The All-Powerful Media
From hunter-gatherer to post-industrial societies, the way humans socialize has evolved tremendously but, there is no precedent to the ease social media added by enabling them to socialize unconstrained by geographical and temporal boundaries. Regardless, the positives of social media accompany the ever-growing negatives.
Unbridled by rules and regulations, social media has played havoc with societies by making people vulnerable to cyberbullying, privacy invasion, false information, data theft, and mental health complications. In 2018, ICO sued social networking behemoth Facebook after its failure to secure users’ personal information was discovered, which allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest the data of 87 million users. The data was allegedly used to influence US elections. This highlights the gravity of the threat that social media poses to peace and democracy.
Cashing Human Emotions
What was initially created to make people’s leisure time pleasant has now transformed into a means of cashing their emotions ranging from insecurities to love and hate, directly impacting advertisements and buying choices, war and peace, and even elections? Recent research shows that 67% of consumers got influenced to buy a product or service after seeing it advertised on social media. What makes such influence bad is the absence of measures to hold deceiving marketing accountable. While social media puts buyers at risk, it does not spare small businesses either. It takes away their power through centralization, as big companies like Facebook favor monopoly and do not shy away from buying potential competitors to maintain dominance and power.
The Onslaught of the Young
Since young minds are most vulnerable to its potential side effects, regulating their usage is essential to avoid irreversible damage. However, with 94% of teens being online every day, it is hard to keep track of their online activity. To curb the overall negativity of social media, an updated set of laws and regulations is thus the need of time. Rules regarding fact-checking viral content, implementing eligibility criteria, blocking hateful content, and privacy and data security can be of great help. Although social media companies have been held accountable by the court previously, it only happened after the damage was done, as with the Cambridge Analytica case.
Implementing rules and regulations can prevent them from misusing their prodigious power over our democracy, economy, and society. But more importantly, breaking down their power subsequently weakening the dominance tech giants like Facebook and Google enjoy, is essential to ensure they abide by the law and find any noncompliance in time. Finally, social media can be used for benefits but only after much-needed caution and legal regulation and intervention.
