[Tej Tourn, R1, RM vs SS] The rise of social media as a primary source of news distribution has thus far done more harm than good to society.

What is social media?

Social media is a collective term for websites and applications that focus on communication, community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.

People use social media to stay in touch and interact with friends, family and various communities. Businesses use social applications to market and promote their products and track customer concerns.

Some popular examples of general social media platforms include Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

a large group of people who live together in an organized way, making decisions about how to do things and sharing the work that needs to be done. All the people in a country, or in several similar countries, can be referred to as a society

1. The divide in society grows ridiculous and deep when you know the news your friends consider to matter most.
   
2. Clickbait and attention deficient societies.
   
3. Lack of social skills and depth regarding specific issues.
   
4. There is no sound reason to use SM as your NDP.
   

HOW CANCEL CULTURE DRIVES CRISIS PLANNING
Cancel culture, by nature, can be hugely damaging to your brand or business. This phenomenon—in which an individual or group stops supporting a person, product, brand, or organization—is most associated with social media. The act of “canceling” could mean boycotting an actor’s movies, refusing to use certain brands, or failing to patronize a certain organization.

One recent example of the power of cancel culture is the student campaign at George Washington University Law School against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the wake of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, which had legalized abortion. Students obtained 11,300 signatures on a petition calling for Thomas to be removed as an instructor. The university never had to take action because Thomas told the school he would be unavailable to teach this year. 
In another example, which occurred during the pandemic, podcaster Joe Rogan’s stance on vaccinations led some musicians to boycott Spotify, which hosts Rogan’s program.
What’s more, a decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to discontinue the publication of six children’s books due to perceived racism in images and text was viewed by conservative media as an attempt to push out beloved parts of American culture.

CRISIS RESPONSE PLANS ARE ESSENTIAL
The close link between social media and cancel culture highlights the necessity for a comprehensive social media policy and a crisis response plan. Protecting your organization’s hard-won reputation should always be front and center. Misinformation and mistakes can cause problems fast, so it is important to know what to do.
A social media policy should outline ways to provide feedback and address commentary so the information that is being shared online is current and correct. A crisis management plan should include a comprehensive social media policy so nothing is overlooked.

With a plan in place, you will have a roadmap for your response when an emergency occurs. Every instance will require different actions for different scenarios. Planning out your response ahead of time can remove some of the stress and uncertainty from the equation.

• The way that areas of one's life and friendships are now completely intertwined with pressuring fellow members of society (with unfriending, rejecting as a threat) if they happen to seem on the 'other side' of this either conservative vs liberal/progressive or Right vs Left divide. It's obviously more than that and genuinely the cancel culture is being done by the right-wing too, they're just more subtle.
  
• The flip-side of this is that even those who try to avoid the sheep-think resulting from it have become oppressed and resentful to fellow members of society. The divide is inescapable to 'feel' and experience unless your views are in line with the ones doing the cancelling and oppressing in your particular group of society. This is so extreme that people have to fear entire careers being ruined on top of isolation from friends.
  

• The way that areas of one's life and friendships are now completely intertwined with pressuring fellow members of society (with unfriending, rejecting as a threat) if they happen to seem on the 'other side' of this either conservative vs liberal/progressive or Right vs Left divide. It's obviously more than that and genuinely the cancel culture is being done by the right-wing too, they're just more subtle.
  

Before Social Media, you didn't need to know what others you associated with thought about everything, you had work colleagues as work colleagues, had your regular barber as the regular barber and didn't give a damn what they thought on matters as they'd keep it to themselves and share it selectively with friends at times. If their view was so taboo that society felt it was worth cancelling, they'd need to go out of their way to be that public about the opinion on the News or societal matter in order for it to result in severe ostracising. It was proportional and the divide in society was far more complex and intricate than now where there are the bland sheep and those too dumb to know to keep their mouth shut... Which is toxic on both sides to be identified as as it highlights the worst aspects of someone who was either having an opinion in line with society or brave enough to challenge the views others held.

The positive aspects of social media

While virtual interaction on social media doesn’t have the same psychological benefits as face-to-face contact, there are still many positive ways in which it can help you stay connected and support your wellbeing.

Social media enables you to:

• Communicate and stay up to date with family and friends around the world.
  
• Find new friends and communities; network with other people who share similar interests or ambitions.
  
