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Do social media make people dumb?
How much time do you spend on social media every day? Is it just a quick 5 minutes? or 6 hours? According to the latest report from Statisia (Stacy, 2023), the average time spent by internet users worldwide on social media platforms is 151 minutes. Many of us have found ourselves captivated by the endless stream of digital distractions, resulting in procrastination of tasks.
The prevalence of short-format videos, and advertisements can negatively impact our mind and decrease our critical thinking skills. In today’s digital landscape, a considerable amount of the content on social media lacks strict censorships. As users, it's crucial for us to cultivate our judgement to counteract misleading information, inappropriate behaviors, and various distractions present on the internet.
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First, there are a lot of misleading information filling on social media. To protect ourselves, we need to think and judge content critically. social media has shifted from a platform where friends share their life and photos, to a space crowded with random posts and advertisements. This shift is fueled by the incorporation of third-party tracking cookies (Anas, 2023) to monitor our searches, browser history, liked posts. Some social media platform like WeChat even eavesdrops information from on our daily conversation. (Josh, 2020)
The use of these cookies sparks a heated debate around human rights and privacy violation. Supporters believe that third party cookies can help advertisers enhance marketing strategies (Alexander, 2023), While opposer are concerned that these cookies contain incredible amounts of information, which may contain user’s medical history, sexual orientation, and even political affiliation. These data are also a big risk of privacy concern on human rights. (Cardlytics) While some suggest that effective social media algorithms can improve user experiences, generating more revenue for online shops.
The current lack of regulations in social media marketplaces allows low-quality products, copyright infringement, or scams to dominate our daily feed. Moreover, some advertisements disguise questionable information as content, influencing people’s thoughts on political views, generating fake reviews, or sharing sinister content. With the prevalence of biased and inappropriate information on social media, there is a risk that people may lose their ability to think critically and judge content accurately.
Second, we need to be vigilant about the message behind those viral videos dominated our apps. Social media frequently promotes inappropriate behaviors in public and online attention, prioritizing popularity over respecting people. This is evident in the selection of the most viewed and shared video, regardless of the behaviors depicted. In recent years, short-form videos, become the major form of content shared on social media.
"TikTok" is the first and largest app features short form videos (Lisa, 2021), which also influences most major social platforms to adapt this particular format over the years. These short-form videos typically feature funny jokes, interesting facts, or short movie clips, with the most prevalent being challenge-type videos for users to imitate. Unfortunately, users often behave inappropriately, such as harassing strangers in public through recording their interviews and pranks, in order to increase their popularity online. The algorithms on these platforms encourage disrespectful behavior and even suicidal contents (Bob, 2023), leading to widespread imitation by users desperately seeking attention online.
To prevent these situations, platform such as Facebook will allow users to report videos. While these platforms have features to report videos contain extreme violence and nudity as a way to protect their viewers. however, these approaches are not able to effectively safeguard their content from general users (Viktorya,2023). Without strong opposition to counteract this behavior, online influencers action was often overshadowed by the importance of respecting others.
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Some may argue that general users can learn a lot of knowledge through social media, there are a lot of knowledge-based creators and advertisers, such as numerous channels dedicated to various hobbies and educational shorts. These channel creators invest a considerable amount of time in scripting, video editing, and voice recording to produce genuinely high-quality content for people to enjoy and learn.
However, with the lack of a consistent method to verify the accuracy of online content, it means that even well-crafted videos made by popular creators could carry a substantial risk of spreading misinformation. (Tom, 2023) Users grapple with the significant challenge of verifying the authenticity of information, despite having additional research opportunities at their disposal.
Critics argue that the inherent nature of short-form content may lead users to consume information without thoroughly scrutinizing or questioning its content, swiftly moving on to the next attention-grabbing video. An illustrative case highlighting the dangers of unchecked information involves a TikToker Pico (account name: hapico_lb) who fabricated a newspaper article about a fictitious movie, "Minecraft," supposedly starring Pedro Pascal.
