The 'what if?' scenario.

A brief announcement. I’m creating a community for men (Kinship), a place for self-discovery, wisdom and connection, drawing on my last 3 years of facilitating men’s groups. You can find out more here. Please share with any men who might be interested.

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It is difficult to imagine alternative versions of our present lives and world. In part, this is because of the infinite number of quanta we would need to re-imagine. 

It’s why well-written science fiction or alternative history novels are so compelling - the writer has painstakingly considered some of the possible impacts of events taking a different fork in the road.

It’s also difficult to imagine another way the world could have been because we are living now, in this present version. We are therefore constantly confronted with our current reality like a permanent mist through which we’re trying to see some other possibility.

To consider the ‘what if’ scenario can be mind-bending and also futile - particularly if we’re spending time imagining how our own lives could have been different ‘if only’ such and such thing had or hadn’t happened.

That said, I sometimes find it valuable to consider alternative universes where things are different. In doing so, we can learn, make different choices in the future - or change the world we’re in now.

One such universe is one where social media hasn’t been invented.

This is not a new question. Many people have pondered this question and it often leads to impassioned defences of social media and what it has created in the world.

The only social media platform I use now is LinkedIn and I probably spend far too much time on there. I have though formed many real friendships and relationships through it. 

But I’m not about to argue for the benefits of social media, instead I want to ponder the alternative universe where it doesn’t exist.

First, a consideration of the defences that are often put forward for social media. A primary one is that social media has enabled and created millions of creators and businesses that would not otherwise exist. There’s a fallacy at play here that is best demonstrated through another real situation.

When cities or countries host major sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup, the bidding process always includes economic analysis that shows the amount of additional income and jobs created through hosting these events. These figures are mainly used as ways to build popular consensus for spending billions of public money.

Yet analysis after these tournaments almost always shows a net loss or breakeven to the economy. One of the reasons for this is the flawed logic of the numbers. For example, much of the job creation comes from constructing the venues for these events, with thousands of workers employed. 

Yet, as was pointed out after the London Olympics, there were not thousands of builders, electricians, architects and plumbers sitting around the UK waiting for a major sporting event. They were mostly otherwise employed elsewhere so their existing labour will have shifted elsewhere but no real new income was created. 

Similarly, the number of new tourists to a country is also used as justification. There is certainly some truth to this. Yet what these numbers never account for is how many tourists would have come anyway, how many won’t come because the event and how many might come to one place over another - coming to London for the Olympics rather than Scotland or the Lake District for example.

Back to social media. If it didn’t exist, what would all of these creators, influencers and business owners be doing? 

We don’t know. What we can certainly say is that there wouldn’t be millions of people simply sitting around waiting for social media to be created.

Their creativity, attention and labour would be directed elsewhere - and who knows what that might have created? We’d have to imagine it and the possibilities are immense.

Maybe all of these young minds would have solved some of our greatest problems? Certainly some of the brightest minds in the world would not be spending their lives figuring out how to make us look at screens for longer and press more buttons.

A second defence of social media is the connections and relationships it has enabled. This is both true and not true. I’d go so far to say that most social media is anything but ‘social’ - it has encouraged performative identities, narcissism, severe mental health challenges, bullying, misinformation, decline in communication skills and attention spans, and so on….

Whilst it may no be much easier to maintain a shallow level of connection with people on social media, it has come at great cost and gives the illusion of real, meaningful connection. How many people around the world have hindered or thousands of social media connections but feel lonely regularly? The research shows that loneliness in developed countries, particularly amongst young men, is getting worse.

So let me now come to the imagined alternative in this thought experiment. Rather than looking at what would be ‘lost’ (more accurately, never ‘gained’) in a world without social media, what might some of the more appealing differences be?

Here’s some things off the top of my head:

1. We would look each other in the eye a lot more.

2. We would be more present in our relationships and less distracted. Not just marriages and friendships but also interactions with bus drivers and baristas.

3. We would pay much more attention to the world around us, being present with it.

4. We’d be able to have better interactions with our kids.

5. We’d have fewer conversations with people who had absorbed some nonsensical misinformation. 

6. Our politicians and public figures would spend less time communicating in ways designed for short clips and algorithms.

7. We’d buy less stuff we don’t need.

8. We’d be less at risk of getting run over by traffic. Fewer sprained ankles too.

9. We’d read more.

10. There would be fewer people working in awful conditions in precious metal mines.

11. We’d spend more time being present with our own lives rather than thinking about getting ‘the shot’ for posting.

12. We’d never have had Donald Trump as US President, or Brexit, or Boris Johnson.

I could go on but I feel like no.11 is a good place to stop.

Imagining the alternative requires us to imagine many sides of it, not just the perspective that confirms why our current world is so right. 

In imagining the alternative, we can also find a stronger desire and case for change - whether it’s in the way our world is run or simply in developing better habits for our own lives. 

If you happen to be interested in developing a better relationship with technology, my friend Lazlo is working on a project you might be interested in. Please spend a few minutes completing his survey.

“Which would you rather be? Someone who hasn’t created anything in years because you’re so busy consuming? Or someone who hasn’t consumed anything in years because you’re so busy creating?”

- Derek Sivers

I’m a coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin. At the heart of my work is helping individuals and organisations to make sense of who they are and the world around them. You can find out more about my coaching work here and my work with men & masculinity here.