Facebook without the Metrics

Recently, after I wondered what Facebook would look like without the numbers, I received an e-mail from Benjamin Grosser about his Facebook Demetricator. Initially, I was skeptical. I've seen too many apps that were nothing more than phishing scams. However, after doing some more investigation, it looked legit. My initial reaction was that it didn't feel any different. However, I quickly realized that I felt calmer on Facebook. I had never realized the emotional side of knowing how many minutes ago a post was or the implied sense of urgency it was creating. I had never considered how the time elements (to the minute) were working to create a gamified experience. The next thing I noticed were the lack of alerts. I didn't have a red number telling me what I was missing, nagging at me to get it down to a zero. Same goes for the pages I manage. Again, without the notifications, I wasn't worried about making sure I wasn't "missing" something. The last thing I noticed was the lack of numbers in the "likes" column. I paid closer attention to who liked what rather than whether or not an item was heavily liked. I realized, in this moment, how often I had been paying attention to posts that were "more liked" rather than posts that were catching my attention. The bottom line is that Facebook has elements of gamfication. My wife calls it a "relational casino" and I tend to agree. Although we go there for distinctly social, human reasons, the platform itself is designed to keep us there. So, the metrics aren't simply data points to keep us informed. They are gamified elements to keep us there. Take this away and it's less exciting initially. However, there is a subtle calm in the demetrification user experience. Facebook feeds off the user's anxiety level. Take that away and you get something much closer to face to face interaction, but also something that looks much less like a video game. So, my lingering thought is what school would look like if we had our own sort of Demetricator, especially in assessments. We might find that there is a greater sense of calm and a greater focus on the human side of learning.