• Join or promote worthwhile causes; raise awareness on important issues.
  
• Seek or offer emotional support during tough times.
  
• Find vital social connection if you live in a remote area, for example, or have limited independence, social anxiety, or are part of a marginalized group.
  
• Find an outlet for your creativity and self-expression.
  
• Discover (with care) sources of valuable information and learning.
  

harm

damage done to something

to damage something or make something worse

the common/general good (=benefit for everyone in society or in a group): The country’s natural resources should be used for the common good.

Some respondents predicted that those individuals who are already being left out or disadvantaged by the digital age will fall even further behind as algorithms become more embedded in society. They noted that the capacity to participate in digital life is not universal because fast-evolving digital tools and connections are costly, complicated, difficult to maintain and sometimes have a steep learning curve. And they said algorithmic tools create databased information that categorizes individuals in ways that are often to their disadvantage.

Pete Cranston of Euroforic Services wrote, “Smart(er) new apps and platforms will require people to learn how to understand the nature of the new experience, learn how it is guided by software, and learn to interact with the new environment. That has tended to be followed by a catch-up by people who learn then to game the system, as well as navigate it more speedily and reject experiences that don’t meet expectations or needs. The major risk is that less-regular users, especially those who cluster on one or two sites or platforms, won’t develop that navigational and selection facility and will be at a disadvantage.”

If the current economic order remains in place, then I do not see the growth of data-driven algorithms providing much benefit to anyone outside of the richest in society.

CHRISTOPHER OWENS

Christopher Owens, a community college professor, said, “If the current economic order remains in place, then I do not see the growth of data-driven algorithms providing much benefit to anyone outside of the richest in society.”

Tom Vest, a research scientist, commented, “Algorithms will most benefit the minority of individuals who are consistently ‘preferred’ by algorithms, plus those who are sufficiently technically savvy to understand and manipulate them (usually the same group).”

These proponents argued that “upgrades” often do very little to make crucial and necessary improvements in the public’s experiences. Many are incremental and mostly aimed at increasing revenue streams and keeping the public reputations of technology companies – and their shareholder value – high. An anonymous sociologist at the Social Media Research Foundation commented, “Algorithms make discrimination more efficient and sanitized. Positive impact will be increased profits for organizations able to avoid risk and costs. Negative impacts will be carried by all deemed by algorithms to be risky or less profitable.”

The quantity of information that we are exposed to every single day is astounding: we now in 2021 take in five times more information than we did in 1986. With our attention spans eroded to approximately eight seconds in our digital landscape, we have learned that to consume is to skim. Most of the text content is forced to be skipped. The American Press Institute found in 2014 that six in 10 people reported not reading beyond the headline in the past week.

About 73% of Americans report feeling certain degree of information overload, yet we continue to interface with it on a variety of devices and media, both professional and social. 1 It is estimated that the average millennial picks up the smartphone 150 times a day. This is purely technology addiction. In 2008, a statistical study conducted at Scotland’s Dundee University found that adults over the age of 55 who grew up in a household with a black-and-white TV set were more likely to dream in black and white. However, younger participants, who grew up in the age of Technicolor, nearly always experienced their dreams in color. 2 This shows the etching impact of the media over the mind.

The American Psychological Association supported these findings in 2011. Over-usage of technology harms the brain systems connecting emotional processing, attention and decision-making. Another study links anxiety, severe depression, suicide attempts and suicide with the rise in use of smartphones, tablets and other devices.3
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is defined by The New York Times as “the blend of anxiety, inadequacy and irritation that can flare up while skimming social media”. Social media is blasted with pictures and posts of scrumptious dinners, raging parties and enviable travel check-ins.4

While virtual interaction on social media doesn’t have the same psychological benefits as face-to-face contact,

there are still many positive ways in which it can help you stay connected and support your wellbeing.

Social media enables you to:

• Communicate and stay up to date with family and friends around the world.
  

• Find new friends and communities; network with other people who share similar interests or ambitions.
  

• Join or promote worthwhile causes; raise awareness on important issues.
  

• Seek or offer emotional support during tough times.
  

• Find vital social connection if you live in a remote area, for example, or have limited independence, social anxiety, or are part of a marginalized group.
  

• Find an outlet for your creativity and self-expression.
  

• Discover (with care) sources of valuable information and learning.