Exploring Types of Influence of Social Media on Human Society

The subject of social network Influence is quite vast and has been researched by hundreds and thousands of students, scholars, academicians, governments and private individuals. In this argumentative essay about social media we will try to take a holistic view discussing the outcomes of various researches and where it stands today. I will classify social network influence in the following categories: a) Emotional Influence b) Commercial Influence c) Political Influence d) The Greatest Weapon of 21st Century

Argumentative Essay About Social Media: Its Influence on Human Society

20 years since the invention of the World Wide Web, the world today exists as a globally connected community transcending geographical, political, economic and social boundaries. Social Networking grew out of its cocoon of chat-rooms and limited accessibility with the launch of Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace & eventually Twitter and Facebook in 2006 and 2007. Since then our society has rapidly changed, with growing debates around how people are more connected virtually, but “disconnected” in reality. Over the last decade, various research studies have been conducted to understand the impact of Social Networking on Human life - especially the emotional quotient - quantifying the feelings of love, hate, loneliness, jealousy. But what I would like to discuss more in this article, is the dangerous trend where it is so easy to make or more alarmingly “destroy” someone's personal brand, due to uncontrolled cyber-bullying. We have heard the term “FAKE NEWS” multiple times in the 2016 US Presidential Election. This article will make an attempt to analyze - what is the real impact of “FAKE NEWS” how social media is being used by various perpetrators of global peace and freedom, to create an environment of instability and terror across sensitive geographies.

Emotional Influence

Researchers have made an attempt to classify and quantify emotions such as happiness, loneliness, self-esteem, narcissism etc. in relation to social media usage of an individual. In theory, social media should help people with low self-esteem boost up their morale, but according to a study by Association of Psychological Sciences people with low self-esteem could counter-productively bombard negative comments towards their connections, alienating them further. It has been seen that more time on social media is corelated with lower life satisfaction and young adults report high levels of perceived loneliness. However, it is slightly different for the senior population, where increased social media usage, leads to lesser depression. We share tons of details about our personal lives, and unknowingly develop what we call a “Personal Brand”. Living the expectations of one’s personal brand can be daunting, and this is what plagues our teenage and young adult population. Jealousy and depression are two major causes why 59% of American teenagers seem to face some form of harassment online. In a general sense, from what we see, social networking although acting as a positive re-enforcement in our lives, has some alarming effects on mental and emotional heath of an individual.

Commercial Influence

With social media advertising expenditure reaching $18.4 Billion in USA for 2019, there is no denying the fact that marketing through social networking has created a new paradigm of brand-consumer dynamics in the past decade. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn continues to be the leading ad platforms – generating leads, converting potential customers to buyers and maximizing profits. But I think the biggest positive influence of social media has been the liberalization the world of advertisement – where every business can reach out to its target customers irrespective of its marketing budget and spending capacity. That has not only generated massive revenue to retail giants like Amazon and eBay but also empowered small and medium businesses around the world, who has thousands of potential customers in a few clicks. However, some academicians have come up with some alarming claims, that forces us to think deep into the world of engineered ad generation. Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing in NYU and Techno Sociologist Zeynep Tufecki have both highlighted the effects of un-regulated information mining and the process of emotional manipulation of consumers by giants like Apple, Facebook, Google & Amazon, falling through the cracks in our legal systems, once again igniting the debate about Institutional information governance.

Political Influence

Based on the fundamentals of digital marketing, the influence of social networking in politics expands to a whole new dimension, especially after the alleged accusations against analytics firm Cambridge Analytica who were working on behalf of the GOP campaign, and Facebook, who apparently exposed personal data of 50 million+ users. To explain the context, political micro-targeting has identified the specific audience of targeted ads on both sides of the aisle, by aggregating, modelling and harnessing piecemeal information that we constantly share via social media. Thus, political campaigns are working on creating a much-polarized society where the section of swing voters or the independent centre is getting diminished every day. To support the claim, if we take the partisanship study from Pew Research Center, in 1994, 23% of Republicans were more liberal than a median Democrat, and 17% of Democrats were more conservative than a median Republican. Today, those numbers stand at 1% and 3% respectively. So essentially political systems are leveraging social media to give us an increasingly divisive society, where chances are that not only our emotions but also public opinion is being systematically modified by power authorities and private enterprises who have vested interest in electing a particular individual or a party.

