Social Media: Blessing or Curse?

By Pierce K. Kozlowski

Introduction

Social media is a phenomenal invention. With social media, you can log in from your computer, and access it from your phone or any mobile device of choice. You enter a forum or feed, which presents you with content, posts, and videos – all of which are personalized entirely to you. You can interact with your family or friends, even if they’re on the other side of the world, via comment features, posts, or even through a direct message feature. And if that wasn’t enough, you can access and connect with entire communities of like-minded people over shared interests.

On Youtube, videos and content creators like Markiplier can share their brimming creativity through videos, and their fans can have a dialogue or show their support in the comments, or even make response videos. On Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, people can make posts, stay in touch with friends, and share their thoughts on current events, or positively educate their audience on topics ranging from social justice to personal fitness. On Reddit, Discord, and Twitch, people with like-minded entertainment or political preferences can interact through live video feeds with real-time chats, have an enlightening dialogue over dedicated chat forums, and even have a fun time or serious discussion over voice calls – all of which are used by people of all ages. The world has become one interconnected web of digital communities, saturated in a litany of never-ending fresh content. What a miracle! The world has transcended geography and borders; it has unified over the digital medium!

Despite this grand achievement, there is nothing without its downsides, and social media is no exception. In fact, it can be argued that the tremendous benefits of social media are equally matched by its drawbacks, and people at large seem to share this position – so much so that people believe that social media’s drawbacks have actually damaged the culture at large. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that 64% of Americans believe that social media bears responsibility for the toxic political landscape of modern American culture. In fact, the study also cites people believing that social media is the broader cause for “the way things are going in the U.S.” (Auxier). The assumption, of course, being that things are not going well. But if it's widely thought that things are not going well and that social media is the culprit, then the question remains: why do more than two-thirds of Americans think this?

The answer lies in the algorithm of social media, which has created three central problems in the culture at large: first, the algorithm has damaged public discourse by preventing exposure to diverse content; second, the lack of diverse exposure has led to the widespread formations of echo chambers and proliferation of misinformation; and third, the algorithm – fueled by the initiatives of advertisers – has both compromised the free will and negatively influenced the purchasing behavior of social media users on a mass scale. So, while social media has its amazing positives, it has equally damning negatives.

The Problem of Echo chambers

Beginning with the first problem, one of the myriad defects of social media is the algorithm. The purpose of social media algorithms, according to the Digital Marketing Institute, is essentially to curate content that you – the user – seem to like. Depending on how many times you interact with certain types of content, whether that be posts of your favorite celebrity, or posts from your preferred news outlet, you will always be ensconced in your own niche of personalized content. By extension, this also applies to advertisements you might be interested in as well (O’brien). On the surface, this does not present an issue. In fact, this would actually seem like an intuitive design because no one wants to waste time viewing content they have no interest in. So why then is an algorithm that supposedly addresses this problem suddenly a problem in and of itself?

The problem arises when we consider the consequences of this feature. Being constantly inoculated in content that you always like is consistent with the content that you always agree with. Effectively, your worldview is never challenged, and with no exposure to countervailing ideas or beliefs, you become part of an echo chamber. A 2021 study from the National Academy of Sciences found this to be true and concluded that “users online tend to prefer information adhering to their worldviews, ignore dissenting information, and form polarized groups around shared narratives.” Despite media algorithms depriving individuals of alternative opinions and sowing the seeds for polarizing groups, the researchers interestingly concluded that “when polarization is high, misinformation quickly proliferates.” (Cinelli et al). This is significant for the reason that there are not one, but two secondary consequences of social media algorithms: the first being online echo chambers injuring the quality of public discourse, which the aforementioned study showed; the second being misinformation manifesting as a result, and this brings us to the next problem.

The Problem of Misinformation

As the former study mentioned, the problem of misinformation proceeds from the nature of polarized communities. Think about it; when sharing a perspective in a chamber of people who already echo your thinking, as writer David Grimes suggests, the likelihood of scholarly pushback, intellectual honesty, or academic rigor becomes a pipe dream. This is because you’re speaking to an audience that is presupposing the truth of your fundamental beliefs, or that of the other members therein. Therefore, by entrenching yourself within the narrow framework of one camp whilst simultaneously shielding yourself from every other, the chances of accepting faulty or fallacious arguments become solidified (Grimes). This distinction between the disciplined standard of academic debate and the reality of modern-day dogmatism is sharply delineated by the liberal philosopher, John Stuart Mills (1806-1873): “There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation” (Wootton 616). Mills’s sentiment of refuting falsehoods in order to pursue truth is a position that is taken well by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) in his book Rhetoric: “we must be able to employ persuasion, just as deduction can be employed . . . in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him” (Barnes 2154). In other words, Aristotle and Mills – and all the other intervening philosophers who, in their golden flow of brilliance, piously carried that same torch of reason and rational principle – are asserting that one must exhaustively test an argument’s premises and rule out rival explanations before ascertaining its truth, and this could not be more different from the mindless folly of judging an argument before properly investigating it. That is why being able to socratically contest ideas, accepting or rejecting them on their merits, and leaving no stone unturned in pursuit of truth, is the cornerstone of healthy discourse and the prerequisite to engaging in the marketplace of ideas. However, the toxic acid of modern dogmatic thinking – made prevalent by the design features of social media – is entirely opposed to the former and thoroughly repugnant to the latter. And because the algorithms of social media produce online formations which result in the coarsening of the public dialogue – which has actively dissolved the faculties of reason and critical thinking from the minds of the public – it is understandable why the majority of Americans blame social media for how divisive and uncivil the mainstream culture has become.

