Strength of social media is also its weakness

SINCE its birth in the early 2000s, social media has gained a life of its own and has become a means of digital connection most of us cannot live without.

So when, as on Monday night, a glitch enters the system resulting in a global crash of the most-used social media platforms – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – we feel as if we’ve lost a limb. We feel disconnected from the outside world.

But social media is a life force that both giveth and taketh away.

Monday’s crash comes in the wake of plummeting Facebook shares after an employee-turnedwhistleblower revealed some nasty truths about the site.

Frances Haugen, a former product manager in Facebook’s now disbanded Civic Integrity Unit, recently stepped out from the protection of anonymity to tell the world how the company - allegedly intentionally - propagates negative, anger-inducing content to create higher levels of engagement, and thus more monetisation for the platform.

That Facebook’s Civic Integrity Unit was disbanded should in itself speak volumes.

On one hand, social media sites such as Facebook are wonderful tools to help us stay connected with family and friends in far-flung places, but on the other hand they are designed to push our buttons, provoking us into anger-based, reactionary engagement so the platform, and ultimately its CEO, can make more money.

This moral issue aside, social media is also a major distraction and thief of our time.

The strength of social media our instant connection to world views, events and people - is also its weakness.

All too quickly, without much thought or consideration, we respond to something we have not verified or taken the time to probe, examine and understand, and fuel a knee-jerk debate over things that may well have been built on a false premise.

The notion of the masses sharing fake news produced by forces wanting to interfere with whole countries’ elections springs to mind.

And, of course, we pass it on to others via our own special bias, because that’s what our generation does.

It is during times of global crashes of these sites when we find ourselves at a loose end and a sudden realisation of how much time we waste aimlessly scrolling through newsfeeds.

When we don’t know for how many hours our beloved WhatsApp will be non-functional, will we pick up the phone and keep in touch with our loved ones by actually talking to them, or will we simply wait until the platform is back up and running?

I firmly believe the majority of the world’s population falls into the latter category.

How often do we find ourselves refreshing the site or rebooting our phone to see if the app has resurrected?

How engaged are we actually with our social media connections? Are they simply posts our sub-conscious half-heartedly absorbs while we, zombie-like, scroll through a bunch of data that an algorithm has spat out onto our newsfeed?

Or are we truly using these sites for good – for reconnecting with old friends and loved ones as the social media idea was originally sold to us?

Perhaps we should stop putting our time into engaging in virtual and digital associations, and start reinvesting in the flesh and blood relationships right in front of us before we lose the ability altogether.

In the age of social media, technology may not be the saviour we have come to expect, writes TAMLYN JOLLY