(upbeat music) - She's backed by popular demand.

Dr.

Jess Rauchberg, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Media and the Arts at Seton Hall University, one of our longtime higher ed partners.

Jess, good to see you.

- Thanks for having me again, Steve.

- Yeah, this is part of our Media Matters series producing cooperation with the new foundation, we created a Center For Media Leadership.

It'll be, the graphic will be up.

This is one of the areas I wanna focus on that's so important.

What the heck is an algorithm and why is it potentially so dangerous, particularly to young people?

- Absolutely.

So an algorithm at its most basic form is a set of an equation that can solve some kind of problem.

And these equations are what power the social media and content creation platforms that more or less shape our media landscape in 2026.

The ways that these platform companies like Meta, ByteDance and Amazon, our designing them is to get our attention and to keep people on the platform.

So many experts say that these algorithmic infrastructures create really addictive relationships between a user and a platform.

- How?

Addictive?

Where?

Here?

Like where?

- Yeah.

So the thing with these platforms is that, if you take Facebook or Instagram, for example, Facebook and Instagram aren't the ones that are uploading content.

They created hosts or spaces, where us, the users are, who get a chance to host our own content on Instagram, right?

I sign up for an Instagram account and I'm agreeing that they can do whatever with my content, with whatever photos or stories or videos as I'm uploading.

And the ways that Meta profits from these users putting their information or putting their content on the platforms is by keeping us on there.

That's also how advertisers see an investment in social media platforms.

And so it's not just, you know, an automated system that's recommending content for us to see.

That is part of it.

But there's a whole team at these platform companies that are making these platforms, spaces that users want to stay on.

So there are psychologists, technologists, marketing experts, who are trying to create an experience where we feel like we never wanna log off.

And that can be dangerous if we don't do that.

- Stay on that.

And I don't wanna go too deep into this.

Last night I'm getting ready to, for an all day taping, today, going through my material.

Then I took out this, the danger device and I started scrolling, and I'm embarrassed to say it.

I started scrolling down.

I'm into mixed martial arts.

Not actually doing it 'cause I don't want to get hit.

But, you know, UFC, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And an hour later I'm looking at fights from 10 years ago and going, what am I doing?

I have to get to sleep.

Why wasn't my brain... And I probably should talk to a psychologist about this.

Why wasn't my brain telling me, you need to go to sleep to get ready for tomorrow?

And why was I just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

- Yeah.

So I'm really glad you brought this up.

This is an important phenomenon that digital culture experts and media experts have termed as doom scrolling, where it feels like I watch one video and then I'm sucked in.

And that really shows how powerful on a psych, how powerful on a psychological level these algorithmic recommendation systems are.

So I watch an MMA video, I watch a sports video, a puppy video.

And if I spend a certain amount of time on that video, maybe I linger, I watch it again.

I scroll through the comments, I go to that profile.

The algorithmic recommendation system now makes an assumption, oh, this user will stay on the platform more the more we show them this kind of content.

And then, you know, it's two hours later and you are thinking, where did the time go?

So that's exactly how the algorithm works.

- I'm sorry for, I'm gonna move from mixed martial arts to politics and society.

- Sure.

- I've often said to my friends who will tell me they saw something in the media... And I'm so sorry for interrupting.

They saw something in which I think is affecting my attention span.

But that's another story.

So my friends will tell me, I saw it in the media such and such, about vaccines or health policy or anything, politics, the war, whatever.

And I realized that what they're looking at, their algorithm is designed to feed them information about the stuff not only they're interested in, but in the point of views that they appear to have.

And that what they're scrolling, doom scrolling, whatever kind of scrolling you wanna talk about, is telling 'em you're right.

And so therefore someone else's scrolling tells them something else.

Are we literally living in what Dr.

Richard Carlson, the author of, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff", who passed away too soon.

He called it separate realities.

Are we living, Jess, in separate realities in part because of this?

- I think that there's some truth to that.

That really eloquent statement, that it does feel like we're in separate realities.

Our feeds, while we might see the same content, we might not even get it in the same way.

It feels really personal.

I think about TikTok for example, their home screen, what you open up when you, what you see rather, when you open up the app is called the For You Page.

ByteDance did that for a reason because they want your relationship to the platform to feel personal.

However, when it feels so personal can silo us.

I also am concerned with how quick information spreads on these platforms when we're thinking about media literacy and media leadership, or leadership, because we don't have time to process.

We don't like one video, okay, we're gonna get fed another one.

Or we see one thing about a political event or public health outbreak, some kind of election.

And there's no time for us to sit and think, what does this mean?

We're just fed another video.

And so when media tools like social media, algorithmic recommendation systems really collapse time and space, it does impact our attention.

It does impact the way we think, and it also can negatively affect how we're able to dialogue with each other.

- Okay, so what I'm curious about is this California lawsuit, March, 2026.

California jury found that Meta and Google, they were liable for contributing to a 20-year-old plaintiff's depression and anxiety after years of social media use in pre-adolescence.

The jury found that the social media apps slash the algorithms were being engineered to exploit the developing brains of kids and teenagers.

How important is this case and what does it mean moving forward?

- This is a landmark case for not just the United States, but for platform companies and how they operate around the world.

I mean, last year we saw the introduction of Australia's social media ban for users under 16.

And a lot of the experts are likening social media and algorithmic recommendation that feels so addictive, that feels so impossible to escape.

It's akin to drinking alcohol or cigarettes that it's difficult to do in moderation and that it can have adverse effects when you start in, consuming that product, whether it's a cigarette or a social media feed at a really young age.

So I do think we're gonna start to see more pushes toward regulation, but I'm not sure how effective that regulation can be.

And in Australia, we're already seeing users under the age of 16 start to bypass some of those restrictions, or it's difficult to enforce those restrictions.

So I think the intent makes sense.

We wanna protect kids.

We wanna make sure that they aren't hurting themselves by, you know, spending seven, 10, 12 hours a day on social media.

But it can be difficult to enforce that.

Dr.

Jess Rauchberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Media and Arts at our higher ed partner, Seton Hall University, will in fact be a part of the new center that we have created, because they're promoting, training, teaching the next generation of media leaders.

Thank you, Jess.

Talk soon.

- Thank you.

Talk soon.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

Media really does matter.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Adubado Center for Media Leadership.

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The New Jersey Education Association.

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EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

A New Jersey health foundation program.

in support of the Adler Aphasia Center.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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