Surprisingly, many individuals believed the fake news and even propagated the misinformation (NY Weekly staff, 2023). This incident highlights the inherent risk of trusting information in the media, emphasizing how easily fake news can be created and disseminated.
Lastly, social media are a huge distraction in daily life and have significantly impacted people’s attention span. Even if we managed to escaped every greedy advertisement, stupid viral short video, the nature of social media still harms us by grabbing your attention constantly 24/7. Platforms encourage users to create Bite-sized content. Such as Instagram stories, notes, reels are aimed to providing short satisfaction. These functions trained user’s brain to be in a constant state of stimulation (Palak, 2023), keeping us engaged as long as possible.
Studies also suggest constant usage of social media can impact our cognitive functions. Such as media multitasking can decrease working memory performance and shortening people’s attention span. Though there are evidence that social media can increase verbal reasoning skill (Abi, 2022), we must not rule out the negative consequences of social media done to our brains.
In summary, misleading advertisements, inappropriate videos, and bite-sized content from social media are all threats to our knowledge, behaviors, and brain functions. The pervasive influence of social media, with global users spending an average of 151 minutes daily, raises concerns about misinformation, biased content, and ethical lapses.
Privacy debates are amplified by the use of third-party tracking cookies, exposing users to low-quality products and scams. Short-form videos, popularized by platforms like TikTok, contribute to inappropriate behavior driven by algorithms prioritizing attention over respect. A notable case involving a fabricated news article underscores users' vulnerability to manipulated information.
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As we navigate this landscape, cultivating discernment and advocating for robust content, safeguards become essential to mitigate the impact on critical thinking and ethical behavior in the digital age.
References:
1. Stacy J. Dixon. (2023, Aug 29). Average daily time spent on social media worldwide 2012-2023, Statisia.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/
2. Anas Baig. (2023, Aug 10). Everything You Need to Know About Third-Party Cookies, Securiti.
https://securiti.ai/blog/third-party-cookies/
3. Josh Rudolph. (2020, Oct 20). Enough of your eavesdropping, Wechat, China Digital Times. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/translation-enough-with-your-eavesdropping-wechat/
4. Alexander Gilmanov. (2023, Aug 26). What Are Third-Party Cookies and How They Work in Advertising, TMS. https://tms-outsource.com/blog/posts/what-are-third-party-cookies/
5. Cardlytics, Third-Party Cookies and Their Impact on Privacy.
https://securiti.ai/blog/third-party-cookies/
6. Lisa Montenegro. (2021, Aug 27). The Rise Of Short-Form Video: TikTok Is Changing The Game, Forbes.
7. Tom Nicholas. (2023, Dec 20). Unveiling the Dark Side of YouTube: A Shocking Tale, Toolify.ai.
https://www.toolify.ai/gpts/unveiling-the-dark-side-of-youtube-a-shocking-tale-313634
8. Bob Hoose. (2023, Jan 24). Study: TikTok Uses Its Algorithms to Hurt Teens, PluggedIn. https://www.pluggedin.com/blog/study-tiktok-uses-its-algorithms-to-hurt-teens/
9. Viktorya Vilk. (2023, Jun 29). Why Reporting Abuse to Social Media Platforms Is So Hard and How to Fix It, Pen America.
https://pen.org/report/shouting-into-the-void/
10. NY Weekly staff. (2023, Jun 2). Pedro Pascal set to star in Minecraft: the movie, New York Weekly.
https://nyweekly.com/entertainment/pedro-pascal-set-to-star-in-minecraft-the-movie/
11. Palak Sharma. (2023, May 31). The Attention Span Conundrum: How Social Media Has Transformed and Challenged Our Focus, Linkedin.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/attention-span-conundrum-how-social-media-has-our-focus-palak-sharma
12. Abi Edmunds. (2022, Mar 4). Does social media use affect cognitive function? An Overview, Linkedin.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-social-media-use-affect-cognitive-function-overview-abi-edmunds