Join the Tech Impact and Policy Center on November 18th from 12PM–1PM Pacific for The Social Media Trap, a seminar with Leonardo Bursztyn.

Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 11:40 AM for lunch, prior to the seminar.  The Fall Seminar Series continues through December; see our Fall Seminar Series page for speakers and topics. Sign up for our newsletter for announcements. 

About the Seminar:

This talk will focus on recent work by Professor Bursztyn showing that many social media users are stuck in a social trap: they would prefer not to use social media but could only do it if others also stopped using it. Combining simple economic theory with large-scale experiments, the talk will show that many social media platforms might actually generate negative value to most of its users. The talk will also discuss how these results might extend to other markets and present tools to address the social media trap problem. 

About the Speaker:

Leonardo Bursztyn is the Saieh Family Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is also an Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, the co-director of the Becker Friedman Institute Political Economics Initiative and Program of the Program in Behavioral Economics Research, and the founder and director of the Normal Lab. His research examines how individuals' main economic decisions are shaped by their social environments. His work has examined educational, labor market, financial, consumption, and political decisions, both in developing and developed countries, and has been published in all leading economics journals and featured extensively in major media outlets. Leonardo is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and an affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and at the Pearson Institute. He is also the recipient of a 2016 Sloan Research Fellowship. He received his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 2010.