Social Network: the Greatest Weapon of 21st Century

In the age before social networking, institutionalized media was considered as propaganda machinery for several hegemony governments around the world. But in this information age, our society is plagued with a new form of warfare through mass self-communication via social media where terrorist organizations like ISIS are using social media as their propaganda tool to influence youngsters of impressionable age to join their cause. So essentially a foreign power, from thousands of miles away can disrupt a perfectly functioning society through its hate messages, inciteful posts and propaganda material. “FAKE NEWS” is a serious concern – concocted information manufactured by interest groups to manipulate public behaviour towards violence. Two young men were lynched to death in the northeastern state of Assam, India in June 2018, when FAKE WhatsApp news was circulated claiming them to be child kidnappers. Alberto and Ricardo met a similar fate when they were burned alive in the small town of Acatlan, Mexico, on suspicion of being a child molester, spread over WhatsApp. As much as these incidents shock us, seldom do we realize what we are dealing with every day – the raw uncontrolled flow of emotions, sentiments, opinions flowing in for public consumption. Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube have global teams of content reviewers who review and remove objectionable content every second, but with the volume of users online at any moment, this seems menial. US Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transport gathered for a hearing, from chief content policy advisors of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – some of the facts and figures which were shared was in 2017 alone, 574070 accounts were suspended for violent and objectionable content, in 6 months, 160,000 videos and 30,000 YouTube channels were suspended, 70% of the depicted violent extremism. But probably the limitations of these review programs have come into light again, when 49 people were killed by right-wing extremist violence in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15th March 2018, and the perpetrators used Facebook, to bolster their cause and beliefs. Thus, social media, in its present form, in an unregulated way, will continue to disrupt our society.

Conclusion

In conclusion from all the above factors, as social network has organically changed our society forever, we as citizens should educate ourselves to abide, obey and watch-out for some of the extra steps that we need to take in order to keep ourselves and our close ones safe. Corporations cannot be governed by the public, but we have the right to choose our lawmakers, right to protest, right to free-speech and right to privacy. As long as individual private citizens are careful and cautious when “online” I believe we are moving in the right direction.

References

• Anderson, Monica. “A Majority of Teens Have Experienced Some Form of Cyberbullying.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, 30 Nov. 2018, www.pewinternet.org/2018/09/27/a-majority-of-teens-have-experienced-some-form-of-cyberbullying/.
• Borgesius, Zuiderveen, et al. “Online Political Microtargeting: Promises and Threats for Democracy.” SSRN, 26 Feb. 2018, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3128787.
• Choudhury, Ratnadip. “Rumours On Social Media Fueled Violence That Swallowed 2 Lives In Assam.” NDTV.com, 14 June 2018, www.ndtv.com/india-news/rumours-on-facebook-whatsapp-fueled-violence-that-swallowed-2-lives-in-assam-1867463.
• Couldry, Nick, and Allison Powell. “Big Data from the Bottom Up.” SAGE Journals, 2014, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053951714539277.
• Frost, Amanda. “Facebook Is Not Such a Good Thing for Those with Low Self-Esteem.” Association for Psychological Science, 2012, www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/facebook-is-not-such-a-good-thing-for-those-with-low-self-esteem-html#.WOrHsdKGNWI.
• Graham-Harrison, Emma, and Carole Cadwalladr. “Revealed: 50 Million Facebook Profiles Harvested for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 17 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election.
• Martínez, Marcos. “Burned to Death Because of a Rumour on WhatsApp.” BBC News, BBC, 12 Nov. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46145986.
• Primack, Brian A, et al. “Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation Among Young Adults in the U.S.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Elsevier, 6 Mar. 2017, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379717300168.
• Steakley, Lia, et al. “Elderly Adults Turn to Social Media to Stay Connected, Stave off Loneliness.” Scope, Logo Left ContentLogo Right Content 9,500 Articles and Counting Scope Stanford University School of Medicine Blog, 19 Dec. 2017, scopeblog.stanford.edu/2011/09/01/elderly-adults-turn-to-social-media-to-stay-connected-stave-off-loneliness/.
• “Terrorism and Social Media: #IsBigTechDoingEnough?” U.S. Senate Committee On Commerce, Science, & Transportation, 17 Jan. 2018, www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/1/terrorism-and-social-media-isbigtechdoingenough.
• “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 1 Mar. 2019, www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/.
• Zote, Jacqueline. “65 Social Media Statistics to Bookmark in 2019.” Sprout Social, 14 Mar. 2019, sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-statistics/.