Ethical Improvements for Social Media: User Empowerment and Interface Design

User empowerment has been defined as the ability to which a user can modify or change a digital interface in accordance with their own desires. One example would be an interface that allows a user to change the layout, modify settings, and adjust the colour to their preferences.

While such a concept exists in the field of UX/UI design, applying it to the field of Cyberpsychology and ethical improvements for social media may allow us to optimize human well-being. Presently, social media use is related to loneliness, fear of missing out, and depression, despite its original intention, which was to connect others with each other. Instead, social media appears to fuel a society where others are increasingly self conscious and disconnected.

The application of user empowerment to the field of cyberpsychology, social media, and well-being may allow for improvements, particularly within the elimination of dark patterns in social media.

Key improvements that could be made in social media interfaces within the lens of user empowerment entail the following:

1. A toggle button for infinite scroll: Allow users to disable the infinite scroll on social media platforms within settings so they may reduce the addiction.

2. The adoption of several social media layouts which users may toggle between: Allow users to enter their social media settings and switch between several layouts. This may increase user empowerment as it may allow different types of users to best achieve their goals (E.g., users who use social media primarily to message others).

3. Providing users the option to change interface colourways.

4. Allowing users to disable or avoid certain aspects of a social media interface by disabling them (E.g., disable Instagram Stories). This may allow users who wish to only accomplish specific tasks, like checking in with their friends profiles, to better achieve their goals. Some users may be motivated to avoid certain aspects of social media interfaces as it may generate negative emotions (E.g., wishing not to see updates from Instagram Stories due to FOMO).

5. Providing users to adjust their social media algorithm. For example, a user may be provided more opportunities to filter or provide feedback on the types of content they do and do not wish to see.

While the adoption of a User Empowerment lens for the design of social media does that solve all of the negative aspects of social media use and its negative impact on human psychology, it certainly moves towards the direction in which interfaces are more ethically designed. This may allow users to have control and agency over what they see and do over social media. As repetitive actions serve to rewire the human mind, it is important to understand how crucial it is to allow users the opportunity to wire the social aspects of their brain in accordance with their goals. Given that social media is ubiquitous with the way young people connect with each other, adopting a User Empowerment lens is crucial to optimizing the well-being of young people now.

In a certain perspective, User Empowerment can be seen as in direct opposition of dark patterns in social media, which serve to manipulate users to complete tasks that go against their original intentions. Providing users with agency over their interfaces may provide a highway towards the ethical designs of interfaces as a whole. However, its implementation is complicated, and understanding user intentions may begin with building profiles that users may endorse. This may begin with user testing to understand the different motivations individuals have for opening and using social media. This would allow us to undo aspects of design which distract users from accomplishing their original goals. The result of such modifications would be the integration of technology within human life, rather than the present reality, where technology presently disrupts human life.

Despite the original idea of social media, which was to build connections between people, it presently divides us into judgmental and self-conscious patterns of thinking due to its interface design. Providing users with options to adjust the interface may undo this effect and support better well-being for the young people of today and tomorrow. Such is the key argument behind adopting a User Empowerment lens when designing interfaces.