The Guy Responsible For Facebook's Like Button Says Social Media Is Wasting Our Valuable Time

Last year, a number of former Facebook employees criticized social media heavily for the sort of negative effect it¡¯s having on society. One of the loudest voices at the time was Justin Rosenstein.

Rosenstein was instrumental in developing the Like button at Facebook, having also previously worked on Gmail¡¯s chat at Google. In the past, he¡¯s talked about the measures he takes to reduce the distraction of social media in his life, even ¡°banning himself from Snapchat.¡± Now, in an interview with The Verge, Rosenstein elaborates on just why succumbing to the distractions of the software around us is bad

¡°The problem is that we¡¯re wasting all our time in life, wasting all our time focusing on the wrong things,¡± he said.

Reuters

¡°It¡¯s especially painful in the workplace context, where we¡¯re just constantly bombarded by everything from social media to push notifications to co-workers to low-priority work that doesn¡¯t really warrant our attention right now.¡±

¡°There¡¯s research that says it takes 23 minutes to get into a state of flow where you¡¯re actually doing deep thinking on something. It¡¯s very rare to get 23 minutes of uninterrupted time, which means no one is in flow.

Reuters

Everyone is just skittering along the surface, and I think that¡¯s freaking tragic. These are our lives. These are our precious, finite, mortal little lives. The idea that we are spending them distracted, not accomplishing the thing that we¡¯re trying to do, is just painful. It¡¯s crazy.¡±

Rosenstein says he even finds himself getting addicted to the very tools he helped build. ¡°It¡¯s very hard to foresee those unintended consequences,¡± he says. ¡°But we have a responsibility to try and think ahead. The workplace is where you spend most of your time with technology. It¡¯s very hard to focus and get things done. It¡¯s just infuriating.¡±