enjoyed this book as many of the insights were disturbing and humbling, but it is such an important book for us today. I have already recommended it to several people!

Social media is ubiquitous. It's where we connect with friends and family, share pictures of our kids and vacations, receive our news and post our opinions.

Looking for a job? Search LinkedIn.
Want to complain to corporate about a bad experience? DM them on Twitter.
Looking for a new gym, church, or nanny? Crowdsource recommendations on Facebook.

But as social media becomes more ingrained in our everyday lives, the more miserable it makes us. For years, study after study has shown a link between social media use and issues of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and general unhappiness. According to Chris Martin, this is by design.

Social media has become the water we swim in, but what we fail to recognize is "the water is poison" (1).

Over the course of Terms of Service, Martin shows how social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are designed to manipulate us - hijack our behavior and emotions. These apps are "designed with the intent to get people addicted" (39).

Further, the methods used to addict us are also shaping us. Social media damages our sense of self-worth, shrinks our expectations for privacy, and warps our understanding of community. The social internet was intended to be shaped organically by the people using it, but instead the users are being shaped by data-hungry algorithms.

Despite the toxicity of the social media environment, Martin doesn't necessarily advocate for retreat - though he concedes that deleting all your accounts would be a logical choice. Instead, Martin advocates simply for a more conscientious and intentional approach to social media (4).

How can we do be more intentional and combat the shaping influences of social media? Martin suggests six ways, but they can all be summed up in a word: disconnect. Be intentional about stepping away from your digital life and pursuing the world and relationships outside of screens.

Terms of Service is a well-written and insightful book about our increasingly digital world. His chapters on attention as value and the trading of privacy for expression (chapters 4 & 5, respectively) eye-opening and changed the way I approach my own social media.

Terms of Service is a valuable contribution to our understanding of social media, and I look forward to what is next from Chris Martin.