Mad Youth Organise Vs Big Tech Billionaires!
The unchecked power of Big Tech corporations is driving the youth mental health crisis. This Autumn, Mad Youth Organise is taking on the tech giants who profit off our pain.
As young people we are the first generation to have grown up with social media - it can bring connection, knowledge, community and fun. But too many of us have been harmed by Big Tech’s addictive and dangerous business model.
We’ve been cyberbullied on platforms where no support or protection is provided, had harmful sites pushed on us by dangerous algorithms, and developed eating disorders after being bombarded by unrealistic images created by companies to sell products. Calculated placement of product promotion blurs the line between content and advertising, while the constant noise leaves little space for peace, focus, or genuine connection. In our atomised society, we have been reduced to data points and demographics - in the eyes of tech giants we are merely consumers to exploit, not people.
Gigi El-Halaby, a leader from Mad Youth Organise first experienced the harm that social media can cause as a teenager, “I was fed unrealistic beauty image after unrealistic beauty image on social media, it fuelled my anorexia. Filters, edited images, and the endless pursuit of perfection created a warped view of reality. Social media platforms amplify this pressure around physical appearance by prioritising content that conforms to narrow, often unattainable, beauty standards. This constant exposure to supposed perfection fuels low self-esteem, body dysmorphia, and eating disorders.”
And the role of tech companies doesn't end with our screens - increasingly we see huge tech corporations in our health care - whether that’s military tech giant Palantir seeking control of the NHS single patient record, or Oxehealth whose surveillance system ‘Oxevision’ monitors patients 24 hours a day in psychiatric units. As tech companies seek more and more data to feed their algorithms, health data becomes increasingly attractive, particularly data as comprehensive as the NHS’s. Such companies, who seek to extract wealth from our most sensitive and private information, should be nowhere near our health systems.
Of course, technology can be a hugely positive force. But as the American historian Krazenberg’s first law of technology states ‘technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral”. Technology’s impact is determined by who controls it. And when huge corporations whose sole motive is to profit control our technology, it is hardly surprising that those technologies can be incredibly harmful.
Companies like Meta are aping the playbook of Big Tobacco by creating products that are designed to be highly addictive. They monitor our every movement, learning what will keep us hooked and feeding us content to keep us locked into endless feeds. We’re told to take responsibility and “just switch off,” but how can we, when the system is built to keep us scrolling? We’re up against corporations that have an unfathomable amount of data, wealth and power - and are using it all to keep us hooked while they cash in.
Tech giant’s disregard for our wellbeing is not accidental, but by design; they profit from our pain. The content that hooks us most is the content that hurts us most — extreme, shocking, and emotionally charged. The algorithms know this. They feed us more of it to keep us scrolling. The result? We spend longer online, we absorb more harmful content. They aren’t just raking in profit from our attention, but our distress too.
Algorithms are carefully designed to push harmful and extreme content, because our reactions drive comments, shares, and engagement. Our insecurities are exploited; we are shown more curated, “perfect” lives in our feed to keep us scrolling as we compare ourselves to others. They profit most when we feel bad about ourselves, compare our lives to others, get pulled into harmful or self-destructive content. — because Big Tech giants don't care what keeps us hooked, only that we stay online.
This has been sharply illustrated by the stripping away of online safety teams. Tik tok workers have been out on strike after the company has made hundreds of content moderators redundant in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. Meta is being sued by 41 US states for deliberately “harming…children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits”.
At Mad Youth Organise we know both sides of technology - we rely on it to organise as a group, using online platforms to come together, connect and plan actions. Mad and disabled communities are often particularly reliant on technology as in person meet ups aren’t always possible. For communities like ours it is even more important that the unaccountable, monopolistic power of tech firms is exposed and challenged. Tech companies are everywhere, gaining increasing control over our lives and our democracies. As young people who’ve lived the harm of tech giants, we’re the ones who must fight back.
But we can’t do this alone! Are you a young person with lived experience of mental distress or Madness? Have you got a story about harm at the hands of tech companies? Maybe social media has driven your anxiety and wrecked your ability to concentrate? Perhaps you experienced cyberbullying or were sent harmful content. Perhaps you’ve been trolled or even monitored by surveillance technology in a psychiatric unit. Whatever your experience, we want to hear from you.
Fill in the story form and look out for more as Mad Youth Organise takes on the Big Tech billionaires!