Social Media is Harmful
Many of my Pacer Times articles speak out against modern technology. I am concerned about the level of digitalization that our society has undergone. One aspect of modern technology that I am most concerned about is social media. I believe that social media services are actively harmful to both the individual user and society as a whole. I have extensive experience both using and abstaining from social media, so I am not just someone who is reluctant to embrace change: I am someone who has been negatively impacted by social media.
Social media is a poor way of socializing.
Although it is called social media, I have never had a social media service improve my socialization. Even more personal social media services, such as Snapchat, enable shallow social experiences that fail to replicate the real thing. Less personal services such as Instagram and TikTok are even worse. These services tricked me into believing that people I never spoke to were genuine social connections that I was in touch with, something I realized was false when most of my followers ignored my repeated offers to maintain contact after I deleted my accounts. After ditching social media in favor of more traditional forms of social interaction, I have become increasingly aware of technology’s power to keep people disconnected from others, as even forms of technological communication that I still embrace, such as texting, fail to live up to the intimacy of face-to-face communication. While technologically based communication is important and effective for maintaining relationships in modern society, we as a society have allowed companies such as Meta to trick us into believing that curated and impersonal social media feeds are an effective substitute for the personal communication that humans need.
Social media Lets Algorithms Control Users
It is common knowledge that social media feeds are tailored to the individual user. What is not common knowledge, however, is why social media users are comfortable with having a
corporation control what media they consume in order to generate profit by any means necessary. Make no mistake: the corporations behind social media services are fueled by capitalism, not by the opportunity to provide a platform. Many people use social media politically, ignoring the fact that social media feeds are personalized, creating narrow and unchallenged political beliefs. Based on personal experience using social media as a source of political information, even political beliefs that I still hold were immature and blindly held due to social media. Memes and reactionary headlines are a poor source of information about global politics, leading many users—including my teenage self—to hold beliefs that are unfounded and undeveloped, simplifying complex issues that should be discussed in better formats than virtue-signaling Instagram posts. While social media is not completely to blame for the political division currently threatening America, we can no longer ignore the threat that social media is posing to our democracy.
Social media is potentially the most common behavioral addiction
While I am not someone who judges people for having mental health problems, I cannot write an article about social media without addressing the behavioral addiction that fuels our society’s unhealthy obsession with posts and likes to pad Mark Zuckerburg’s pockets. One of the main reasons why people consume social media content is as a limitless source of dopamine, with each new post and comment and like being akin to a hit or bump of a drug. Although this sounds like an argument that Nancy Reagan and your grandmother who dedicates too much time to watching the news would make, keep in mind that I have personal experience with social media, and I feel the need to highlight that this was the main reason I distanced myself from social media. When scrolling through my Instagram for you page, I began noticing that my scrolling was often mindless and purely compulsive, adding nothing of meaning to my life. The more that I compulsively scrolled, the more I became disgusted by the addiction that social media poses to the majority of its users.
Although many of my generation seem incapable of functioning without TikTok, I have found that my life has dramatically improved for the better since I quit social media. Social media services are intentionally designed to addict users to the never-ending source of dopamine that comes from having a source of unlimited information that is designed to appeal to you specifically. I encourage everyone to attempt to live without social media services. It is not as though life without Instagram and TikTok will end your social connections; texting and phone calls provide the ability to maintain social relationships beyond face-to-face interactions. Instead of isolating you, giving up social media can provide a healthy and realistic perspective on social relationships, revealing that liking a post or watching a story is a far cry from engaging in actual meaningful social interactions such as having a conversation over coffee.
