I started my career 16 years ago designing games for social networks, but I never wanted our social networks to become games. In this piece, I approach the problem of modern social media through the lens of game design. What happens when we quantify the value of our connections to others?
0. problem
Social media is not a game. But the design of modern social media encourages and rewards those who play it like one. By assigning numeric values to our interactions with others, social media reduces the intrinsic value of those interactions, and corrupts the motivations for social connection.
It makes a game out of something that isn’t a game to other people.
To understand why this is a problem, we need to understand what is and isn’t a game. We need to understand how modern social media allows itself to be gamed. And we need to understand why our largest social systems should never be played to win.
1. play
Play is behavior that exists outside the bounds of normal social interaction. The value of play is intrinsic; it is for its own sake. We play because play is enjoyable, recreational, fun. And we play with others as a form of positive social connection.
Play is fun because it delineates its own space and context, safe from the consequences of “real” behavior. Dogs might be jumping and biting at each other, but when it’s play it’s not serious. The dogs aren’t angry; nobody’s going to get hurt; it’s for fun.
2. games
Play is a universal concept, but games are a human invention. If play is inherently unbounded, then games are inherently structured. They are the application of rules—constraints—on boundless play.
We play by tossing a ball back and forth. It becomes a game when I say that you lose if you drop the ball.
Because games are a form of play, they ascribe to the same core principle: an activity distinct from normal social context. A game creates a playful space with limited consequence outside its bounds.
It’s okay if you lose, because it’s just a game.
A game is only a game if everyone agrees to the rules governing play. This means that playing a game requires consent: it’s not a game if you don’t know the rules; it’s not a game if you don’t know we’re playing.
3. gaming
Games are played, but games aren’t “gamed.”
Systems are gamed.
Gaming a system is a pernicious act. It is the willful manipulation of a set of rules against their intended effects. It is playing a game with something that’s not a game to other people.
Systems are often gamed in ways that benefit an individual to the detriment of others. And gamed systems are often those with real, serious consequences in the lives of those involved.
For example: Monopoly is a game, but capitalism is a gamed system, because capitalism is not a game. And while it might be fun to “win” at capitalism, it is very dangerous to lose.
4. points
In games and gamed systems, success is often quantified through numeric value. The simplest expression of this value in games is “points.” Generally, having points is a good thing. And the higher the number, the better you’re doing.
Points are also a comparative value; I win by having more than you. And if I’m focused on winning, then it matters to me that you have less than I have.
This mentality is acceptable within the context of a game, but it becomes harmful when applied to other systems.
I shouldn’t want others to have less than me; I shouldn’t define my own success by what others don’t have.
When systems incentivize this attitude, they encourage the gaming of those systems, and they encourage harmful behavior: “I want my number to be bigger than yours, no matter what it takes, because that’s how I win.”
5. gameability
Numbers make systems “gameable,” because the visibility of quantified value in a system creates opportunity and incentive for measuring success against the value of others.
So the “gameability” of a system—its susceptibility to pernicious manipulation—is often tied directly to both the presence of numeric values, and the visibility of those values to others within the system.
The more “points” expressed in a system, and the more visible those points are, the greater the implied incentive for me to have more points than other people within that system.
This incentive is particularly strong when there is an actual, material benefit to “winning” within the context of the system.
A gameable system with real stakes has greater potential for harm.
6. social systems
Social systems are formal or informal structures that define relationships between people. Families are social systems, as are friend groups, religions, schools, sports, and jobs, among many others.
Social systems connect us. They are how we find and maintain connections to others. They allow us to be part of something larger than ourselves.
We seek out social systems because we are a social species. We need each other to survive.
7. social media
Social media platforms are social systems. And they are some of the largest social systems in the world, connecting in aggregate more people than have ever been connected in history.
Social media is also, by design, highly gameable.
Any given modern social media platform contains a wide range of numeric values tied to its users, their content, and their behaviors.
These values are often highly visible, both to the individual user, and to others engaging with that user and their content. And the apps and websites for these platforms frequently call attention to these values throughout their interfaces.
For an individual user, a platform may identify:
- the number of “Friends” or reciprocal connections they have
- the number of “Followers” or subscribers to that user’s content
And for any piece of content posted by a user, the platform may display:
- the number of users who’ve viewed that content
- the number of “reactions” to the content (such as “Likes” or “Hearts”)
- the number of comments or replies to the content
- and the number of shares or reposts of that content.
