Opinion
Annello: Modern social media platforms are history's biggest envy generators
“The tools we have now are also the biggest envy generators that have ever been invented.”
Insight
Annello: Workplace instant messaging platforms destroy deep focus worse than email
“The people who work there are now expected to use them, and that intrudes upon any time that they may have spent actually focusing on something and working, because when the IM window pops up, it's like email, but worse, and now it's even more frictionless.”
Insight
Annello: Thriving social media apps succeed by exploiting biological desires
“I think that the success of these companies is because we have a biological need to stay in touch. We're, it wouldn't be unoriginal for me to say that we're a social species, so those things are deeply part of us, and I think that most of these services have e…”
Insight
Annello: Disconnecting from social networks triggers a homeostatic backlash from others
“If you truly disconnect from those things, what you have to understand is there's a, they're network tools. So, when you turn your network off, their network has some homeostasis, right? So, if you, and there's going to be a homeostatic response.”
Insight
Annello: Most things people think they know are only understood superficially
“If you are an introspective person, you will realize, and I certainly did, that a lot of the things that you think you know, you only know at the chauffeur level, you don't know at the Max Planck level.”
Insight
Annello: Quitting social media mirrors the difficulty and dynamics of quitting smoking
“The answer when it comes to smoking is probably going to be the same answer when it comes to social media, which is that a lot of people will fail and won't be able to do it, even with sincere intentions. Some people will be able to quit cold turkey. And some …”
Insight
Annello: Workplace communications will expand to fill all allotted time
“Communications will expand to fill the time allotted. I mean, you could literally, if you wanted to, spend your entire time just communicating.”
Insight
Annello: People who do temporary digital detoxes invariably return to connectivity
“And there's two things that seem to happen with all these people. One is they find when they detach that they get a lot of those powers back that they missed. So they're like, well, I can focus more, and I don't feel so jittery all day, and so on. But the seco…”
Disclosure
Annello: Uninstalling Twitter from mobile devices helps control usage impulses
“I don't have, like, I don't have Twitter, the app installed on my phone, so I don't go through it on my phone. I don't have it on my iPad. The only time I really use Twitter is on my actual, on the computer, and I, so I'm limiting myself to when I'm able to ac…”
