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Mark Zuckerberg took the stand last week to testify in a lawsuit brought by grieving parents who believe their children were harmed by engagement with Meta’s social media platforms. Zuckerberg arrived at the courthouse still looking much like a teenage boy with his mop of curly brown hair. He seemed out of place in his grown-up clothes, a suit and tie. I watched this sober-faced man-boy, and I was reminded of images of young college-aged men on trial for the deaths of their fraternity brothers after a night of drunken hazing. Zuckerberg did have a good idea while he was still in college. Back in 2003, he seemed to understand the social needs of college students to connect, to be seen, heard, and liked. It wasn’t long before he realized that all people have these same social needs, and Facebook for the masses was launched. For most of us, connection remains the main reason we continue to use social media all of these years later. Zuckerberg launched his career at Facebook with the motto: Move fast and break things, a motto that has dominated the tech world. In 2014 he updated the motto to “Move fast with a stable infrastructure,” whatever that means. In any event, maybe it was too little too late. Move fast and break things was too deep in the DNA of the entire industry. And not just the tech industry, the contagion spread and created a pandemic that is apparent everywhere including our politics. These folks seem to have grown up with the belief that “We’re cool because we’re careless.” Think Facebook and the genocide in Myanmar, or Musk and DOGE. Move fast and break things is what a child freeing himself from the restraint and security of his mother’s arms might be thinking. Move fast and break things might be the motto of a wrecking crew not a builder, a jewel thief not the jeweler. Move fast and break things sounds like fun until it is time to clean up the debris field or until you cut off your own hands. When every norm is broken, lives can be destroyed, and they are not so easily put back together as the grieving parents who filed these lawsuits complain. It is not the first time Zuckerberg has been called to account. Many books have been written. Members of the press have confronted him. He has been called before Congress. Perhaps Zuckerberg feels too big to fail and so he has not heeded the warnings. Perhaps, like many powerful men, he believes the rules do not apply to him, or he deludes himself by believing that things are as he says they are because he says so. Or maybe he is incapable of empathy and through his social media empire, he destroys empathy in others. A business that is built on a model of scandalizing its patrons and promoting outrage will eventually become self-destructive. When you see the scale of the damage influenced or caused by social media, you realize the depravity. This model is not just breaking the rules of business; it is breaking people, breaking peace and order, breaking elections and democracy, breaking civilizations. A strong footing in reality is the foundation of mental health. Social media has stolen reality in order to sell advertising. Half of the country gets its news from social media where reporting is not balanced, fair or complete, where it is deliberately manipulated and sensationalized through disinformation in order to foster outrage, clicks, and sharing. It normalizes political fear and hatred and increases suspiciousness. It amplifies the demand for immediate answers which doesn’t allow experts time to do their work. This furthers misinformation and loss of confidence in science, truth, and expertise. Social media company owners cry “freedom,” to keep their malignant operations running, but what does that word “freedom" even mean when words are manipulated in such a predatory fashion? Research shows how easily our minds can be influenced and our choices and behavior swayed. All of this is well studied and applied by social media companies and marketers of every stripe. Social media is programmed to appeal to our reptilian brains—brains that react without concern for their young or for others. It makes people self-absorbed. Technology is causing children to be confused about what it means to be alive, to be a human being. It has changed the way we engage with others and work in groups. It amplifies our primal instincts of fear and aggression. As our machines get smarter and faster, we lose the higher functions of the mind like insight and empathy, functions that make us fully human and give us the capacity to anticipate and care about the consequences of our actions. There are many industries in which moving fast is critical: think EMTs, firefighters, ER doctors and surgeons, people who repair our power lines and sewer pipes in the midst of storms…It is possible to think fast, act quickly and still maintain the structure and safety of individuals and society. What most of us want is to live in a world filled with compassion not hate and conflict. We all want to feel inspired and optimistic not beaten and suspicious. We need hope not despair. We all want to be seen and heard, but the only way for society to survive is with shared truth based on facts and history. It is all coming to a head, Mark Zuckerberg, the speed, the greed, and the misdeeds. No kid goes off to college thinking he will kill a fellow student at a frat party. And that brilliant kid sitting in his dorm room at Harvard who came up with the idea to connect us surely didn’t start out with the intention to push teenagers to suicide or countries to genocide. You can do better than this. Our parents never encouraged us to move fast and break things, but they did often remind us to be careful of the company we keep.
