A generation ago, Sean Parker would have us believe, parents worried that their children were becoming couch potatoes, passive consumers of information dominated by TV. But he said that concern has now shifted in the opposite direction, acknowledging that technology companies have employed “tricks” that encourage users to become “narcissistic, self-involved assholes”.

In a characteristically frank discussion at the Techonomy conference in California’s Half Moon Bay, the Napster co-founder said society had gone from worrying about one paradigm to worrying about another.

“We’re not sitting here passively consuming anything, we’re creating it,” says Parker. “Now we’re worried that everyone is going to be narcissistic, egotistical, self-involved assholes, who are going to spend all their time passively agonizing over every single photo of themselves doing every single thing that they’re doing.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Parker says it’s not up to Facebook to think about its impact on society: ‘They should try to be as successful a company as possible - I’m a big shareholder, I’d like that to be the case.’ Parker, right, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and rapper Snoop Dogg in 2011. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

There was an early realization at Facebook that social validation was driving use of the service, he said. “I think that same realization happened at a lot of companies over the years in social media, that social validation was the primary currency. That was what was fueling everyone’s engagement,” Parker said.

“I generally think that I’m going to discourage [my own children] from using those products the way I tried to trick people into using them when I was younger,” says Parker. Those “tricks” involve the feed algorithm, which is optimized to keep giving the user validation from friends.

Einstein was very upset by the nuclear bomb. You do science, and you get unintended consequences Sean Parker

“There’s a sense in which that’s a totally rational thing for a company to want to do. To try and optimize the process of making sure you get as much feedback as possible, because that’s going to cause you to post as much as possible,” he said. Engineers are working around the clock to learn what users want and make these algorithms better, perhaps without fully realizing the larger implications they might have on society.

So while the societal concern in the 70s, 80s and 90s was sloth, in the social media era it’s narcissism and ego, he said. Engineers aren’t creating the problem; they’re merely either consciously or unconsciously exploiting elements of human nature that were already there. He described this as “the unintended consequences” of the social networks.



“Einstein was very upset by the nuclear bomb. You do work that’s basic science work, or you do work that has to do with human psychology, and you get unintended consequences. None of us could possibly have understood what it would mean to have a billion or two billion people potentially using these platforms regularly,” said Parker. “That wasn’t something that factored into anyone’s analysis in the starting of these companies. You just want to be a successful company. You want to understand the mechanisms that work, you want to play into them, you want to reinforce them, you want to be a successful company.”

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Parker says that new companies are just happy to exist; they’re not looking 10 to 15 years down the line to determine the moral and ethical implications of what they’ve created. So whose job is it to fix the situation?

“It’s not incumbent on Facebook to change their behavior. They should try to be as successful a company as possible. I’m a big shareholder, I’d like that to be the case,” says Parker. Instead, he thinks it’s incumbent upon society to try and think about what it’s doing.

Social media has fueled an ego-driven society where we celebrate reality TV stars, heavily curate photos we post online and strive to have huge follower numbers on social media.



“Is that something we want to do culturally forever, or should we be trying to reinforce a value system that surpasses that element of human nature?” Parker asks. It’s a solid question, and one we might not be able to answer for some time.