Cruel optimism is when someone takes a big problem that has deep causes within our culture and offers a simple solution that is up to an individual to implement. These solutions are often given in a positive manner. What makes this form of optimism cruel is that the solution will ignore deeper causes in society that are causing the issues that will lead most individuals to fail. Then when the solution fails, the individual blames themselves.

A current example of cruel optimism is many people’s response to the issue of social media distracting us. Many think that the answer to being distracted by social media is to simply limit your social media use. From my own personal experience, this is much easier said than done.

When I tried to give up Instagram for 5 days, I turned off my notifications for Insta but then found myself going to different social media and checking those instead. My bad habits persisted, despite my effort to lose them. My phone was still constantly sending me notifications. When it no longer could send me Insta notifications, I started to get more Facebook notifications instead. I did cut down on my social media use, but not by much.

Authentic optimism on the other hand, is when a group of people comes together to build a solution that addresses the underlying causes of a problem. By dealing with the deeper issues, this allows there to be a long-lasting solution.

Simply turning off your notifications may solve the issue of phone distraction for you, but not everyone. The problem of our phones distracting us will continue if social media companies have a reason to distract you. As long as they make money from advertisements, they are going to bombard you with notifications to get you to view their advertisements. This is why an authentic optimism response is needed to address the root issue of our phones distracting us. Social media companies need to be pushed to rework their business models, so they aren’t making money off our viewing of advertisements if we don’t want them to distract us with advertisements.