Here we are again friends. This time I wanted to talk about a very polarizing topic, social media. There are those who love it and those who can’t stand it and a bunch of us in the middle of those. The concept of social media is very simple. It is a network designed to let people from all over the world connect based on common interests and share their points of views and opinions. Sounds great, right? Well, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way.
In its infancy, social media was a limited thing. There were not a lot of people who were using it. I’m reminded of the days of MySpace, an early social media platform. When you asked most people about if they were on there, most people had no idea what it was or even how to use it. It was a very solid concept. Friends could find you and stay up to date with everything you were doing. How much they knew was totally determined by how much you shared.
I never posted much on the old platform. I never needed to. At the risk of sounding very old, I still believed if someone wanted to know what was going on with me, they should pick up the phone and call me or stop by my apartment to hang out. I didn’t see much value in sharing photos or status posts. I honestly thought it was going to die out and just fade away. I mean I was already connecting (and being pissed off at) people from around the world during my time as an online gamer, also still in its infancy. Then Facebook came along.
That is when social media really began to appeal to the masses. Why? Hell, if I know. It was the same thing except in a prettier package and without people competing for a space on your main page (which was a dumb thing anyway). Facebook gave rise to an entire industry of companies who created social media platforms. Instagram, Twitter, and a bunch of little known or more specialized social platforms began to spring up. People were connecting in ways they never had before.
People in America could connect with people in Japan and bond over epic animated shows. People in France could connect with people in Mexico based on their music preferences. People in Brazil could connect with people in Portugal over their ancestry. It seemed like everything was great. People had a way to share their views on everything from politics to muffins. Everyone’s voice could find others like it. No longer was the one goth girl living in a rural town in the middle of Oklahoma alone. She could connect with others who were just like her in situations just like her.
That is exactly what the inventors of social media wanted. Well, that and to make some money off their invention like anyone else living in a capitalist society. The truth is, while that does still happen, there have been things about social media that negatively impacted our society. The biggest of these is an addiction to social media. We all heard the phrase “doom scrolling”. The act of just scrolling through tons and tons of social media posts to the point that you really don’t even register what you are looking at. That is what most people are doing. If you go out and watch people in public settings, a lot of them are staring at their phones and scrolling through their social media. Completely oblivious to the wonders of the world around them.
There is a programmed idea that if we are not looking at social media, we will miss something important. Yet, half the time, all we see is people sharing pictures of the food they are about to consume. This leads to information overload. There is so much information, both important and trivial, that our brains literally can’t process it all. This can cause us to miss something important.
The way information is presented can also be an issue. Many people, especially younger generations, have become accustomed to getting information in smaller segments. Data has shown that a lot of Gen Z individuals don’t follow links that lead to longer stories about any sort of topics. To many, if it’s not in these bite sized pieces, then its not worth knowing. And yet, as a society, we see more and more people using social media as their primary source of news and information. This can be a problem when you have complex concepts to explain like tariffs and immigration. It is extremely difficult to make something bite sized when it’s incredibly complicated.
That then leads to something that is so incredibly difficult to deal with, misinformation. News outlets, in theory, are held accountable for what they say. If they give the wrong information or straight up just lie, there is usually a consequence. Journalism is supposed to be unbiased. Social media has no restrictions. Anyone can say anything they want. People can make all kinds of claims on social media and there is little recourse for those actions.
Once that wildfire starts, it’s nearly impossible to stop. We see this everyday in the spreading of rhetoric about immigrants and transgender people. We see it in posts by government officials spreading false facts about our economy. We see it by governments posting information to impact elections in other countries. And there is no clear-cut way to deal with this since those who want to spread this kind of misinformation will find ways around things such as bans and blocks.
The last point I want to make in this blog is about the worst thing about social media. We all have opinions, and they are all valid. However, not all of these opinions should have a platform to be heard. Social media has given rise to increases in things such as racism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. There has also been increases in intolerance, hate speech, and even death threats. And none of it is based in reality or has any real reason behind it except for the fact that someone has hatred in their heart.
This is also difficult to combat. There is an argument on how this is protected by certain rights granted to users by the government. However, the data shows how harmful the continuing of this behavior becomes. Even I have been subjected to random strangers who don’t agree with me or are somehow think they are affected by my gender identity encouraging me to commit suicide as some sort of act of compassion for society.
This leaves people with a choice to make. With the plethora of social media platforms, do we simply move from one to the other? That is a real possibility. However, the danger is that we create an echo chamber, whether intentionally or not. Having only, one sides view doesn’t help. Informed opinions and intelligence only come from listening to both perspectives. But that doesn’t mean we should simply look at someone who is wishing death upon us as another point of view. Hate and bigotry are all rooted in impulsiveness and irrational ideology. There is absolutely nothing logical about it in any way despite what one side may say.
I think, in the end, we must limit ourselves. We miss so much around us so much when we are looking at our feeds. I don’t deny that some good comes from social media. I met my best friend on social media. I found a supporting community on social media. These things helped me in ways I can’t even describe. However, I feel that a tipping point is coming for social media. With so many using it for ways it was never intended to be used and spreading messages that go against the ideas of hope, unity, and freedom, I think its only a matter of time before social media begins its descent into history and is remembered that while it showed some a bright light, it also showed how dark the human race can be as well.
-Robin Alura
No comments:
Post a Comment