Zucked: Early Facebook Investor Roger McNamee on How the Company Became a Threat to Democracy
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In this Democracy Now! interview, early Facebook investor Roger McNamee walks through what he describes as the habit-building playbook of consumer platforms — notifications, rewards, and personalization tuned to keep people scrolling longer than they intend. He raises concerns specific to children and teens: he says Instagram carries 'huge issues with bullying and body shaming,' argues that products aimed at very young children, such as Messenger for kids, accustom them early to a world of constant data collection, and points to rising teen-suicide figures during the smartphone era as an alarming pattern that, in his view, demands scrutiny of social media's possible role — an association he raises, not an established causal finding. Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as McNamee's fullest on-record discussion of children and teens.
"Zucked: Early Facebook Investor Roger McNamee on How the Company Became a Threat to Democracy." Democracy Now!, October 23, 2019. https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/23/roger_mcnamee_zucked_facebook_mark_zuckerberg