PRO
In this day and age, kids and teenagers are on their phones 24/7. Their eyes are glued to their X timelines and TikTok For You Pages constantly. They have no interest in turning their TVs on and watching the news. Even when they do turn their TVs on, the remote is in one hand, while their iPhones are in the other.
With social media being everywhere, people can definitely use it to learn a thing or two about the world, especially with politics. Few teenagers watch the news voluntarily, but the news always somehow finds its way into our social media algorithms.
I get clips from news segments such as NBC or the Daily Mail on my TikTok For You Page all the time. The younger generations can easily find a video centered around what is going on in the political world on these platforms nearly daily by having it pop up on their page.
Social media also provides multiple different points of view on world issues. It is not just news sources that post to social media, but also political influencers and influencers in general. With all of these voices, people will find their way around learning from different resources.
Information spreads very fast online. Users can become more informed on upcoming events, voting, protests, etc. from hearing about it on apps like TikTok.
For example, the #MeToo movement would not have gotten as big as it has if it weren’t for social media. Tarana Burke first started the #MeToo movement back in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2017 when the movement got picked up, because of the use of hashtags online, when actress Alyssa Milano shared her experience of sexual abuse on X along with the hashtag. This caused #MeToo to be used on X 1.7 million times in 85 countries. The outcome of this was that more people became educated on this very important topic.
I do think it is important for people, especially the younger generation, to stay informed on what is going on in our society. What is going on in the world now sets up their future and social media can help people keep up.
jcaramag@ramapo.edu
CON
Need a recipe for dinner tonight? Outfit inspiration? Book recommendations? Your wish is social media’s command. There are a lot of areas in our day-to-day lives where such an ease of access to information can be really beneficial and we should take advantage of the privileges it offers us.
However, as with all good things, there comes a point where social media can do significantly more harm than good. To me, politics is one of those areas.
Social media is a vacuum of information. The carefully curated algorithms associated with each of our accounts across these platforms allow us to see what we want to see. While this comes in handy in many cases, it can also be weaponized in quite a frightening way when it comes to politics.
People who feel a certain way about one political issue will only ever interact with content that supports that specific view, which will only encourage the algorithm to feed them that content. This only further devolves into a never-ending cycle of confirmation biases, where any content that fits within the viewer’s hyper-specific viewpoint is accepted as truth, whether or not it actually is.
So, while people may think that the political content they consume on social media is helping them better understand the ins and outs of our political climate, it may actually be giving them what is a fragmented and unreliably accurate picture of something so complex and nuanced.
Having witnessed this in my own life, I think it is plain to see that social media does not actually allow for a free flow of truth and information and a wide range of opinions as it claims to. In fact, I think it largely does the opposite, which is particularly true for politics.
In times like these where it is so important to be politically engaged and educated, social media has proven it will only hurt, not help.
mkane10@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of Logically Facts
