Use Social Media, Not Social media You

Social media is a double-edged sword and we need to understand it better.

Social media needs to be strictly regulated.

The rapid development of social media has changed people’s lifestyles and created many positive changes. However, it is also dangerous. So I think social media should be strictly regulated, and the government should establish special laws on social media and punish those social media leading enterprises for their malicious monopolies.

Because first, there are more and more types and numbers of social media and various industries are beginning to involve social media. In my opinion, social media is like a huge comprehensive market. Any market needs strict supervision to become ordered and excellent. For example, like the monopoly of Facebook mentioned in the article “When it Comes to Facebook, the Need for Action Has Been Obvious for a Long Time” by Kara Swisher, when Facebook’s acquisition of other software is rejected, plagiarism and copying are adopted to curb their development. Snapchat is an obvious example. Their ideas and products are being eroded by Facebook bit by bit. I think this is not real social media, and this kind of monopolistic behavior will have a knock-on effect, for example, the profits of the copied company will shrink, the unemployment rate will increase, and so on.

Second, many people regard this behavior as an antitrust behavior, but it is difficult to bring Facebook to court because I think social media mostly corresponds to data, and these data will involve a lot of our privacy, so we can not treat data like treating other products that can be monopolized, but should be treated as more complex things that can be shared and stored. Besides, the government has not taken any effective measures to restrict social media after 1998. Therefore, the government’s inaction on social media has also exacerbated this phenomenon. So, as far as I am concerned, the government should adopt special laws on social media to control it, and appropriately suppress leading social media enterprises like Facebook. Because breaking up the dominance of players like Facebook is so hard and we still need them now.

Correct adaptation is important

I think we should develop a habit of reflecting on any information because my major is communication, so I understand some strategies of social media, and I always believe in one sentence that everything has two sides. For example, as Sinan Aral mentioned in Prof Galloway’s podcast, the spread of fake news is faster, deeper, and wider than the truth in every category of information that they studied. Moreover, social media is subtly changing our behavior, such as voting, dating, exercise, and so on.

I agree with this point of view. For example, when people see some news that is unfavorable to the elector, they will have a strong sense of substitution. Even if the news is later found to be false, the vast majority of people will have a bad impression of that elector. Therefore, when we cannot change the general direction of social media development, we need to adapt to it in the right way. In my opinion, when we are immersed in any social media, we need to think carefully about every piece of information. And we need to understand the information that we see maybe not true.

Second, it is mentioned in GENEVA COLLEGE BLOG that one study found that college students who are on Facebook while studying or doing homework earn grades that are 20 percent lower “than students who don’t have the social networking site in visual range or running in the background on their computers or mobile phones.” So we should also control the time we use social media. I think reducing the cost of time on social media is also beneficial for us to recognize social media.

So Social media needs to be supervised, and we also need to look at social media with a pair of reflective eyes and control the time of using social media.

See you next week!