Social media: company wealth at the expense of user wellbeing?

Social media allows you to easily connect with others, express your personality and share with the world whatever you want, whenever you want. That’s what it can often appear to be on the surface, but below that, social media platforms including TikTok and Instagram are built with algorithms designed to keep people engaged for as long as possible - keeping users scrolling, watching, liking and coming back. Why? The more time users spend using social media, the greater the amount of advert views; meaning more ad revenue therefore more money for the already huge social media companies. 

 

However, this does not happen without issue; its addictive design often comes at an expense to user wellbeing. It can have a highly negative impact on physical health (sometimes contributing to obesity and eating disorders), lead to lower life satisfaction, waste valuable time and fracture relationships through its anti-social design. It can also cause lower self esteem through the normalisation of heavily edited looks, creating damaging pressure to alter personal appearance to meet unattainable standards. Social media can also make it feel like everyone else is living a better life, often because people only share the highlights of their life. In addition to this, social media can often promote harmful content, including violence, extremism, hate and misogyny; it can open doors to strangers along with darkness. All of this, and more, can contribute to poor mental health including anxiety and depression where in some severe cases, has lead to suicide. Sadly, the biggest impact is often felt among children and young people.

 

To put it simply, social media companies are too often making money at the expense of user wellbeing.

 

Aside from individual users, social media has a huge impact on society too. It often can act as an echo chamber, offering a limited perspective on different issues, with little to no variety or challenge. This can often be influenced by bad actors, both domestic and foreign, and have real world consequences such as affecting elections. Content shared on social media, such as attitudes towards woman or minorities, can also distort people’s perspectives and exaggerate existing issues. Furthermore, misinformation can spread like a wild fire, partly because the line between fiction and truth often gets hazy, having both online and real world impacts. For example, in the wake of the horrific Southport stabbings in the UK, misinformation around the attacker’s identity spread fast including claims that he was a migrant when in fact, he was not. Riots then ensued where migrants where targeted, people threatened and many police officers injured.

 

Of course, social media isn’t all bad, it can be essential for businesses and play a vital role in everyday communication. But the damage caused by social media to society must not be ignored. The big multi-billion and multi-trillion companies must be held to account for the problems they have knowingly caused with their damaging greed. Greater power must also be given to the user, so that they have greater control over what they want to see, not what the algorithm wants them to see. More moderation to detect and remove inappropriate content is also needed. The government must take more action to ensure the young and vulnerable are shielded from the dangers of social media, whether that's with new regulation or better law enforcement. 

 

It’s time for companies and governments to act.