“Privacy is dead, and social media has the smoking gun,” said Pete Cashmore, CEO of the online news site Mashable. Though there are other causes for the deterioration of privacy, and we would argue that it is not too late to save it, Cashmore was correct. Social media, by definition, encourages users to share their data. It is also addicting and potentially harmful. It also has a negative impact on our democracy and fundamental rights. As a result, we must understand how to reverse its detrimental effects.
How it all began
Social media started very little. The phenomenon is only a few decades old. In 2004, MySpace became the first large-scale social medium to reach one million members. It brought people together and allowed them to share images. However, in 2019, Facebook had 2.4 billion users, while YouTube had over one billion. These social media behemoths do a plethora of things. Facebook is working on its own news service. Google is developing self-driving cars. TikTok, with its short video format, is especially popular among young people, with an average of 20 million subscribers added each month between 2016 and 2018. However, it is conceivable that it will grow and offer additional services in the future. It’s safe to claim that social media has taken over the planet. They all make the majority of their money through advertising.
What’s fascinating is how much the social media ecosystem has evolved since its inception. MySpace, once the market leader, has vanished. Twitter used to not allow videos because of its microblogging style, but all evidence reveals that the best performing material on its platform today contains video and images. Although Facebook is the most popular social media platform, it is not as popular among the young, who prefer Snapchat or Instagram. The young see Facebook as a site for the elderly.
The ‘age gradient’ for Snapchat and Instagram is particularly steep – these services’ popularity declines quicker with age. Snapchat is used by 73% of those under the age of 25, but only 3% of people over the age of 65 use it.
So, what causes social media to be toxic?
The rise in social media use over the previous decade has, of course, coincided with a significant increase in the amount of time people spend online. Young people are driving this tendency. In the EU, young people’s online time has more than doubled in the last ten years and now ranges between two and three and a half hours each day.
This is significant because it indicates that young people increasingly live online. It means they are connecting with friends or family or looking for information online, but they are also vulnerable to bullying or rumor spreading and have unrealistic perceptions of other people’s lives. According to one Pew Research Center poll, young people saw as many negatives as positives about social media.
However, even if social media is perceived as neither positive nor harmful, it is true that it forces people to compete for views, claps, likes, or praise. This has an impact on both the younger and elderly generations. This is why twitter is so toxic.
The persistent pursuit of recognition and attention can have negative consequences in our life, leaving us hurt or in need of more attention. A terrible example is the case of a ‘Mum Blogger’ who felt forced to defend her baby since the images she posted of him on Instagram were not receiving much attention.
Several research have found that excessive social media use increases the chance of people feeling nervous, depressed, or lonely. It’s even been linked to an increased risk of self-harm and suicide.
Is it all about the cash?
Advertising is how social media firms generate money. Selling advertising by providing a free service is not a new concept; television, newspapers, and media corporations have been doing it long before social media companies existed.
The most recent episode of your favorite TV show isn’t made only to satisfy you. It is designed with commercial breaks in mind, so the 30 minutes of pleasure are punctuated with two or three short commercial breaks.
Social media works in a similar manner. It seeks to keep you on its platform for as long as possible by giving you the impression that you are receiving a free service. This increases your chances of falling for some of the advertising on the sidebars. According to Facebook, each user makes more than $8 in revenue every year. That is a lot of money.
Filling your feed with more clickbait and things that catch your eye is one method to accomplish this. And therein lays one of the major pitfalls. The algorithms that power our social media platforms favor the most dramatic, frightening, and destructive news. That is how terrorist footage spreads so swiftly around the world. That is how anti-vaxxers’ conspiracy theories are spread on social media. Extremists gain oxygen this way. And this is how social media giants like Facebook profit from divisive, misleading, and harmful content to our democracies.
My data is my data
But the issues with social media go far deeper. Have you heard of Cambridge Analytica? In 2018, it was revealed that this previously undisclosed British political intelligence firm has been utilizing people’s personal data obtained through Facebook for political purposes.
The corporation was able to access the data of all those who had participated in a ‘digital game’ played on Facebook designed by a third party, as well as the data of those people’s friends. To play the game, you had to agree to share your data as well as the data of your friends. But no one in the game had ever heard of Cambridge Analytica, and their data was being used for political campaigning without their knowledge. Cambridge Analytica had just collected 87 million people’s data by creating a simple digital game, and they were able to use this data to micro-target voters with their political advertisements.
Facebook expressed its outrage. The general public is even more so. However, the social media behemoth has been doing this for years. Its currency is people’s data.
This episode revealed that simply by using social media, you may be giving massive quantities of data about yourself and your friends, and presumably their friends’ friends, with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of companies without even realizing it.
Some skeptics may respond by claiming they have nothing to hide and perceive no danger. That could very well be the case. However, our democratic system cannot function properly unless your data is kept private. It’s not only manipulative advertising that is microtargeted to touch our personal buttons. According to research, people are less likely to discuss potentially contentious matters online when they are aware that they are being followed. And democracy cannot exist without public discussion.
How can you safeguard yourself against its noxious effects?
Technically, you can turn off your phone or establish a time limit for your social media use. You will simply be unable to use these platforms as a result of this. Of course, this is difficult because everyone is online, including our friends and family members with whom we would like to maintain communication.
This implies that we should become more ‘news literate’ or knowledgeable about the news and whatever material we read online. For example, we should always investigate the source or profile of anyone who shares a dubious message. We should also read from a variety of sources rather than limiting ourselves. It is not acceptable to share something without first reading it.
Is democracy under threat?
Malicious states and organizations all over the world have long recognized the potential of social media for their actions. Certain entities realized they could have their political advertisements in front of millions of people without being held accountable. This means that countries like Russia can sponsor causes or parties that undermine our democracy or promote instability. Russian intelligence may sponsor online efforts to destabilize the UK and the EU with impunity during the Brexit referendum.
Social media is harmful not only because it is designed to be addictive but also because platforms disseminate disinformation and encourage their users to engage with false news rather than fact-checked real news. As a result, misinformation travels faster and to a larger audience. This undermines public trust in democratic institutions such as elections, governments, and public services.
What this means is that outside influences might destabilize and undermine our own democracy simply by exploiting gaps in today’s social media.
At the moment, there is no European-level transparency framework in place to ensure that all those who submit advertisements have their credentials reviewed, exactly like traditional advertising. It means that our data might end up in the hands of anyone, with little we can do about it.
Is there an overarching solution to the problem?
Legislators and human rights organizations pressure social media companies to update and enhance their programs to safeguard society from harmful content, such as malicious disinformation. The EU is eager to take the lead in regulating Facebook and Google to preserve people’s privacy and prevent Europeans from being subjected to constant commercial surveillance or propagating fake news, both destabilizing democracies. Discussions are still ongoing; in some situations, advancements are positive; in others, these changes introduce new issues.
We urge the EU to implement a system that requires all entities that wish to publish a political advertisement online within the EU to register and be held accountable for the material they display. We also need to know who is seeing these advertisements. It is necessary for the sake of our democracy. In our activism, we still promote another significant solution: ‘The EU must ensure that data protection standards are really enforced.’ These regulations shield us against some of the most harmful and manipulative methods, such as micro-targeting.’
The EU should compel social media companies to be open about their algorithms and how they decide who sees what content. Just as we test food and automobiles to ensure their safety for our health, we must inspect algorithms to ensure their safety for our democracy.
Finally, we must discover strategies to encourage individuals to spend less time on social media and more time in the real world. There is substantial evidence that social media is harmful to humans on multiple levels. Let us not give its bad effects any more airtime.
