Five Problems with Social Media

The popularity of social media platforms has increased tremendously in the last decade and individuals ranging from teens to old people are active on at least one of these platforms. There are social media platforms for almost everything with the popular ones being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 Like everything in life, social media has its pros and cons. So before I begin to list the problems associated with social media, I think it’s only fair to acknowledge that social media has done quite a lot of good. I am very active on Twitter than the rest of the platforms so my opinions will be from using Twitter as a case study.

On Twitter, I have seen reforms put in place that stemmed from a tweet or two. For example, more conversations and reforms have been held regarding police brutality which has become more rampant in recent times. Protests like Church too and Market march which protested sexual assault in the church and markets began on twitter. Honorary mention to the period partner initiative which supplies IDP camps with sanitary products.

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Despite these and more, there are still quite a number of problems associated with social media. One of which is the anonymity – this can be either good or bad depending on how you see it but half the time, it’s bad. Because of the anonymity on SM, most people use this as an opportunity to troll and bully others for cheap likes or just for the fun of it.

Another issue I have with Social Media is the spread of fake news. The spread of fake news has become an epidemic. For example, during the world cup a bikini picture of Coco (Ice T’s wife) surfaced the internet with the headline portraying her as the Croatian president. The image spread far and wide, it was printed in the newspapers of several countries. I remember having an argument with a friend that the image shared wasn’t of the Croatian president and he didn’t agree with me. Another example will be the pictures that surfaced during the xenophobic attacks in South Africa. Half of these pictures and videos were a couple of years old but they were shared over a thousand times on different social media platforms and blogs, it sparked the right amount of outrage it was intended for.

I understand that as human beings, the need to seek validation from others is high. Social media has however made this worse, most people now believe that their validation stems from the likes they get on the images or videos they post. You see people doing the absolute most for that hint of validation from strangers that they end up losing themselves in the process. Not shitting on likes or retweets but I’m talking about attaching your self-worth to them (It’s not social medias fault but it is what it is). My message– Likes or retweets absolutely do not define you or your craft so don’t let it.

This particular problem is kind of ironic but it’s a major issue – privacy. There is no privacy on social media, you can literally tweet something this morning and in the evening it’s on all the blogs and you have your entire family members calling you to ask you what exactly you meant by your tweet. I know social media is a public platform but a couple of years ago, uprooting people’s tweets for content on blogs and other social media platforms wasn’t as rampant. So what exactly changed? Blog content has finished?

Lastly, the use of fake identities and catfish accounts are a big problem. Almost every week, we have someone telling an impersonator to take down their picture and stop using them to gain followers on twitter. There is also the issue of fake businesses using the images of real people to scam others. When all goes to shit, guess where they’ll all camp at? You guessed right, the person that has no idea that their image is being used to scam people.

These are just a few issues I have with social media and I think that they are issues that can be addressed properly and taken care of in some way. Remember social media isn’t all that bad but when it gets too much, you are allowed to take downtime and log off.

I decided to do this challenge to challenge (lol) myself to write more, let’s hope I finish strong.