These numbers quantify the value of a social media user. And like any point system, it is implicitly “good” when these numbers are larger, particularly when compared to the numbers of others.
8. business
The numeric values associated with social media users and their content are commonly referred to as “metrics.”
Historically, this term has been used to describe data collected when measuring the success of a business: the number of sales of a product; the number of clicks on a website; the number of visitors to a retail store.
Social media companies measure their success through user engagement with the content on their platforms. This is because these platforms typically generate revenue by selling ad space alongside their content, or by offering subscriptions that allow for more ways to engage with content.
So the business of social media relies heavily on the content created by its users, and that content’s ability to keep both new and existing users engaged.
The more a user’s content is viewed, liked, and shared, the greater their value to the business. And users with more friends or followers have even greater value, because of their larger, more engaged audiences.
The modern usage of the term “metrics” now conflates these two ideas: the quantified value of a business, and the quantified value of a person—whether that value is to the business, or to other people.
And while business metrics are often protected, non-public information, the metrics of social media users are, by necessity, highly public. It is their public visibility that drives the incentives for users to create engaging content, which in turn benefits the platforms and their ability to generate profit.
The business of social media relies on the gameability of its platforms. It wants you to want to win, because that’s how it makes money.
9. incentive
For users of social media systems, there are real, tangible incentives for wanting the numbers to go up, beyond the simple satisfaction of seeing numeric values increase.
Bigger numbers can lead to influence and power, as the creation of engaging content increases one’s audience. And they can lead to financial opportunities, as larger audiences can, in turn, be used to further one’s career, or sell products and services. Put simply: bigger numbers change lives.
The “game” of social media, then, is not about creating positive social connections. It’s about figuring out how to make the numbers go up as much as possible, because winning at social media both feels good, and can be life-changing.
10. strategy
For those who treat social media as a game, the most effective strategies for winning are largely antisocial; they run counter to interactions that reinforce positive connection; they require playing a game with something that’s not a game to other people.
A 2021 Yale research study found that posts expressing moral outrage spread faster on social media than other types of content, teaching users to express outrage more frequently.
A 2019 MIT study found that misinformation spreads more rapidly than the truth, incentivizing users to post false or unverifiable information to gain more likes and shares.
And a 2021 study from Harvard Business School found that negative content engages more users than positivity, and that news outlets across the political spectrum focused on negative and divisive coverage for the sake of their businesses.
The best way to “win” at social media is to be more cruel, more antagonistic—to divide people and capitalize on their emotions and divisions.
The other optimal strategy is exploitation of the platform itself—gaming the mechanisms used to define engagement, as the inflation of those values has an additive effect. The more likes, comments, and shares a piece of content receives, the more that content is seen by others who will like, comment, and share, and the farther it spreads.
The tangible, real-world benefits to “winning” at social media will often lead its most self-serving users to optimize for the highest engagement possible—the most direct path to which is creating antisocial content, and employing antisocial strategies to maximize its spread.
11. design
The cruelty of modern social media is by design. The visibility of social metrics compels users to create the most engaging content possible; the highest engagement is most easily gained through antisocial strategies; and the business itself directly benefits from users who optimize for engagement above all else.
So greater financial success for the business can be had not by removing the mechanisms that incentivize high engagement, but by cementing their value and foundational necessity.
It is against the interests of social media platforms to discourage antisocial behavior.
There is a reason why every modern social media platform adopts the same core design, and the same social metrics: it is commonly understood to be the best practice for generating revenue and shareholder value, regardless of its impact on a platform’s users.
In other words, it is the optimal strategy for winning a game that’s not a game to other people.
12. connection
Online social systems play a critical role in our ability to build and maintain connections and communities. We’ve grown to rely on the internet to help us connect with others, but we need the value of those connections to be intrinsic—for their own sake.
As long as we’re distilling those connections down to numeric values—friends, followers, likes, shares—we undermine their intrinsic value, and corrupt the motivations for social connection. We open up vital social systems to pernicious manipulation, with greater potential for harm through mechanisms which implicitly reward bad behavior, and are backed by real, tangible benefits for doing so.
The social game is a losing game, but leaving it behind means losing the connections we’ve already made. So we’re stuck playing a game we never agreed to play in the first place.
If we want to stop playing the game, we need somewhere else for those connections to reside. Somewhere playful, but real. Sincere and unquantified. We need a clean, well-lighted place free from devaluing forces, and free from the motivations to treat our connections as anything other than human, and valued.
Some things in life just aren’t games.
