Who might rescue us from social media? At this moment, possibly just ourselves.

Extracted from “Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart” by Nicholas Carr, M.A. ’84.

It was a Sunday evening, October 19, 1952, when Frank Walsh, an electrician from Long Island who also worked as a security guard, felt exhausted. He made his way upstairs to sleep while his wife, mother-in-law, and five children remained down in the living room engrossed in the latest episode of the hit comedy “The Abbott and Costello Show.” Walsh tossed and turned but was unable to drift into slumber. The television’s volume was too high, the laughter disruptive. His annoyance escalated, eventually transforming into fury. He got up and reached for the .38 Special he used for his guarding position. Halfway down the stairs, he caught sight of the offending television. He paused, took aim, and pulled the trigger through the screen.

Walsh’s wife, infuriated, dialed the police. Officers arrived and seized the firearm, yet no arrests were made. There’s no legislation, they clarified, against shooting one’s own television. Two days later, The New York Times featured a brief, tongue-in-cheek report about the occurrence, under the headline “Obviously Self-Defense.” The following day, a Times columnist, Jack Gould, commended Walsh’s “public-spirited act.” He urged authorities to return the firearm to the man. “His work has only just begun.” The paper’s report turned Walsh into a sensation. Within a week, he found himself as a contestant on the widely watched prime-time game show “Strike It Rich.” He secured a television as a prize.

To shoot a television set, Frank Walsh realized, is not an act of defiance against media and its control. It is to become intertwined with the televisual. It is to behave as someone featured on television would behave. As the producers of “Strike It Rich,” along with the editors of The New York Times, promptly recognized, Walsh’s act of shooting his television was a media spectacle — outrageous, humorous, violent, and relatable. Flattened into a source of entertainment and channeled into the media stream, Walsh succeeded only in becoming content. Nevertheless, his act endured. Shooting a gun at a television would evolve into a cultural trope, replayed endlessly across books, films, songs, cartoons, and, of course, television shows. Elvis Presley developed a habit of shooting his televisions and burying the remains in a “television graveyard” behind Graceland. He would then proceed to purchase more sets. He maintained over a dozen televisions in various places within his mansion, all plugged in and broadcasting. By surrounding himself with screens, the King was a pioneer. We all inhabit Graceland now.

***

Due to its lack of attachments and its versatile flexibility, mass media has consistently shown resilience. It absorbs critiques directed towards it (even when they manifest as projectiles), transforms them into programming, broadcasts them, and then diverts our attention with the next spectacle. Social media advances this further. By promoting an intense style of rhetoric that fosters political division and governmental gridlock, it diminishes the likelihood of being subjected to significant regulations or other legal controls. It thrives under the conditions of distraction and dysfunction that it creates. Politicians utilize social media to voice their contempt for it while also monitoring the like count.

That’s not to imply reform is unachievable. The European Union, which has been considerably less optimistic than the United States regarding the abandonment of the secrecy-of-correspondence principle, frequently enacts laws and regulations aimed at limiting social media platforms. These rules empower citizens with greater control over the information they share and the data they receive. Europeans can opt out of data-collection frameworks, targeted advertising campaigns, and even personalized news feeds, as of the summer of 2023. However, these controls, regardless of their benefits, haven’t fundamentally altered how social media functions. The rationale is straightforward: they haven’t modified the behavior of most users. As surveys indicate, consumers have become accustomed to exchanging personal data for tailored products and services. Few are now inclined to opt against receiving content tailored to their preferences. Personalization has become essential to individuals’ experiences with media and the enjoyment they derive. For ardent TikTok users, removing the For You from the For You page would be akin to disconnecting a pleasure center in the brain. High engagement is not only advantageous for the platforms; it is desirable for users as well.

Antitrust actions against corporations like Google and Meta, which could be justified in economic terms, are also improbable to alter the operations of social media. Technological advancements possess an inertial force that continues on irrespective of the machinations of the companies profiting from it. While dismantling big tech firms or limiting their capacity to form oligarchic alliances may indeed increase competition and innovation within the internet sector, it is unlikely to redirect media from the technological trajectory it has already embarked upon — a path that has proven to be appealing to consumers and profitable for companies. The purpose of antitrust actions, posits Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor, is not to penalize the major platforms but to compel them “to pave the way for the next generation of technologists and their visions.” Such a notion may sound inspiring — until we realize that it is the visions of technologists that have led us to our present predicament. The forthcoming wave of innovations — larger language models, more realistic chatbots, enhanced content generation and censorship systems, more precise eye trackers and bodily sensors, more immersive virtual realms, swifter everything — will only propel us deeper into the void of hyperreality.

The most adventurousand among the most innovative of social media’s aspiring reformers, a small coalition of legal experts and various academics, joined by a few rebellious developers, have formulated a more radical initiative. They refer to it as frictional design. They contend that the current technological framework requires deconstruction and reconstruction in a more human-centric manner. Embracing an approach reminiscent of the 19th-century British Luddites’ tactic of machine destruction, albeit without the aggression, they aim to effectively undermine current social media platforms by reintroducing friction into their functionalities — injecting virtual sand into the virtual machinery.

