Key Learning: To understand some of the ways that social media has cause unintended harms to society and the individual.
Please remember that this is also relevant to Media Regulation, however the focus is not necessarily on content, but on how monetising social media has lead to harm to society and the individual.
Source 1
The Facebook Leak
Identify the ways in which Facebook is alleged to have caused harm to American society.
Key ideas and concepts from this video:
- Platforms
- Race, ethnicity and religion
- Hate speech
- QAnon
- Profit & growth over safety and protection from harm
- User engagement
- How to manage discourse without enabling violence
- Connecting the world, but at what cost?
What are the concerns regarding Metaverse – the new VR platform Facebook is developing?
Source 2
Jonathan Haidt: Has Social Media Destroyed a Generation?
Some excellent evidence on the impact social media has had on the mental health of a generation of young women.
Key ideas and concepts from this video:
- Who are Gen Z?
- The fragilisation of Gen Z
- What are the numbers for self harm (hospital admission)?
- What happened in 2009 which caused a shift in the impact of social media on young people’s mental health?
- You could also refer to our research in Media Regulation on the tragic case of Molly Russell.
- A Twitter mob
- Call out culture & victimhood culture
- Factions as the Achilles heel of democracy
- Instagram and TikTok are rasing our children.
- Twitter and Facebook are running our public square.
Source 3
Social media addiction – how it changes your brain | Luke Burgis | Big Think
This is perhaps more interesting in that is reveals the clash between the evolved human brain and the distorting impact that social media has on our perceptions of our desires for a better life.
Key ideas and concepts from this video:
- A memetic machine in our pocket
- Memetic desire / Memetic Models.
- External model of desire.
- Internal model of desire.
- Desire is a transcendent experience
- Desire is the feeling that we ‘lack’ something.
- A dopamine hit.
How might we draw a link between models of desire and what Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality?