Let’s start with Facebook. It used to be that I would open up Facebook and see, in rough chronological order, posts from “friends”, of whom I have about 600. I would post something that I thought was interesting or clever, and I would normally get 10 to 30 people who “liked” it or commented on it, and – if it was something personal, like a birthday – I would get over 100 people liking or commenting. That was then; this is now.

I just looked at Facebook, and scrolled down through the first 50 posts that were on my page. Of the 50, only three (yes, three) were from “friends”. The others were from “The Content Comet”, “LongIsland.com”, “American Red Cross”, “Sir Fur”, “Zillow”, “Humor Side”, “St. Jude’s”, “Punny Pete”, “Laugh Unlimited”, the “Wall Street Journal”, “Visit Washington DC”, “Animania Galleria” and so forth. And, oh, yes, there are “reels”, and “people you may know”. Facebook is no longer a place for communication, it appears, but simply a place where unknown groups post, for reasons that must earn them money although I am not sure how, and which Facebook’s algorithm thinks I’d want to see.

(Diversion and nod to George Gershwin, who never knew Facebook:

“Algorithm,

Algorithm,

Algorithm,

Who could ask for anything more?”)

Okay, the algorithm is not necessarily wrong. I do enjoy about 20% of the posts they show me – generally cartoons I think are clever. Rarely do I look at anything else. Well, that’s not right, either. I like the historical photos I see of various places, and I often get posts that have to do with architecture, and I look at those. But…..for this I need Facebook?

So, Mark Zuckerberg, a serious question: what has happened to your business model, and why?

By the way, as to the “people I may know”, I seem to see the same folks over and over, and I know that, even if I “friended” them, they would probably ignore me, thinking I was the product of a hack of some sort.

And as to the reels (and this is my real focus today), some of them are cute and enticing and addictive, to be sure, but beyond that they are worthless and they can be dangerous, and even they are changing, as reels created by artificial intelligence programs seem to be overtaking those showing real people doing real things.

Let’s talk about the addiction. The reels are addictive because they are so short that it is easy to say to yourself, “let’s see one more”. And on and on. They tend to be visually of interest; if not, you just stop watching and scroll down to the next one. They often have extraordinarily attractive people – whether it’s a 20 year old woman in a skimpy bikini, a muscular young man with a winning smile, and so forth. And, although you can assume these people are real, maybe they aren’t. These days, you just don’t know.

But these people do extraordinary things. They jump from the tops of buildings into swimming pools, turning 10 somersaults on the way down; they are so strong that they can carry another 5 people on their backs; their dancing puts Fred Astaire to shame. And then there are the “regulars” – the man who asks the young girl “Tell me your greatest secret”, “Tell me something your parents don’t know”, “What is your body count?”, “Why did you break up with your boyfriend?”, “Tell us one thing about Gabon than n one knows”, and so forth. And there are those that ask questions: “What flag is this? Right….the Seychelles” or “Name six countries in Africa that start with the letter W”. And the stand up comedians who are rarely funny. And I get a lot of Jewish reels – Hasidic weddings, rabbis telling jokes, and so forth. And a lot of boxing or WWE matches, or people slapping each other. Excerpts from Family Feud, and America’s (or Britain or anywhere else) Got Talent, or what have you.

Of course, Facebook is not the only place you can find “reels”, although I don’t tend to look at them elsewhere. They pop up all over YouTube, but I never open them there, and of course there is Tik-Tok.

Tik-Tok is all reels, and it’s been a long time since I clicked on the app, and perhaps its reals are more varied than the ones I get on Facebook, although some of them are, I am sure, the of the same type. But you can’t get your “news” from Facebook reels, and I understand you can, and millions or billions of people do, get them from Tik-Tok.

I totally discount the fear that the Chinese owners of Tik-Tok are using the app to get information about me, and – if I am wrong and they are – I really don’t care about that either. But I do fear that, although for me Tik-Tok and other “reel apps” are just a waste of time, for younger people, they can be dangerous.

For adolescents, whose bodies are not like those on the reels, or who do not have the worldliness of those who they watch, or whose athletic abilities are more limited, or those who fear heights, or who can’t speak Swahili, or whose body counts are 0 rather than 20 and those who have never broken up with a boyfriend or girlfriend because they have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. For all of these young folks, these reels can be dangerous (and more dangerous as time goes on), as well as addictive and time wasting.

In Australia, as I understand it, you now have to be 18 to legally watch any of this type of app. They may be part of the answer. And another part of the answer would be banning cell phones in schools, something that is beginning to catch on here (why that took so long is astounding to me). But still another may be more extreme, like banning Tik-Tok, and similar “reel apps” altogether. I know, “free speech” and all that. But still. You keep hearing that free speech does not allow you to call “Fire” in a crowded theater. That may be a sufficient precedent to say you cannot place Tik-Tok on an adolescent’s phone.

Let’s leave it there…….

But one more thing: Trump is suing the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll showing that he was trailing Kamala Harris? I have been very quiet about Trump after the election on the theory that we should give him a chance to see how his policies will really affect the world, on the chance that they will make some things better even we disagree with them strongly. That’s an easy position to take during the transition period, when Trump has no control over anything, and is just talking about who he is appointing to what positions.

It will be much more difficult to maintain this position after the inauguration, it seems, since the one thing he has actually done since the election – suing the press for an article he doesn’t like – is so abominable.