by Dr Farooq A. Lone
It explores social media’s profound influence on human behaviour, the growing global unease over its effects, debates around regulation and potential restrictions, and the need for adults to adopt disciplined digital habits to set healthier examples of online engagement.
There is no denying the fact that social media has penetrated its hooks in humans. We, the humans, are so enthralled with this new form of communication. In the words of Biologists Carl T Bergstrom and C B Ogbunu, as quoted in Scientific American, we have evolved to be Information Foragers.
Thirst for knowledge and information helped our earliest ancestors seek out food sources and shelter. Shared ideas kept small communities knitted together and created a space for culture to develop. A love for learning helped us advance our knowledge and technology to flourish. Taking the experience forward, social media is engineered to tap into this ancient information appetite.
Somewhat similar views have been expressed by a friend, learned colleague and a former senior police officer, Ahfadul Mujtaba, in one of the episodes of his talk series Hum Kalaam, again on social media, while discussing the present age being referred to as “age of information and communication”, making home the point that all ages have been ages of communication except for the fact that the speed of communication is enhancing tremendously with every passing day.
Addiction vs Business
There can again be no denying the fact that the Internet runs on advertising dollars, and as such, platforms compete fiercely for our attention, contend Bergstrom and Ogbunu. Social media companies know exactly what type of information entices users to keep them hooked as long as possible. “This specialised attention to new information on social media has come to mean that we spend much of our time engaging with the fluff at best and disinformation at worst.”
It is unlikely that media conglomerates will ever acquiesce to the large-scale changes required to support better, safer, healthier social media practices. Our human nature makes us vulnerable to the negative aspects of social media. But our human erudition can save us from its worst effects.
When interacting with information online or on social media, we need to be more aware of how our emotions and biases can be exploited. Before you hit like, share or heart on a post, pause and consider:
Is this content meant to brand me as partisan? Have I read the whole article?
Am I sharing this content to get validation through likes?
More importantly, how are the social media entities using my consumer data, political preferences and past behaviour to manipulate me and make money off of me?
“Ask yourself if sharing it is worth the risk of becoming a messenger for disinformation meant to divide people who might otherwise have much in common” is the advice from the editors of Scientific American. Andrea Gawrylewski suggests that many of us feel that strange sensation of being sucked down into a social media rabbit hole, scrolling endlessly through posts and video feeds. Rather than reading a book or article or playing a video game, social media is a mostly passive activity, with images, sounds and ideas flowing at us and pinging our dopamine receptors.
From Boon to Bane
Of late, the attention of the world has shifted towards children and social media. Australia is the first country to introduce sweeping social media restrictions for teenagers and children. Malaysia, Denmark and some other countries are likely to follow suit.
In our country, too, people have started building up a case for similar restrictions. How our thinking is going to change from the early 2010s, when phones and social media were being promoted as tools to help students learn, can only be visualised. Some of the readers might have heard about what has been referred to as “Technology Hype Cycle”. To explain the Hype Cycle curve briefly, for every technology first comes the technology enthusiasm, then rapid adoption, and finally disenchantment. Social media right now is at a later stage of the cycle.
Weighing the Options
In 2011, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) came out with a policy brief encouraging social media for learning. The UNESCO brief argued that social media can help schools allow the real world into their classrooms, and hence prepare students for a real, better future. A decade and a half later, this perception has changed a lot. Public concern is mounting over risks, including predators, disturbing content and cyberbullying, etc. While some platforms have introduced a variety of safeguards and parental controls, some governments and public advocacy groups consider that it is not enough.
Those in favour of the ban contend that giving a legal framework to restrict social media sites to young children will be a blunt instrument, giving parents and teachers a new kind of leverage with their children to say that they are not allowed to have a social media account because it is against the law.
Some other advocacy groups have raised questions about the ban, noting that it could hinder the benefits of social media, like education and connections with friends, without addressing the manipulative techniques used by some tech firms or the safety risks children face online, and that there is a lot more we could be doing to get to the underlying systems and make those spaces safer.
Some experts say schools should educate students about online risks and responsible phone use, rather than rush to impose blanket tech bans. Those in favour of the ban argue that the lesson from the evolution of social media on mobile phones is that something can happen over time, and you do not realise it is bad until it is almost too late.
Protocol for Adults
While we keep on discussing the pros and cons of social media ban for children and keep a watch on the countries that impose such bans, as to how it works out, some suggested helpful tips to break the adults out of the trance perpetuated by social media are as follows:
Turn on time limits on your phone that cut off social media access.
Do not keep your phone in the bedroom at a distance where you might be tempted to scroll in bed.
Go on walks without your phone as far as possible. The world kept moving when there were no mobile phones. Get used to being without your phone sometimes.
Agreed, it can be hard to break our social media fixations. But nothing is impossible to achieve when the human mind decides so. If the adults control themselves and lead by example, regulating kids would become easier.
(The author is a retired IAS officer and former Chairman of the JKPSC. Ideas are personal.)
