Something which a little while ago got me thinking – to the extent that I felt that I needed to blog about it – was the decision to ban young people from social media following an example in Australia. Now, my thoughts were not strictly along the lines of is this a good idea or not – rather the announcement triggered a lot of related things.
It is likely that many will look at this idea and say yay or nay to the question of is this idea a good one. The problem is that whilst that is a possible way of gauging public opinion in lots of respects this is ‘opinion’ of the worst sort and it is definitely possible that the popular opinion may well be missing the point. The reason for this is that without an enormous amount of study it is impossible to actually quantify the worth of a ban – or conversely the worth of allowing social media use.
In this post I should say that I am in no way putting forward my own opinion– because I am quite ready to admit that my knowledge of the ins and outs is sparse. What I think I do have is the capacity to explore the things that need to be covered in depth to arrive at any judgement.
Starting with the easier aspects it is undoubtedly true that social media as it currently exists certainly has the potential to do harm. There are certainly people who are “bad actors” in the social media community. Looking from the other perspective it is also true that there are people who are much more likely to fall victim to the dangers that lurk in that environment.
I should put a warning here that this post is likely to go off on a number of sideshoots and it maybe difficult to determine what the main point is. If you find yourself thinking that then good – to a certain extent you are getting the point – this is not a neatly contained problem.
Fundamentally, of course, all social media is just a set of tools to enable communication. You might ask “why do we need them” – however they the latest in a long line of ‘improvements’ in how we communicate (and I put improvement in quotes deliberately because probably they all bring with them some major or minor issues which some would disapprove of). These steps forward go a long way into history and at least part of the problem with social media is that the rate of change in the way we communicate (and the tools we have) has become much faster.
Going all the way to when the first language started to take the place of grunts and pointing (and yes it is an interesting question as to who and why language first came about – I am sure there is a lot of research into that in the field of linguistics) we have seen many changes – some of the most significant have been writing, the printing press, the telephone, television, mobile phones and most recently things like email, zoom and social media. I realise that this is an incomplete and selective list but it is sufficient to illustrate how things have changed.
In all cases the change led to behavioural changes – and a time of education and learning. Not everyone coped with the introductions of the “new technology” at the same rate and – importantly – these changes themselves did not mark the end of development – rather each new invention continued to morph and improve – just think of what television looks like now compared to the first channels.
So social media will inevitably continue to change – it is already very different to how it started – and you might hope that as it continues to march into the future then it will become ever more helpful.
However, in parallel to the technological improvements (yes that slight misnomer again) it is necessary for people to learn how to use the technology and that is perhaps a bigger problem. I have written elsewhere (I think it was in relation to how the way that rules and laws are generated becomes more difficult as the community that they apply to becomes bigger) that when one person is communicating with one other person it is reasonably straightforward to reach a ‘status quo’ which allows the communication to be fully understood – as the community grows – to family, neighbours, towns, countries and bigger things become much more difficult.
Most of what I write here will be in relation to Facebook – only because that is the platform that I am most often on – but it pretty much applies to all of the platforms.
In “the good old days” there would be a few people who knew about what was going on in your life; what your thoughts were on various topics; what gossip you wished to share; your opinions on world events. There would be a few other ‘levels’ of connection with people who would know different levels of detail about your life. One of the major question marks I have about Facebook is to do with the fact that you have friends and there is no stratification – if you make a statement then all your friends (at least) know about it.
Different people use this in different ways – I have friends who never post and I have some that share (seemingly) every detail of their lives. It is your choice which end of this spectrum you feel comfortable. The problem (in my view at least) is that the majority use this unthinkingly and without regard for the implications.
So – is banning young people going to be a good idea? Like all tools, it is imperative that you use them properly. Many useful tools have associated dangers and so it is with social media. A sharp knife is a useful tool for some things – but you would not let a three year old play with one to avoid any accidents. They need to – at the appropriate time – learn how to use that tool properly. Knives are also a tool which can be deliberately used ‘wrongly’ as a weapon. Should they be banned? That is another question which doesn’t have a quick answer but perhaps the basic answer is that they need to be controlled.
A car is a very useful tool – but (rightly) in order to be allowed to drive one unsupervised you need to have passed a test. This, in itself, does not make you a good driver, but at least it sets a minimum standard – they can still abuse its use.
In the “real world” there are usually constraints that stop the ‘unqualified’ from doing things they should not do – or at least makes it more difficult. Usually these may possibly be inadequate – but that is still better than nothing. A fence will stop people going to somewhere they shouldn’t – but it can be climbed – a law stops young people from obtaining alcohol – but it is sometimes difficult to enforce. So should there be some of these sort of things in social media rather than an outright ban?