“The relentless drive to eradicate friction in the digital networked landscape for the sake of efficiency,” articulate two of the movement’s prominent figures, Brett Frischmann from Villanova and Susan Benesch from Harvard, in a 2023 publication in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, has imposed significant, concealed costs on society. “A broad course correction is essential.” Citing the “time, place, and manner” limitations historically applied to public discourse — such as the ban on utilizing a megaphone in a residential area at night, or requiring demonstrators to obtain a permit before marching through urban spaces — Frischmann and Benesch argue that similar legal constraints can be enforced on media software to promote civil behavior and safeguard the public interest. In contrast to antitrust measures, privacy laws, and opt-in mandates, which fail to confront “the rampant techno-social engineering of individuals by digital networked technologies,” government-imposed design limitations would, as they suggest, alter the “digital architectures [and] interfaces that shape human interactions and behavior.” These constraints would transform social dynamics by, borrowing again from sociologist Charles Horton Cooley’s terminology, modifying the processes that govern information flow and the formation of associations.

A variety of “desirable inefficiencies” have been suggested. Restrictions could be placed on the frequency with which a message can be forwarded or on the number of recipients it can reach. These limitations might become progressively stricter as a message gains traction. A pause of a few minutes could be incorporated before a post is visible on a platform, granting the poster time to reassess its content and tone, thereby decelerating the pace of interactions. A similar pause or a few additional clicks may be required before an individual can like or respond to someone else’s post. A nominal fee could be instated for disseminating a post or message to more than 1,000 recipients. The charge might escalate for 10,000 recipients and again for 100,000. A broadcasting permit could be necessary for any account boasting over a quarter million followers or subscribers. Popup notifications could remind users of the potential audience for their posts or messages. Infinite scrolling, autoplay features, and customized feeds and advertisements could be outright banned.

There are compelling arguments for the frictional design approach. It embeds values beyond mere efficiency into media technology and would foster the development of networks that, akin to older analog systems, encourage greater contemplation and discernment from viewers and listeners. If “code is law,” as Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig posited years ago, should not societal values and interests be considered in the creation of software that influences how society operates? We install speed bumps on roads to alert drivers and protect the public; why not implement similar measures on the web? Additionally, this approach finds precedents in recent trials conducted by the platforms themselves. In 2020, certain Twitter users began encountering a popup inquiring, “Want to read the article first?” when poised to retweet an article they hadn’t perused. These popups sparked some annoyance — “Who appointed you?” one user tweeted — but appeared to impact behavior, increasing the likelihood that individuals would at least skim an article prior to sharing it. Two years later, Twitter trialed a similar popup aimed at curbing “abusive language” in tweets, which also seemed to yield results, with users retracting or altering about a third of the flagged messages. Apple and Instagram have initiated algorithmic measures designed to inhibit the sharing of nude photos among minors. Teenage users of Apple’s Messages and Instagram’s direct-messaging service receive warnings prior to sending or receiving messages containing nude images, and these images are occasionally auto-blurred.

However, while frictional design may assist in mitigating certain clearly defined forms of undesirable online conduct, it is likely to be as ineffective as Frank Walsh’s gunplay when addressing the underlying mechanics of social media. Unlike traditional laws governing time, place, and manner, which do not significantly impact the everyday existence of most individuals, modifications to the fundamental operations of social media would influence nearly everyone simultaneously. Even though the frictional design proposals concentrate on regulating the functionality of technological systems rather than the content shared by individuals, they would still elicit concerns regarding free speech and press. Numerous individuals, even within the expanding demographic advocating for stricter oversight of platform corporations, would object to what they perceive as paternalistic overreach or interventions from a nanny-state. Others would contest the government imposing a uniform set of values on public communication and entertainment modes. Many would wonder if politicians and bureaucrats could be relied upon to interfere with software without complicating matters. Would every fluctuation in political sentiment result in sudden and disorienting changes to app functionality?

The greatest hurdle to incorporating friction into communication is likely the entrenched habits of social media users. The trajectory of technological advancement illustrates that once individuals acclimate to enhanced efficiency within any practice or process, any reversion to reduced efficiency, no matter the justification, is deemed unacceptable. The general populace is seldom willing to endure delays and inconveniences once it has experienced relief from them. In a culture oriented towards convenience, speed, and entertainment, introducing friction is the hardest of all propositions.

The esteemed technology historian Thomas Hughes, after decades of examining electric utilities, manufacturing facilities, and transportation and communication networks, contended that complex technological systems become challenging, if not impossible, to modify once they become entrenched. During a system’s initial, formative phase, the public possesses the opportunity to influence its design, operation, and regulation. But as it becomes interwoven into societal functions and individual lives — as the technology gains “momentum,” in Hughes’s terminology — it resists adaptation. Altering the system in any substantial manner results in too many disruptions for too many individuals. Society adapts to the system instead of the reverse.

In the 1990s, when the internet was just starting its evolution from an academic resource to a commercial network, there could have been legislation and regulations enacted that would have directed its developmental trajectory and subsequently impacted how social media operates.

We could have revised the secrecy-of-correspondence doctrine to suit a new era of online communication. We could have applied a public-interest standard to internet enterprises. We could have held these companies legally accountable for the information they transfer. We could have established technological and regulatory distinctions between private and public communication. Yet none of this transpired. It was scarcely discussed. The public’s enthusiasm for the web and its perceived democratizing potential, an enthusiasm that resonated through Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, was too overpowering. Our faith in the advantages of increasingly efficient communication overshadowed any worries regarding risks or unintended repercussions. Now, it’s too late to reconsider the system. It has embedded itself too deeply within society and the collective psyche.

Yet perhaps it is not too late to change our own behaviors.

Copyright (c) 2025 by Nicholas Carr. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.