The Problem of Targeted Advertising

Despite social media retaining some responsibility for the abandonment of civility in public discourse – a development that philosophers like Aristotle and Mills would’ve abhorred – the problem does not end there. The third and final issue that comes about is how advertisers take advantage of a user’s personalized feed, with some people boldly suggesting that this curtails the free will of the user. In 2018, columnist Michael Miller from the Law and Liberty organization did a review of Jaron Lanier’s book, 10 Reasons to Delete Your Social Media. Miller quoted Janier saying that the free will of social media users is being curbed by the gestalt of corporate interests and their respective algorithms: “We’re being tracked and measured constantly, and receiving engineered feedback all the time. We’re being hypnotized little by little by technicians we can’t see, for purposes we don’t know. We’re all lab animals now” (Janier). This is a striking take from Janier considering that he spent the better part of his early career exclusively in the tech industry (Wierenga). However, the thought doesn’t end here; Miller further elaborates on Janier’s idea, explaining that because of how tech giants operate in the digital square, users are more of a product than a consumer. This is because the oligarchic-corporate overlords of social media gather “data from users to whom it has no responsibility and uses that data to manipulate the user and make tremendous profit while simultaneously undermining the economic dignity of the user” (Miller). Miller, who reiterated Janier, even went so far as to liken the actions of targeted advertising to the operant conditioning methods of famous behaviorists like B.F. Skinner. Alright, so invasive data collection, targeted advertising, conditioning . . . these are all negative things that just sound like one bad thing after the other, but you’re likely asking what this last point all means when considering the full issue.

To paint a clearer picture, tech companies obtain information they have no business obtaining from their users, and use that information to design an algorithm that personalizes content to said user. Therefore, because this content is advertisement-focused, people are being systematically conditioned (in “Skinner-Esque fashion”) to engage with personalized content that makes it significantly more likely for them to make purchases they would otherwise never make. This is why Miller and Janier both suggested that social media undermines the personal privacy and economic freedom of the users involved. By collecting information on a user, they become a product rather than a consumer; by using that information against the user to target personalized ads and conditioning them to engage with such ads, they become financially undermined. For this reason, the algorithm of social media does two things: at worst, it compromises the free will of its users, and at best, it negatively influences the purchase and engagement behavior of said users.

Closing Thoughts

While these reasons don’t begin to properly scratch the surface of social media’s primary features and their subsequent consequences on society at large, it can be argued with reasonable certainty that one of social media’s greatest defects is the behavior of its algorithm – which is conducive to the formation of echo chambers, the spreading of misinformation, the deterioration of public discourse, and even the undermining of the user’s purchasing behavior. However, while social media may contribute to these problems, we mustn’t pass the buck and demonize social media as the ultimate scapegoat for said problems. As writer Cathy Young puts it, “Blaming social media for the state of our public square absolves us of responsibility. It also obscures the real issues — from economic insecurity to rapid cultural change — underlying political polarization” (Young). Ultimately, social media will be what we make of it, and while certain negative tendencies are bound to arise from the very nature of social media’s design, it is up to each of us as individuals to decide how much of an impact we let social media have on us, and whether we can turn a potential curse into a blessing.

References

1. Auxier, Brooke. “64% Of Americans Say Social Media Have a Mostly Negative Effect on the Way Things Are Going in the U.S. Today.” Pew Research Center, 15 Oct. 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/15/64-of-americans-say-social-media-have-a-mostly-negative-effect-on-the-way-things-are-going-in-the-u-s-today/.

2. Barnes, Jonathan. “Rhetoric.” The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Princeton University Press, Princeton , NJ, 1995, p. 2152, 1355a, 29-34.

3. Cinelli, Matteo, et al. “The Echo Chamber Effect on Social Media.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118, no. 9, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023301118.

4. Grimes, David Robert. “Echo Chambers Are Dangerous –  We Must Try to Break Free of Our Online Bubbles.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Dec. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/dec/04/echo-chambers-are-dangerous-we-must-try-to-break-free-of-our-online-bubbles.

5. Miller, Michael Matheson. “Social Media – What a Bummer.” Law & Liberty, 22 Oct. 2018, https://lawliberty.org/social-media-what-a-bummer/.

6. O’Brien, Clodagh. “How Do Social Media Algorithms Work?” Digital Marketing Institute, 19 Jan. 2022.

https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/digital-media-literacy/what-is-an-echo-chamber/1/

7. Wierenga, Allyson. “Does Social Media Compromise Free Will?” Acton Institute PowerBlog, 24 Oct. 2018, https://blog.acton.org/archives/104361-does-social-media-compromise-free-will.html.

8. Wootton, David. “On Liberty: Chapter 1.” Modern Political Thought: Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche, Hackett, Indianapolis, IN, 1996, p. 616

9-. Young, Cathy. “Is Social Media the Scourge of Democracy, or Is It Us?” Cato Institute, 20 Apr. 2022, https://www.cato.org/commentary/social-media-scourge-democracy-or-it-us.