Social Media

 

    We live in a world full of alternative facts and inconvenient truths. It has become accepted that those in power will lie and that those lies will be repeated to the point that the common man will often have difficulty separating fact from fiction. Far too many people are willing to lend credence to a statement they have read or heard online as long as it sounds right without taking the time to do a fact check. When I stop to think of how we got to this Post Truth Era as Daniel Levitin (2017) calls it, the only answer I can come up with is the popularity of social media. People have begun to confuse facts with opinions. 

    The world of social media has created a platform in which every person gets a voice and everyone can share their message. In many ways, this can be a positive thing but it becomes a problem when every voice is given equal weight without the fact-checking that used to go behind the worlds we once read online and in print. You know we are in trouble when Wikipedia has to lock down one of its pages because users keep trying to change historical facts about American history to match statements made by a politician (Estes, 2011).

    Social media has the power to change the world. We know this is true because its existence has already altered the world in which we live. Now we just have to determine how to harness the power of social media for good rather than let it control us. The potential power of social media today creates a responsibility in those that use it to find a way to channel its power into intentional and positive change.

    Many of the problems people blame on the rise of social media are in fact a reflection of our culture rather than social media itself. For decades children have grown up in public schools that emphasize socialization and self-esteem almost to the point of overshadowing the value of academics. When every child is told that they are the best without having to make any effort to succeed, is it any surprise that they carry over these feelings into the virtual world where they make carefully tailored identities that paint them as being the best in all things? And can we claim confusion when those same children fail to form real and lasting connections when they base all of their interactions on these artificial personas?

    So instead of bashing social media for all the things we want to blame it for, maybe we need to look more closely at our society. Instead of blaming it as the source of all of our problems we should consider that it is just a symptom of a larger issue. I wish I had all the answers to what the problems are and how to fix them but I don’t. But I do believe that in order to fix the problem we must first admit what the problem is rather than just blaming the side effects. 

Levitin, D. (2017). Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era. Dutton, New York, NY.

Estes, A. (2011). The Wikipedia War of Paul Revere and Sarah Palin. The Atlantic Online. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/wikipedia-very-sick-sarah-palin-supporters/351471/