Social Media And Its Algorithms Are Destroying Us
An interesting correlation to observe is that between the advent of social media and the worsening of human interrelations. Facebook started in Feb 2004 and, although not the first social media platform it was the first to get really popular. “Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world, had 2.4 billion users in 2019. Other social media platforms, including YouTube and WhatsApp, also had over one billion users each.”(https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media) At the time, the global population was around 7.7 billion people. Therefore, that is a startlingly high percentage of users worldwide. My topic of argument here is that a childish digital representation of us, social media, has had unforeseen consequences upon human relations across the globe. Social Media and its algorithms are destroying us. Complexity is beyond social media.
Social Media Reduces Relating To Kid’s Stuff
Facebook was based on the premise of the school yearbook but in a digital format. Lots of pics of happy smiling faces and hopefully funny captions to go with them. Obviously, the concept appealed to lots of folks. There were ‘Likes’ and “Friends’ for the social engagement factor. All of these things are childish things: picture books, image based stuff, likes and friend requests. Real life transmuted into a simplified kid’s conception of life. Users were soon competing for how many likes and friends they had – these are hardly grownup things to do are they? This social media platform debased and dumbed down what adult human relations are really like.
Tweeting Made Nuance An Impossibility
Of course, social media is not just Facebook. Oh no, we had the childishly named Twitter to consider too. Over on this platform, which was originally limited to a 140 characters, so that it could fit into an SMS on a smartphone, things were more punchy. Spiteful, gossipy, and short and sharp to the point. Tweets were where the nasty kids expressed themselves in the schoolyard. Again, limiting the number of characters limited the nature of the interrelating. This was technology squeezing the human IQ or our expressive nature into confines to suit its purposes. Reducing us from adult status, with a hopefully larger vocabulary, to texting teenagers. “It’s impossible to express a nuanced opinion about politics…” (https://www.wired.com/story/a-brief-history-of-the-ever-expanding-tweet/)
The Algorithm Is Designed To Get Us All Riled Up
You can begin to see how social media has regressed us all via its formatting and conceptual digital designs. The Digital Age has not been this great innovative watershed but a truck stop on the way to nowhere. Everywhere you look online the textual titles and images are clickbait. Everything in the digital space is designed to grab attention via sensationalising. YouTube videos are made to enrage, aggravate, and provoke anxiety. We all sit down to countless hours of screentime every single day. Pouring over these sites, posts, and pages which crave our clicks. It is a recipe for our own destruction. We are not the smartest apes in the room because if we were we would all turn them off.
Toxic Hate Spreads Fast Via Social Media
OK, we have now reached a toxic level of hate and grievance for others and ourselves respectively. The actual world, not the digital impression of it, has not changed all that much. Our interaction with it through the digital filter has warped our perception of our fellow and sister human beings. The childish social media platforms encourage tribal behaviour and conflict. Nasty messages provoke online conflict. Trolls and cyber bullies attack other users anonymously. Vile language and name calling are all childish displays of petulance. This is a large part of what social media does for all of us. How great is that? How bloody stupid?
Ban Social Media?
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
This proverb is no longer true in the Digital Age of social media because online bullying can kill people!
In Australia, our government is bringing in age controls around who can use social media. The federal government is attempting to force the social media platforms to comply with these new guardrails. In all truthfulness, it would be better to ban it for all ages, rather than just isolating kids and younger teenagers from it. The positives are far outweighed by the negatives when it comes to the effects of social media in its current guises. Extremists love the medium, as it enables them to reach like minded folk rapidly. Terrorists and paedophiles can groom vulnerable youngsters on it. Gangs and mobs can threaten individuals via social media.
“Despite their increasing ubiquity in people’s lives and incredible advantages in instantly interacting with others, social media’s impact on subjective well-being is a source of concern worldwide and calls for up-to-date investigations of the role social media plays in mental health. Much research has discovered how habitual social media use may lead to addiction and negatively affect adolescents’ school performance, social behavior, and interpersonal relationships. “
- (Pellegrino A, Stasi A, Bhatiasevi V. Research trends in social media addiction and problematic social media use: A bibliometric analysis. Front Psychiatry. 2022 Nov 10;13:1017506. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.1017506. PMID: 36458122; PMCID: PMC9707397.)
The premise of this article is that Social Media and its algorithms are destroying us. The correlation between worsening human interrelations and the advent of social media is undeniable. The digitisation of human relations has spawned disrespect and embittered divisiveness. People say stuff online that they would never say to someone’s face in the flesh. However, because it is recorded, as that is what computers do, it stands as legal tender in the judicial sense. Text, post or email abuse and it is there forever and you are ultimately accountable for it. Finally, the laws are catching up with the Digital Age. Social media is a childish format for human relations in most of its manifestations via the available platforms. It brings out the worst in a lot of people.
It is being used, abused and manipulated by various nefarious agents for a bunch of different reasons. Scammers use it to hook their vulnerable human targets via identity fraud. Online bots are employed by political and covert intelligence operations to sway public opinion and sew dissent.
“Russia has officially made one dystopian prediction about artificial intelligence (AI) come true: it used AI to lie better, faster, and more believably. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice, along with counterparts in Canada and the Netherlands, disrupted a Russian bot farm that was spreading pro-Russian propaganda. The FBI director and deputy attorney general in a press release highlighted the use of AI to create the bot farm as a disturbing new development. What they did not say, however, is that the West is unprepared to defend itself against this new threat.”
The Internet is a portal able to cross borders and reach populations far away for relatively little investment. Social media makes this easy. Countries like Russia, Iran, China and Myanmar can get real bang for their buck in terms of attacking wealthier nations in the West. Of course, it was the US that started this covert use of the Internet in their digital attacks on the Iranian nuclear program. There are no clean skins in this abusive use of the online space.
“The US was the principal player in the most sophisticated cyber-attack ever known and has been orchestrating a campaign against Iran designed to undermine the country’s nuclear programme, it has been claimed. According to anonymous senior administration sources, quoted in the New York Times, President Barack Obama decided to speed up an initiative launched by his predecessor, George W Bush, codenamed Olympic Games, which aimed to use computer viruses to attack Tehran’s uranium-enrichment programme. The disclosures about Obama’s role in the cyberwar against Iran appear to show beyond doubt that the US, with the help of Israel, was behind the Stuxnet virus, which sent some of Iran’s centrifuge machines – used to enrich uranium – spinning out of control. “
Digital communication has delivered lightning fast human to human interactions but at the cost of our security becoming like Swiss cheese. Banks used to be in the game of protecting our money but not these days. Scammers enjoy seemingly unfettered access to the movement of funds globally. The banks take their cut of every transaction through fees. Security has gone the way of the Dodo and convenience is king.
The consequences of everyone staring at screens all day is that mass influence is much easier. Remember 1984 the George Orwell novel and its warning. Elon Musk has hundreds of millions of followers. Trump likewise has plenty. Getting the message out to the masses is too easy. Social Media and its algorithms are destroying us. Sending out pithy statements about stuff with no evidence backing up the claims is how Trump travels. Musk is the same. Stupid men who want to be just like Elon or just like Trump are fodder for macro corruption and authoritarianism. Humanity is in the grip of a childish entanglement with technology. Looking at devices making pretty pictures and turning life into a game is not making us smarter but dumber. The wake up call is going to be painful. AI is just going to accelerate that dumbing down.
Ask yourself this? How long does it take you to get riled up when you look at your screens? The click bait nature of the text, videos and images you are constantly seeing prods us for a reaction. Social media is like picking at a sore. Everyone is clamouring for attention in the online space. It is reducing you to a childish state.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©HouseTherapy
