The growth and influence of social media has become so evident and powerful that even people who work for these companies find themselves leaving the companies because of the lack of morals. Amy B. Wang sits down with Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook VP for user growth, who talks about how social media is changing society as a result. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created and destroying how society works: no civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth” (Palihapitiya). And this problem is not just within the U.S. as it has also become apparent in other countries around the world as people’s lives are being centered around social media and the interactions within it. No longer is it just going online and posting and seeing pics. Now it is dependent on likes and comments and how many people “physically” interact with posts on social media, because otherwise people become saddened by it. But do people actually like someone on social media because they like or agree with it or do they only like it because of the person that posted it? Even though not everyone is going to “like” something it doesn’t mean that they don’t see it. People shouldn’t be as discouraged by not getting any or as many likes on their posts and shouldn’t resort to allowing random people to follow them just to get a few more likes.
In her article titled “social media is keeping us stuck in the moment,” Clive Thompson explores the term “reverse chronological” and how it has shaped the very foundation and algorithms for all social media platforms. What it means is that social media pages are always refreshing and put the most current information at the top of the page for users to see. Statistically it may make sense, but chronologically it does not match up with how the concept of time is meant to work. For example, if a person gets a bunch of messages in a group text, do they only read the most current text that came in? Most likely no, because otherwise they would be missing vital information and the incoming texts would not make sense in context. Now social media doesn’t have to be a chronological story by following hundreds of people, but it should allow the person to see all the content from the last time they logged on and not just the most recent. But social media wants to keep people in the loop of what is currently happening because it has been transitioning to a heavy news focus in recent years. Thompson brings up the idea of how Harold Innis, a Canadian communications theorist, had predicted how news would only become concerned with covering the news happening there and now. Even the first prints of newspapers developed the idea of printing only the most current news of the day so that people would have to come back and buy newspapers every day to stay “current” with what was going on around them in the world. The same can be said for social media today where people not only go on to interact with friends, which seems to be decreasing, but also to check their news for the day.
News has always been one of the most influential parts of media for decades because of the influence it has on people but also its ability to adapt over the year with changes in technology. From the first newspapers printed, to broadcast TV, to the Internet, and now social media, news has been able to stay on top with the top trends. But now it comes at a crossroads as all the platforms of news are beginning to intersect but also are drawing lines in terms of credibility and what is considered real and fake news. Social media has the greatest reach by far, but the size of it and flexibility causes concerns for its news being unreliable. But that doesn’t stop most Americans from getting their news off of social media. According to Pew Research Center, about 2/3 of Americans get some form of news off of their social media. This is a common trend among millennials, but the research also found that the numbers for adults who get their news off of social media is also growing yearly. Within the U.S. research found that the social media platform with the highest percentage of users getting their news off of it was Facebook which had 45% of users getting news. The next closest was YouTube at 18% followed by Twitter at 11%. Social media allows for information to be spread quicker, but as news becomes quicker it will be interesting to see how accurate and correct the news stays.