Social media can be really good and it can be really bad. In my experience the ‘better’ things have been where a group – which can be quite large – share a particular interest and all play by the rules – even when those rules are not written down but are really just – to put it bluntly – “common decency” and respect for each other and the group. In these areas people do not post things that are irrelevant or disrespectful or whatever.
In much of social media that is not the norm. Just the other day I saw a thread where an initial post led to a host of replies accusing the original poster of a particular worldview – whilst at the same time illustrated precisely the point that was made in the post. So many times we see the pot calling the kettle black. Usually these things have little or no basis in reality. This is shown up starkly in posts on X – I don’t usually take part in any discussions there because they rarely consist of balanced and rational content – discussion no; argument yes.
This is perhaps illustrated most in any post that is either pro or anti Trump. Both sides will weigh in without any real content – perhaps without any thought – and certainly with no sign of taking anything from the opposing viewpoint. Regardless of which side you are on you should always be willing to recognise that others are entitled to their opinion and, maybe, could have a point.
In all social media something that matters a lot is who you choose to “listen” to. That in itself can be a hard choice to make. Lurking at the root is that those who are chosen are often those who proclaim the same worldview as you do – or at least a similar one. Of course it is good to get your thoughts and ideas confirmed by others – but it is necessary to learn and grow, getting new perspectives, by listening to those with a different point of view.
In my blog post Us and Them I discussed the dangers of slicing the world up that way. Whether it is by nationality or religion or colour of skin or any other polarising criteria there is always danger of treating someone as Them rather than Us rather than exploring the differences and the similarities between the viewpoints.
Although such a separation is wrong and divisive what is much worse are those people with influence to use that influence to pull Us and Them further apart. This is often done by using some generalisation about Them – “they are eating the dogs” being one recent example. It works by finding some attribute that can easily be put to Us as being “a bad thing” and labelling all of Them with that attribute.
Just last week there was a very high profile case where a footballer was shown some leniency after receiving a red card. The desire for a change in his punishment came from someone who was both high profile and had a significant amount of influence which has recently been used to set up many groups of Them for his Us to push away – literally out of the country. One group were those who had birthright citizenry in the United States. All of them should be stripped of their citizenship and no one should be able to claim such citizenship.
Turns out that the footballer is someone who gained his US Citizenship through this process as he was born “by accident” in the US simply because his mother was denied travel when late in pregnancy. This inconvenient fact has been ignored as his place in the US football team was secured!
This has been a long diversion – but the point is that those who wield influence on social media can be among the bad actors. Whether they put themselves forward as leaders, or content creators, or influencers, or experts in a particular thing they do so without any guarantee that they are worthy of those positions.
Don’t get me wrong – lots of those people put forward useful, interesting and needed information – the problem is that there is nothing to back up their claims to such fame – in the professions there are ways to become qualified and whilst this in itself is not a guarantee, at least it is a barrier that should keep out those who are simply charlatans. I did actually see a YouTuber – an ‘expert’ in a particular field – actually post a video where they ranked others who publish videos in that field.
(On a related but slightly perverse note – what qualifications should you have to serve in government?)
Young people are naturally less well informed and knowledgeable to make the distinction between the charlatans and the competent. For many the mere fact that something has been published means that it must be right. So a social media ban would shield them from the charlatans – but unfortunately it would also mean that they avoid the wise pronouncements of those who actually inform the audience.
One thing that does worry me – away from the young people ban – is the fact that I see so many people posting stuff – reposting stuff – or just making stuff up that has no grounding in facts and reality. Worse – often the original poster is attacked with comments about their character, faith, political leanings or whatever when that is not relevant to what has been written. Basically the OP is one of “them”.
It is rare (certainly on Facebook) to see a considered discussion about just about anything – rather there are arguments where the only choice is between two opposing viewpoints with seemingly no common ground or any attempt to explore the grey area between the extremes. This can be about little things or big things – but whatever is discussed always comes down to A or B. A big topic for a long time has been immigration. I think anyone considering this would agree that uncontrolled immigration is something which causes problems. However, there are many, many reasons why immigration is not only needed but definitely beneficial.
It does make me smile – or perhaps some more negative reaction would be more appropriate – that a country like the USA which is, lets face it, built from immigrants who were more often than not treating the natives with (at best) disrespect, should be so showing considerable anti-immigrant feelings – and actions!
All of this – as you can probably tell from now given how far this has strayed – seems to highlight the fact that banning youngsters from social media participation is treating the symptom instead of the cause. It is not the use of social media that needs fixing it is the misuse – a large number of participants need to be better educated on ‘proper’ behaviour (not just on social media).
This post is now far too long – so I will wrap it up here. There is much more that could have been said, much more that maybe should have been said – but my posts are not going to change the world.