The time’s up for social media and the harm it does
ONE OF the most noticeable changes during my lifetime has been the disheartening debasement of public discourse. The internet, a place for posturing but rarely for genuine discussion and considered debate, must take much of the blame for this transformative decline.
But while the coarsening of the “national conversation” is an obvious example of the harm done by the internet, it is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Beneath lurks a growing crisis of disengagement, depression and decay, facilitated by tech companies that profit from exploiting insecurities, doubts and fears.
The internet is often presented as if it were simply the latest stage of revolution in communication stretching back through the telephone and telegraph to the first postal service. While applications such as email can be seen as part of such a continuum, social media is something wholly new.
Tech companies do not exist to simply facilitate communication; rather, they control and manipulate virtual social interaction in ways that play on innate fears about standing and status.
Increasingly, young people measure their value in terms of how many followers they have and how many “likes” and comments their most recent post attracted.
For a generation of addicts, one ignored post sparks doubts about status and abusive comments which can result in depression, misery and even suicidal thoughts.
Companies such as Facebook – or Meta, as we must, at the will of messianic founder Mark Zuckerberg, now call it – ruthlessly exploit their power over users to harvest vast quantities of data. The company also owns Instagram and Whatsapp.
Their business models depend on monetarising information, with little regard to how it may be used.
Until earlier this year Facebook allowed advertisers to explicitly target children who had expressed an interest in smoking and gambling. Whistleblowing leaks by Francis Haugen, a former member of Facebook’s “integrity” team, reveal that behind the scenes the company is fully aware of the harm it is causing to the mental health of young people.
One leaked Facebook study found 13.5 per cent of teenage girls in the UK said suicidal thoughts became more frequent after starting Instagram.
As Ms Haugen recently told a Parliamentary Committee: “Facebook has been unwilling to accept even small slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety.” She paints an ugly picture of a firm which is callous, careless and heartless.
Rather than expanding freedom, social media has turned billions of people into pawns of powerful, greedy corporate interests.
Yet, like the American frontier of legend, the virtual world of the internet can be tamed.
I know, because as a Home Office minister I piloted through Parliament legislation that forced internet companies to retain data for scrutiny that could help expose terrorists, track down paedophiles and locate abducted children.
The successful introduction of the Investigatory Powers Act demonstrated that the internet can be regulated in ways that are necessary to protect us all.
The Government has now published more much-needed legislation to curb online harm. The new Bill aims to crack down on ways the internet is exploited for malevolent purposes – from the radicalisation of vulnerable people by terrorist groups through to protection from online bullying. It will establish a new statutory duty of care, forcing companies to finally take responsibility for the safety of their users, with a new regulator responsible for taking effective enforcement action.
It is just as unrealistic for us to expect the internet giants to regulate themselves as it was to expect tobacco companies to do the same. In both cases the core business model depends on people doing things we know to be damaging to health and wellbeing. Tech conglomerates cannot be trusted to check themselves.
Haugen paints an ugly picture of a firm which is callous, careless, heartless
THERE is a solution that does not involve reinventing the wheel. Newspapers and broadcasters are already held to account as publishers. If those duties were to be extended to social media companies – making them responsible for content and subject to legal action if it is damaging – then they would be forced to ban anonymous harmful accounts.
After the Industrial Revolution it was Conservative pioneers like Lord Shaftesbury who forced reforms – such as banning child labour – on the new industrial elite. Like anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce before him, Shaftesbury faced the opposition of those whose greed was fed by exploitation, and free-market Liberals who gave them succour.
Now similar battle lines are being drawn, and similar determination is required, to face up to the damage caused by social media, and the corporate giants that run it.