Is Social Media as Harmful as We’re Told?

It seems like everyone has social media these days, and we use it for a variety of reasons: social interaction, memes, self-promotion or business-promotion, news, pop culture, etc. We use it all the time, and most of us enjoy it. So why do many of us also think it’s one of the worst things to happen to humanity?

It could be that it’s a common story told in our media. Even on our social media, there are often conversations about the negativity of social media, how it’s harmful for youth, and how self-absorbed we are as a result of it. So the question is, are we so addicted to it that we can’t give it up, despite the negative effects of it? Or is it really not as bad as we think it is? The true answer is probably somewhere in between, but since it’s so difficult to measure the true effects of the virtual world at our fingertips, it’s hard to know how to feel.

The news often tells us that social media is bad for our mental health and for children. According to the eight different articles I saw that were published in just the last three weeks, social media damages teenagers’ mental health. One take by BBC News reports, “heavy social media use is linked to negative wellbeing and self-esteem[.]” They also go on to say that this negative mental state is influenced by the pandemic, lack of exercise, lack of activities, and family income. They even quote a researcher saying, “[Social media is not] a vacuum, it works both ways,” when it comes to turning to social media for solace during times of hardship. Even though the research discusses a variety of drivers of young people’s mental health, the primary one used by the news outlet is social media, something that is barely mentioned in the summary of the research.

While this research is important and significant, the news seems to skew data into eye-catching headlines about the “damage” that social media causes. Doesn’t that seem just a little bit biased? It can’t possibly be socioeconomic state of the world, the physical health, or the generational trauma that causes this rise in mental health issues, so it’s got to be those darn phones!

The Social Dilemma, a Netflix documentary from 2020, tells a similar story to these popular news sites. The documentary brings together multiple people who had large roles in the creation of social media platforms and gets their opinions on the way social media has evolved in the last few years. The revolving slogan for the documentary is “The technology that connects us, also controls/manipulates/polarizes/distracts/monetizes/divides us.”

Official Trailer for The Social Dilemma

While I agree with much of what this documentary talks about is problematic and unnerving – considering that fake news spreads 6x faster than real news, that our searches and social media are tailored to our opinions, and that we “conflate” likes and media attention with value – I also think that the way the documentary is presented is intended to have a desired effect on us. They describe “the dark side” of social media, say that social media is no longer “a force for good,” and, like the news, say that social media causes a generation of anxious teens – all showing the negatives of social media.

Social media is often demonized on TV too. My personal favorite show, Mr. Robot, focuses a lot on social media in its first season. The protagonist, Elliot, is an antisocial computer programmer who is a vigilante hacker by night, hacking into people’s social media accounts to uncover the truth about their infidelity, crimes, and darkest secrets. He often says condescending things about the people he hacks, looking “for the worst in them.”

Scene from the pilot episode of Mr. Robot (my favorite pilot of any television show)

While I think Mr. Robot does a good job of showing the reality of social media and its negative effects, it is also a skewed reality that we see through the eyes of Elliot, who has very strong opinions about social media and society.

No matter what your opinion on the harmfulness of social media is, I think we can all agree to a point with Elliot when he says that we’re “spamming each other with our burning commentary of bulls**t masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy,” and that we do these things as a society because we want to be “sedated.”

Header image by Christopher Ott on Unsplash