What We Do
Social Media in Society
Social media is one of the most popular and dominant technologies of our modern era. But it also has proven to be a force of destabilization — with corrosive effects seen on our mental health, our institutions, and even our sense of shared reality.
The Stakes
Social networking sites of the early 2000s were built with a simple goal in mind — connect people on the internet. But as these sites rose in popularity, their designs evolved into what we now call social media platforms. The design choices on these platforms were no longer just focused on connecting people; they were increasingly informed by attention-based business models, and focused on driving engagement, keeping users on site, and accumulating as large a user base as possible.
CHT co-founder Tristan Harris was one of the first to publicly sound the alarm on the effect that these design choices could have on our psychologies. It was clear that the race to harvest our attention was creating, in Tristan’s words, “a race to the bottom of the brain stem,” along with an array of second-order societal harms. Social media’s extractive technology began to take a mounting toll on our communities, our political and cultural discourse, and our mental health.
At CHT, we believe it is critical to course-correct social media, so that it can fulfill its earliest promise — providing people with a supportive environment where they can connect with one another. By bringing clarity to the ongoing challenges with social media, we empower society to discover its agency, especially as our younger generations come online.
Our Work
CHT remains one of the leading voices in the call to end manipulative design choices on social media. Our work focuses on educating the public about the nature of manipulative design, highlighting alternative design paths that provide better online experiences, and shepherding policy at the state and federal level to hold tech companies accountable for harms.
With our co-founders’ insider tech expertise, CHT remains uniquely positioned to demonstrate how social media design impacts people and society. Since social media companies are incentivized to keep users on site for as long as possible, their designs reflect these incentives — and they roll out features that capitalize on the human brain’s vulnerabilities. CHT demystifies the incentive structures that lead to attention-harvesting features — features that make it difficult, if not impossible, to stop scrolling, stop clicking, and stop engaging.
With these incentive structures named and clarified, CHT combines technical and policy expertise to transform these incentives and envision a better path forward with social media — one that supports our society, our institutions, our discourse, and our families.
CHT’s success in this space includes the groundbreaking Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma,” which sparked a global conversation around the impact of manipulative design on our everyday lives; multiple congressional testimonies by CHT co-founder Tristan on the nature of persuasive design; 42 state Attorneys General lawsuits against Meta alleging that Facebook and Instagram include addictive design features aimed at children; and more.
The social media harms of the 2010s and early 2020s were preventable. But with effective interventions, we can still avert social media’s future harms, and step into a world with more humane social networking technology.
Resources Library
Social Media and The Brain
Our evolved biology serves us brilliantly in many ways but also includes vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
Foundations Course
A free, self-paced online course for professionals shaping tomorrow's technology
Attention Economy
Extractive technology is damaging our attention & mental health.
What We Can Keep Doing
Since the release of “The Social Dilemma,” a movement to make social media safer has grown globally. Countries from Australia to Brazil have passed laws to regulate social media platforms; 47 states in the U.S. have passed laws to make social media safer for kids; and countless coalitions, advocacy organizations, and even academic institutes are now dedicated to improving social media.
While this momentum has had great effect, more can be done. We don’t need to accept the current negative effects of social media throughout the rest of the 21st century. Technologies like social media and AI can — and should — increase our wellbeing, strengthen our democracies, and improve our shared information environment. To continue our journey with social media, we can:
- Create Awareness: Educate people at all levels of society on the attention economy, attention-based business models, and the dangers of manipulative design. The more informed people are about the products they use, the more empowered they are to demand change.
- Drive Policy: Advocate for policies that improve the impact social media has on young users, reduce polarization, and repair our information environment. The most effective policies incentivize tech companies to build better social media products.
- Improve Tech Design: Support tech designs – such as removing dark patterns, and building algorithms that optimize for pro-social goals – that improve social media. In doing so, tech companies can build products that reflect what the public really wants in a social media platform.
The Current Challenge: AI
Artificial intelligence — specifically large language models — are being developed and deployed at an astonishing speed. While this technology offers great promise to society, its reckless rollout threatens to undermine any benefits AI could offer. From manipulative AI chatbots, to runaway frontier models, we are already seeing the outcomes of developing this powerful technology without guardrails. It’s essential that we intervene and transform the incentives that are fueling the dangerous rollout of AI.
