The Conundrum of Social Media
(...and why I can't seem to quit)
Oy... I really can't find the right words to describe what a cesspool I think social media has become.
I've been on Facebook for many years, and still spend far too much time on there (particularly now that I'm retired and fairly bored). I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with it. I continue to love the way in which it enables you to reconnect and stay connected with old friends, as well as sometimes make a new one.
However, I find myself becoming more and more disillusioned with it. I've really come to resent the way in which their algorithm interprets my actions, and then inserts ads it thinks I may respond to. The sheer volume of these in my feed is becoming oppressive.
It also records the things I click on (among other things, in my case, lots of animal rescue vids), and then posting lots of the same type of content in pursuit of more clicks out of me (I have to admit that sometimes it works).
Twitter/X, Instagram, and TikTok all use similar algorithms to determine what to post on your feed. The most toxic application of this is in terms of politics. If you click on political posts that appeal to whatever hatred you feel inside, that platform will keep feeding you more and more of the same content, thus reinforcing and further fueling that hatred.
Many of these platforms have become dominated by people with a certain mindset. If you were to try and gauge public opinion about any political issue based on the social media posts associated with the story, you'd swear the people who have that certain mindset represent 80 to 90% of public opinion.
That's absolutely ridiculous. This is why I believe it's grossly irresponsible for news organizations to allow their social media platforms to serve as vehicles to promote the amount of divisiveness we see right now.
The comments don't remotely reflect actual public opinion; only those of people who have nothing better to do than to troll these pages to post fringe opinions, lies and falsehoods, rumors, conspiracy theories, and whatever else will further their agenda or promote their ideology.
Posting their stories on social media can help drive traffic to their websites, where they earn revenue, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, the comments provide no commercial benefit and instead have become spaces for people to just yell at each other and call each other names. They have absolutely no positive benefit.
These aren't spaces where people have thoughtful discussions about pressing issues. They more closely resemble elementary school playgrounds where people with the emotional capacity of 10-year-olds yell and scream at each other. Often, it's fairly easy to tell they haven't even read the article on which they're commenting. They just saw the headline and started swinging for the fences.
I won't claim to be immune to this, but I'm slowly achieving self-control. I used to jump into arguments with people pushing lies and propaganda with relish, and arguably almost always won. But any satisfaction was short-lived. It has become increasingly obvious that to the cultists, facts, reason, and evidence are irrelevant. That being the case, it does absolutely no good to argue with them and just fuels their dopamine-enhanced rage and hate.
I still occasionally post corrections to falsehoods because that's my jam, but I no longer go back and forth with the cultists who want to argue. And I'm reaching the point where I may not even bother to challenge lies in those spaces. I really feel like the toxicity in these comment sections is negatively impacting my mental health. I also believe that the toxicity found in news pages' comment sections is driving people away from them; another way in which these outlets are actually hurting themselves.
Unfortunately, I also see a lot of my Facebook friends reposting falsehoods - things that sound good, but aren't true. I don't know how to address that, or if I should even try. I tend to feel that, at this point in my life, keeping my friends is more important than being right or looking for some satisfaction from correcting them.
The fact is that fewer and fewer people who wish to explore facts and have interesting policy discussions are doing so on social media. I know this analytically because I can see how much less the people I'm connected to on Facebook are engaging on that platform. Many have left completely, I'm sure for the same reason (mental health) that I'm lessening my activity.
This is particularly true on news pages. The arguments that take place in their comment sections are usually stupid and offensive, and above all, unproductive and probably harmful.
I believe news organizations should shut down the comment sections of their social media posts, as they do way more harm than good. It won't cost them a penny; they can still promote their stories, it would help curb the viral spread of falsehoods, and would earn a lot of goodwill from those of us who still recognize the critical need for good journalism.
As for me, looking beyond all the toxic commentary, I often find myself really regretting clicking on something that's been posted and ended up in my feed. For example (not very frequently at my age), I'll see an image or video of an attractive woman that gets my attention and click on it, and for the next week I'm flooded with hoochie posts of every type imaginable - not to mention friend requests from strange women.
Or God forbid, I make the mistake of clicking on an ad for something that looks interesting. Not only will I be flooded with similar ads on Facebook for months, but they'll also start showing up on other pages (like news sites).
And then there's the fraud... With increasing frequency, I'm seeing people posting totally untrue narratives, often accompanied by AI-generated images as an illustration. Why people do this is totally baffling. I guess they get some sort of cheap thrill just knowing they fooled someone into clicking on their post.
I've been trying for years to convince my Facebook friends to migrate to a different platform that doesn't so flagrantly exploit us, but have had no success. I know the only reason I stay on Facebook is because that's where my friends are.
And this is just me on Facebook. I also have a Twitter/X account, which I never use (I can't express anything in 280 characters, much less 140), but created for work purposes. I have an Instagram account only because anyone with a Facebook account has one. I have a YouTube channel, but have had that since before it was regarded as a social media platform. I have a Blue Sky account, which I don't use for the same reason as why I never took a shine to Twitter, and I have a MeWe account, which is where I wish all my Facebook friends would join me.
Why we should all consider alternatives to Meta
I don't have a TikTok account. I have no use for that. I don't find the kinds of things people post there particularly entertaining, and frankly, don't understand why some people do. When I see people say things like "TikTok saved my life," all it generates from me is a facepalm. What differentiates TikTok from any other platform?
And I hope someday, someone can explain to me just what the hell brought about the rise of so-called influencers. This, to me, is one of the most baffling developments in the realm of social media, and an utterly sad reflection on the state of our society. Have we become so insecure, lacking in creativity, and devoid of individualism that we have to look to others to tell us what we should think or like or emulate?
And does this also account for our cultural gravitation towards artificial intelligence? Are we just becoming so lazy and uncreative that we abandon our own intellect in favor of machine algorithms?
And just to stray into what I believe is a related consideration, is this also why so many people have gravitated towards authoritarianism? I've read postulations that suggest the reason for this is that life has become too complicated for some people to tolerate. Can it simply be that our culture has become overwhelming in terms of the choices we have and decisions we have to make, and we want someone else to do that for us?
You see where I'm going with this, don't you?
The conflict, as I see it, is that social media provides a unique and novel means of being connected to friends and things you care about, while at the same time, it's perhaps the most prolific venue for bullshit and propaganda in human history.
I'm still happy to be connected with friends on Facebook, but if you see less of me on that platform, you know why.
I can always be reached via email: