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SOCIAL The media has been a staple in the lives of many, making it virtually impossible to divorce our lives from social media given its extensive use in our daily activities.
This is true for me, and it may also be the case for other social media users, that it is about time we looked at how these tools are affecting our lives and the measures we can employ to control our use of social media.
I once believed that social media was just a tool and, as with any tool, it depended on how it was used.
I compared social media to a knife designed to cut an object. If the knife is used for other purposes that are harmful, then the fault lies not with the knife but with the person who uses it incorrectly.
Now I realize how simplistic an argument was, as social media actually makes it so much easier for users to spread harmful content, incite violence, to name a few.
Mark Zuckerberg in his Facebook post on January 7, stated that Facebook and Instagram have indefinitely banned former US President Donald Trump for using their platforms “to incite a violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”
The following day, Twitter, as stated on its blog, permanently suspended Trump’s Twitter account “due to the risk of further incitement to violence.”
The actions of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and some other social media corporations were in response to the assault on the Capitol on January 6 by Trump supporters, who demonstrated in support of Trump who “incited his supporters to march to the Capitol “where Congress sat to certify Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States. You can see from the events that social media is not just a tool.
It has become a behavior modification tool, affecting not only young children and adolescents, but adults as well.
To shed some light on the harmful effects of social media, I recommend watching The Social Dilemma (2020), a Netflix documentary drama that features a handful of tech experts offering insight into the mechanics of social media and its effects. users.
In the documentary, Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google who later co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, says that “we have moved from having a tool-based technology environment to a manipulation and addiction-based technology environment.”
This is a huge concern as social media is designed to keep us engaged on screen.
It’s not just about the hours we lose on the platforms; it is more the control that we lose before them as we are fed with content that we do not require or seek, which could affect our vision of the world and our decision making.
I recently bought a pair of shoes from a brand I had never heard of, until I saw their ad on my Facebook feed.
Now, consider the number of times you’ve bought items that you never searched for but were recommended to you on your Facebook feed.
What happened to you and me was not a coincidence, as there are algorithms in play that predict our interests, based on our online activities.
In the same documentary, Jeff Seibert, a serial tech entrepreneur who was previously a Twitter executive, says that our online activities are being watched, tracked and measured.
It should not surprise us then that social networks can provide recommendations that we may not seek, but that are related to our interests based on the “clicks” or “touches” we have made.
Whether this recommendation system is necessarily a bad thing is up for debate.
The way I see it, it’s a bad thing if we let social media control our decision-making by giving them hours of our time per day and effectively allowing them to modify our behavior and affect our decision.
Although we could, to some extent, determine the type of information we devour, the social media corporations that are selling our attention to advertisers cannot simply walk away from the fact that their inventions are negatively impacting their users, by spreading content. regulated.
Dangerous content available on social media can affect its users, especially young children who are more vulnerable to such content and can follow or replicate what they see on their screen. This is not an exageration.
On January 21, a 10-year-old Italian girl, who was found with a belt tied around her neck, was declared brain dead by a Palermo hospital, after allegedly participating in the “Blackout Challenge” on the video-sharing social network , TikTok. .
The challenge “encourages participants to drown until they pass out for several seconds, which is supposed to result in euphoria.”
Following the untimely death, the Italian Data Protection Authority temporarily “prohibited TikTok from further processing data related to any user whose age could not be established with complete certainty to ensure compliance with age-related requirements.”
In response to the Italian authority’s order, TikTok blocks access to all Italian users as of today and prompts them to re-enter their date of birth for verification, removing users under the age of 13.
The action taken by the Italian authority is imperative and stresses that social media corporations should not be left unchecked and unregulated, especially given their widespread consequences.
Given the damaging effects of social media, how can we protect ourselves and our loved ones from being controlled and manipulated by social media?
As Tristan Harris said in The Social Dilemma, “(social media) is confusing because it is a simultaneous utopia and dystopia.”
On an individual level, what we can do is limit our screen time. I share the belief of many that social media is fundamentally a force for good, and I have personally experienced many wonderful things through the platforms.
However, I cannot deny that social media is highly addictive and manipulative, and that the negative effects can outweigh the positive ones.
In the documentary, Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, founding father of virtual reality, and author of Ten Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, suggests we get out of the manipulative social media ecosystem.
Of course, this depends on the path one is willing to go.
For parents, monitor your children’s online activities, especially in this day and age when information and misinformation are easily accessible with just a few “clicks” or “taps.”
While we demand that social media corporations create a safe environment for our children, we must not leave our children in the hands of corporations.
We should also continue to pressure lawmakers to develop policies around social media and pressure regulators to penalize social media corporations that fail to protect their users.
Although it can be difficult to beat the system so intricately designed to keep us hooked on the screen, let the negative consequences as reported in the news and as seen around us be a wake-up call for us to be careful when using social media. .
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