Has social media been a positive or negative influence on society?
Humans are inherently social beings, whose modern existence relies solely on the ability to
collaborate and exist in a symbiotic society. Throughout our history, civilisations and groups,
which were the most efficient communicators, whose members and rulers had the best access
to information, the ability to apply and pass on this information had the most successful
survival and prosperity. Then natural selection performed its unstoppable magic.
I hold absolutely no doubt that the 21st-century explosion in information and communication
technologies had an immense effect on our society and species. Social media is the
culmination of millennia of evolution, and we will never be able to imagine our lives and
history without it.
The beneficial aspects and implications of social media are relatively trivial. It facilitates the
exchange of information to, literally, a few twitches of a finger, connecting people and places
from across the globe. From Facebook, Instagram, to instant messaging and YouTube, the
phenomenon has accelerated the rate of scientific progress, cultural exchange, increased
freedom of speech, opened the doors to an education for millions of humans and advanced us
closer to democracy.
But can this all be an illusion?
Clearly, the companies and beneficiaries of social media realise the power of the tool in their
hands. It can be demonstrated that control over the wide-reaching tool is fairly highly
monopolised, possessing the influence to direct public discourse and information flows. Why
would mass-media then propagate and publicise its own faults and detriments? Hence, I can
not help but notice the insufficiency of academic and philosophical discourse about the
opposite side of social media.
We know that the overwhelming majority of social media platforms and their services are
free of charge for the user. This strikes me as slightly ironic and contradictory in a capitalist
society, in which innovation is propelled by the drive to generate profit by making the
customer pay, hence why is social media free of charge? Is there a catch? In business circles,
a poker saying has been adapted to describe this mystery: “If you receive something for free,
then you are the product”, highlighting the fact that nothing can be ever free. Applying this
concept to the nature of social media yields an interesting result. Google and Facebook (now
Meta) are the two biggest monopolists in the market, and the biggest inflows on their revenue
statement remain “online advertising”, comprising 98%, or UDS$86 billion, of Meta’s
revenue in 2020. Yes, the adverts on the side of the page and random posts in our social
media feed have paid Meta for their place, demonstrating the extreme willingness of
businesses to sacrifice massive resources to find themselves on your screen, because of social
media’s extreme influence on our behaviour and purchase decisions. Social media is an
extremely powerful tool for corporations and businesses to expand their reach, but the
personal, psychological effect is rather insufficiently researched, and it is possible that in the
neurological aspect, social media’s greatest detriment can be most evident.
Why is social media so addictive?
Humans are inherently social beings, whose modern existence relies solely on the ability to
collaborate and exist in a symbiotic society. Throughout our history, civilisations and groups,
which were the most efficient communicators, whose members and rulers had the best access
to information, the ability to apply and pass on this information had the most successful
survival and prosperity. Then natural selection performed its unstoppable magic.
I hold absolutely no doubt that the 21st-century explosion in information and communication
technologies had an immense effect on our society and species. Social media is the
culmination of millennia of evolution, and we will never be able to imagine our lives and
history without it.
The beneficial aspects and implications of social media are relatively trivial. It facilitates the
exchange of information to, literally, a few twitches of a finger, connecting people and places
from across the globe. From Facebook, Instagram, to instant messaging and YouTube, the
phenomenon has accelerated the rate of scientific progress, cultural exchange, increased
freedom of speech, opened the doors to an education for millions of humans and advanced us
closer to democracy.
But can this all be an illusion?
Clearly, the companies and beneficiaries of social media realise the power of the tool in their
hands. It can be demonstrated that control over the wide-reaching tool is fairly highly
monopolised, possessing the influence to direct public discourse and information flows. Why
would mass-media then propagate and publicise its own faults and detriments? Hence, I can
not help but notice the insufficiency of academic and philosophical discourse about the
opposite side of social media.
We know that the overwhelming majority of social media platforms and their services are
free of charge for the user. This strikes me as slightly ironic and contradictory in a capitalist
society, in which innovation is propelled by the drive to generate profit by making the
customer pay, hence why is social media free of charge? Is there a catch? In business circles,
a poker saying has been adapted to describe this mystery: “If you receive something for free,
then you are the product”, highlighting the fact that nothing can be ever free. Applying this
concept to the nature of social media yields an interesting result. Google and Facebook (now
Meta) are the two biggest monopolists in the market, and the biggest inflows on their revenue
statement remain “online advertising”, comprising 98%, or UDS$86 billion, of Meta’s
revenue in 2020. Yes, the adverts on the side of the page and random posts in our social
media feed have paid Meta for their place, demonstrating the extreme willingness of
businesses to sacrifice massive resources to find themselves on your screen, because of social
media’s extreme influence on our behaviour and purchase decisions. Social media is an
extremely powerful tool for corporations and businesses to expand their reach, but the
personal, psychological effect is rather insufficiently researched, and it is possible that in the
neurological aspect, social media’s greatest detriment can be most evident.
Why is social media so addictive?