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 If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. – African Proverb ******************************** Speed is the thing. It is the only thing. We want express lanes and speedy deliveries, fast food and speed dating, prompt responses and high-speed internet. We prefer snap judgments and quick reads, fast-acting elixirs and rapid relief. Forethought and careful attention to detail are as extinct as dinosaurs. Demand either today and your age is showing. And your new name is Karen. You will be tossed into the category of emotional extremist faster than you can swallow your dignity. Accuracy is not to be factored into the results so long as we are going as fast as we can. Destination is superfluous. In the prescient words of Yogi Berra, “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.” Here is the latest example. My friend Angie placed an Amazon order. Within the promised hours, Angie’s phone pinged an alert. The delivery driver was eight doors away. Angie waited a few minutes and then opened her front door. Ta-da! Prime magic. A package had appeared on her porch. Puzzled by the size of the box, Angie picked it up and studied the shipping label. The name and address belonged to a neighbor. Suspecting a mix-up by a harried delivery driver with a full bladder, Angie carried the package to the neighbor’s house. Sure enough, the package intended for Angie was on the neighbor’s porch. Fearful of being mistaken for a porch pirate, Angie knocked and traded parcels with her neighbor. Back home, Angie opened the box and removed the paper, the bubble wrap, and the plastic shrink wrap. Through some sleight of hand, the item in the box was not what Angie had ordered: wrong address, wrong item, but “on time.” There is some black magic that I can’t comprehend. Speed has been separated from time and results. Age may be a factor in my befuddlement, but age seems like a convenient stereotype to explain away this turn of events. I find myself looking for speed bumps, something to calm the traffic and prevent accidents. Many of us are just not fast lane people. We never were. We obey the speed limit, brake for squirrels, read the road signs, slow down and let others merge. We study the billboards and mentally correct the grammar, memorize the faces of missing children, ponder the Bible verses, and take note of the new businesses. If a caution sign says work area ahead, speed limit 50 mph, we’re willing to risk our lives for the sake of others. We…slow…down. Growing up in a different era reinforced my already unshakeable predisposition to travel in the slow lane. “Pay attention” was the theme song of my youth. We painstakingly practiced penmanship and served time in detention for running in the hallways at school. Adults were there to borrow from John Wooden and remind us: “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” We lived a life of lazy Saturday mornings lounging in our PJs until noon. We spent Sunday afternoons our grandmother’s house when all the shops were closed and a family dinner took all day. We were encouraged to slow down, take our time, do things right. The only thing we were in a hurry to do was grow up, and my mother warned us about that, too: “Don’t wish your life away.” Perhaps she was influenced by Shakespeare’s Macbeth who warned us of the “brief candle” that is our lives. Now, after a lifetime of temperament and conditioning, I find myself pressed to choose speed over satisfaction, action over forethought, frantic energy over peace of mind. Shoot me an acronym-filled text message, there’s no time to talk. Or listen. Life is zipping away. I can’t help but wonder, are we really saving time with all of this speed? If so, what is everyone doing with all of the extra time? Collapsing from exhaustion? When our loved ones travel or begin a new adventure, we wish them God speed. God speed is a blessing, not a curse. It is a prayer that the traveler will arrive, not swiftly, but safely and well. God speed implies fidelity, an old word meaning faithful and true. The right package reaching the right house at the right time in the right condition for the right reasons to serve the right purpose. I wasn’t built for life in the fast lane, and I don’t like going it alone. I find the journey safer and more enjoyable when I share the road with others. I am older now, but I still have far to go. I want the journey to be for the rights reasons and serving the right purpose. Will you come with me? We’ll go together. At God speed. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
March 2026
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