Social Media Can Be A Force For Positive Or Negative Thinking

by Mike Critelli

Recently, the Social Media Victims Law Center filed lawsuits against Meta (Facebook and Instagram's parent), TikTok, and Snap. What does this have to do with the MakeUsWell Network?

Everything!

In 2016, I joined the PowerMyLearning Board, a New York-based non-profit. Its mission is to empower teachers and families. The organization used to provide free laptops to low-income families. After the families received the laptops, learning workshops were offered. I attended one at a Bronx school.

After 2½ hours of training, on the many benefits of the new laptops with Internet on-ramps, the last hour was a real eye opener. The trainers focused the parents on all the bad things unsupervised use could bring to the kids.

Social newsfeeds, video games, postings, and online forums, cyberbullying, pornography, violence, and self-harm/suicide themed URLs.

The recent lawsuits do not treat social media as neutral platforms. These lawsuits allege that the sites are most focused on increasing user engagement by whatever means works most effectively, even if the algorithms induce self-destructive behavior, fear and anxiety, violence toward others, or depression.

The claims in these lawsuits resemble the old maxim of local news editors: “if it bleeds, let it lead." This is magnified and multiplied by how social media sites achieve addictive engagement.

This addictive and destructive set of trends was inadvertently, but unmistakably, accelerated by the pandemic lockdowns ordered by government officials at the recommendation of public health authorities.

School children increased their online usage. Adults working either from their homes, or from satellite work sites also were in front of computer, phone, and tablet screens more than in the pre-Covid work environment.

This combination of more algorithms designed to achieve more addictive online engagement, the focus on negative news, comments, conflict, alienation from workplaces, and the significant increase in the time we all spend online is a lethal mix. By their natures, addictive products and services, unless understood and counteracted, will continue to take increasingly large parts of our population into a downward spiral.

Employers, faith-based institutions, educators, and public health officials need to know this and they need to take the same kind of pre-emptive action they would take if a community were being devastated by opioid, cocaine, alcohol, or performance-enhancing drug addiction. This is one of the nation’s silent crises that is wildly underestimated in its impact.

The tools the internet has given us over the last three decades have far outstripped our ability to manage them. It is equivalent to handling highly toxic and hazardous chemicals by people who do not realize the risks of what they are handling.

At the MakeUsWell Network, we are focused on how to diagnose the most prevalent online addictive pathologies in communities and how leaders must address them. You will hear more about our work in the coming weeks and months.

1 Response

I see two factors contributing to the social media driven disinformation and political polarization that is becoming ubiquitous, the “Universal Printing Press” and “Click Bait”. UNIVERSAL PRINTING PRESS Fifty years ago authoritative newspapers delivered to our houses provided curated news from authoritative sources. Today newspaper readership is much reduced and the Internet enables anyone to create a website and online content without any editorial overview or authentication. If I make outlandish claims and strategically select keywords in my content, then my online content may be the material that appears when people search for content on that topic. Unless the content becomes “viral” and catches the attention of concerned citizens, there will be no rebuttal or contrary content posted. Even highly educated people can be fooled by professional quality websites with official sounding names, fabricated information, and falsified documentation. The social engineering utilized in current online scams is often more convincing than the legitimate sources. CLICK BAIT Social media make money for the content providers and the social media companies by attracting viewers (“eyeballs”). It is an unfortunate law of nature that we are most attracted to interesting or “outrageous” content: videos of teenagers performing dangerous stunts in stolen cars on crowded city streets will attract many viewers. Social media will therefore naturally evolve towards the sensational and magnify any slight tendency towards controversial and biased content thereby resulting in content rich in disinformation and political polarization. When social influencers and pop stars have millions of followers, they are motivated to create content that attracts more viewers and sustains their money-making enterprises. They are not journalists or scientists; they are not motivated to conduct deep research into the legitimacy of the content they are posting and re-tweeting. Meanwhile, some TV personalities find spreading obvious lies and conspiracy theories energizes their viewers and translates into millions of dollars of income and product sales. SOLUTIONS? The youth who are newly introduced to the miracle of the Internet have all of human knowledge at their fingertips ... as well as mountains of disinformation and toxic content. They are not yet equipped to distinguish the two. So far, solutions to these issues have been lacking. We cannot agree upon a “big brother” to rate the legitimacy of online content. This is probably a good thing because truth is not a popularity contest. No matter how many people believe hydrogen is heavier than oxygen, it is not. Many people trust https://www.snopes.com/, NBC, or the New York Times to rule upon the truth or myth status of widespread news reports. Naturally the generators of disinformation do not and have their own selected authorities so the problem persists. When millions of people reject the “authorities”, managing online content is a serious challenge. Less widespread disinformation never even gets contested. Even the SSL “padlock” on a website which provides some assurance of a secure connection for sensitive information is misleading. The “padlock” does not authenticate the website as being legitimate. It merely ensures that your transaction will reach the target site securely – but there is no determination as to whether the site is a criminal scam or a legitimate business. CONCLUSION Despite the phenomenal benefits of the Internet, social media have opened Pandora’s box to disinformation and scams. We are living with the “Knights and Knaves” philosophical problem of asking directions of a liar and an honest man. Unfortunately, we don’t know which is which and therefore we don’t know what to do with the answers we receive.

Douglas Quine, PhD

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Social Media Can Be A Force For Positive Or Negative Thinking

by Mike Critelli