It's much worse than tobacco. At least tobacco only kills people when they're older, whereas social media robs young people of their mental health while simultaneously threatening truth and democracy
This seems to be the latest topic from the outrage machine. Can you explain how social media is an actual threat to the democracy or democratic process to a reasonable person?
Roughly 50% of the population in the US have an absolute distrust of the media, election results, and science. But wrap something up in a meme and post in on Facebook and it's treated like Gospel.
Here's something that's extremely disturbing to me.
"Republicans have become the purveyors of misinformation, and when our two-party system is broken like that, democracy is seriously in trouble. The president acknowledged that it's time to actually start doing things and maybe taking some names and putting people in jail."
I would say jailing press for printing things the government doesn't like is way more obvious a threat to democracy than the information they publish. This is no longer a slippery slope if this guy would even consider uttering this on national TV. We would be going into pretty blatant authoritarianism.
I was originally going to write a whole drawn out thing, but I realized it wasn't necessary.
One interesting aspect to think about on how social media affects democracy is the aspect of education. I can't find the video right now, but I remember seeing or maybe reading a post that said how you watch all these videos on all these topics ranging from math to economics to civil engineering etc, and you build this false perception of "oh yeah I know this shit", but really you don't, you know one summary that was presented to you.
Those channels: Tom Scott, Johnny Harris, 3B1B, etc. Are all amazing in the time they spend learning their material and then producing such high quality instruction, but even if you watched an hour long video on econ you still wouldn't be an economist. A lot of us know this, but there are a lot of us that don't, and we then go to vote on bills and politicians thinking we know the implications of our actions and how it might affect the country when we really don't.
Of course this isn't just a conversation about social media and it can devolve into a conversation about the dangers of an uneducated democracy overall. But I feel that social media definitely contributes to this false sense of educated that a lot of people have, pair that with echo chambers, misinformation, and an addictive formula and you've got a troublesome future.
> Can you explain how social media is an actual threat to the democracy or democratic process to a reasonable person?
The best explanation I've read of this is Tim Urban's "The Story of Us" series [1]. It builds up a model from individual behavior to societal behavior and how it's changed over the decades due to how online interactions have shifted behavior (both individual and societal).
I don't know whether it's the right or wrong model and explanation, but he lays it out very clearly.
I read that series when it first came out, so it's been a while. Forgive me if it's hazy. I completely understand the political divide and how it started in the late 80s. Limbaugh was really the frontrunner of our modern version of it. Fox took his model and applied it to TV. Many traditional news companies adopted that model for the left, and here we are. Social media is really just an extension of that.
I'm not sure how it's a threat to democracy though. I certainly don't believe it originated on social media either. People on both sides repeat some really dumb shit, but that's always been the case.
> Social media is really just an extension of that
This is true, however extensions are by their very nature different than the thing they're extending.
Social media is an extension to traditional media at a scale, speed, and attack vector (friends, family, community) which humans are much more vulnerable to
People are pretty vulnerable to the garbage that passes for news in the last 20+ years. I'm not so sure "fixing" (read censoring) social media will solve any of this, even if it was possible. The outrage machine will still exist in traditional news media, but they won't have to worry about new technologies unseating them. I'm not sure that is a good thing. Social media, to me, seems like just a comment section to current events, most of which are presented from traditional media.
FWIW, I haven't used social media since Snowden, so I don't know what it looks like today compared to 9 or so years ago.
It might be worth your time to explore outside the realm of singular, anecdotal, HN comments and dive a bit into the history and research. Good luck to you, friend!
>It might be worth your time to explore outside the realm of singular, anecdotal, HN comments and dive a bit into the history and research. Good luck to you, friend!
I don't buy the statement that social media is a threat to democracy. I think it's a political football and used hyperbolically in an attempt to normalize further censorship of people and press. I was hoping for at least one reasonable example of how social media is literally a threat to democracy to ease my mind, but I have yet to see a convincing one. I would say if anything, government censoring press and citizens is significantly more of a threat to democracy than garbage people post on social media that most people can see through.
You've also stated that you aren't up to date on the latest information around the topic. I've recommend you familiarize yourself and even provided resources (Cambridge Analytica, Social Dilemma).
It seems you're incredibly invested in this conversation. Take this time and passion to learn about it.
When you say reasonable person, do you mean layman? If so, watch the Social Dilemma. There was Cambridge Analytica and other countless misinformation campaign examples
