Social Media: Liberator or Overlord?

Image courtesy of Stockvault.

Sharing information has changed drastically over the last 20 years. Mass media initially involved printing words on paper. This could only affect people that could read, at least until pictures could get printed en masse. Print gave way to radio, which then gave way to television. Each change meant information spread from a trickle to a fire hose.

But the information only went one way.
The difference between mass and social media is that the latter lets the audience interact with what they’re getting. I used to tell people who yell at their televisions that the people inside can’t hear them. It was true until the advent of live streaming and live Tweets. Now there is a crowd consuming media that can turn on the provider and each other on a whim.

This is a good thing. Right?
People in countries affected by the Arab Spring might have the most to say about it. There certainly are some social movements here in the U.S. that needed social media to flourish. Despite these phenomena, there are also counter-movements forming against new ideas. Names for everyone get combined with searchable hashtags and spread everywhere like manure.

One question I don’t hear asked enough is whether social media is a servant or master of people. Facebook’s recent problems with fraudulent companies, Twitter’s problems with curbing ISIS recruitment accounts, and YouTube’s problem with abusive child media are all good examples of the darker side of this new thing. People want social media they can use freely, but they don’t want the consequences such unfettered speech brings. Strangely enough, the best way to prevent such consequences is to use social media to persuade people to do things.

That’s its own peculiar danger. Everyone can agree that social media is great when it prompts people to do whatever they feel is the RIGHT THING™. Such prompting needs to get looked at more closely. There is a very blurry line between a mob bullying people to follow along and a consensus getting formed from persuasion and mutual respect. Sometimes both can be happening at the same time.

Image from quickmeme.com .

I can’t say that social media is encouraging people to be the best versions of themselves.
Whether it’s an argument on Facebook or toxic trolling on blogs, right now social media companies have metaphorically destroyed the dam holding back human interaction. Everyone is their own mass media outlet now. The people who get voices are often only those which garner attention for attention’s sake. I think this forms the basis for my previous complaints on news and its impact on people.

Even this blog is part of the problem. I started it originally to voice whatever was coming into my head as I learned to cope with depression and anxiety. Those problems don’t exist on their own, and they necessarily reach into other areas. As of late, I’m terribly aware of what effects my non-fiction writing might have on my audience. I don’t want to add to mental illness stigma, or to hate speech, or to marginalizing anyone simply for belonging to a group.

The human capacity for speech is greater than it has ever been. Whatever I write no longer just affects one or two people that read it. But I’m still only a small part in this great machine of electronic data we call the Internet. My fear is that the least edifying of humanity will determine how this machine will work, that people will willingly deliver themselves into this web where they can never break free.

Social media, by all rights, ought to be a tool like a hammer or a screwdriver or a wrench. To a certain extent, they are, because they can be used to build many different things. Right now we still have a choice as to what we’re building.

I don’t think that choice will last forever.