The Web of Social Media

Social media has become one of the daily needs of our life, one which we spend 3-4 hours on average every single day. That has transformed us and still transforming us mentally to spend more hours of each day browsing it. A lot of people may not be aware of it, but many of them still spend massive chunks of their time on social media. The tech giant social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and the rest spend Millions of dollars to make their social media more addictive. These companies study the behaviors of the users through various advanced artificial intelligence, deep learning algorithms, and automated computer processes known as “bots.”  For instance, which post you like, which video you skip, how much time you spend on whose content, at what time you use their platform, becomes part of their massive data collection.  Moreover, they also read apps you are using in the background, which websites you have visited, the products you buy, and services you order. Social media giants are able to access Nearly Everything you do online and use it. Social media software is able to give you the really precise output in the form of content based on your interests. That is the real game: if you see something you like it, of course, most of us are gonna take it.

A lot of data scientists work together to create Algorithms which are responsible for producing precise outputs each user will engage with.  In today’s world, however, that is not enough; even psychologists study user behaviors and work with Data Scientists to create and continuously upgrade the Algorithms, to get the maximum user engagement that takes hours out of users’ days spent on their platform. It is next to impossible to understand the algorithms behind social media for common peoples, students, teenagers, even adults, etc.

Social Media has brought us together. If anything happens in any part of the world we can get instant news from the social media. It’s become really easy to communicate because of the social media. For all those reasons for bringing the people together, social media is the crucial factor for making the world a global village. At this time people can’t imagine their life without Social media. If they don’t get access to it, they feel like they are getting disconnected from the world. Advancements in technology reduce the latency of connectivity. Development of the sectors like IT, communication, Education, Infrastructure, etc. are the outcome of social media. People become aware of the world, technology around the globe, the importance of education, lifestyle, living standards, and other aspects of each other’s lives that wouldn’t normally be seen. International business becomes a lot easier than previously, the communicating tools make it easy to understand different cultures, learning new languages, getting out new opportunities, and reducing international boundaries. Now people can get products and services from anywhere around the globe. They only need to ask for their services through social medial communication tools. If any unwanted or suspicious activity happens with any people, they have a new tool to protect themselves through social media. By just posting about your experience with something, you may get a lot more attention for a problem or issue than you would speaking about it in person.

But in this era social Media is not just about the news, communication, and awareness; it has become a big entertainment platform. You have access to entertainment for absolutely free and also in unlimited quantity. For instance, if you open your Facebook app and check on videos then, it does not ask what you want to see; it starts supplying content that has a high possibility that you will love it. That supply is the result of your behavior on the internet. People spend their precious hours scrolling Facebook feed, Insta posts, Snapchat stories, TikTok, Youtube, etc. Even minors are also getting access to these technologies as the technology has become cheap and easy to use. It has a very bad impact on minors because the content they are consuming has the highest watch time, views are in billions. This means parents are allowing their kids to access the internet for a lot of hours using the technology as a high dose of entertainment, the kids become aggressive when someone tries to take the phone from their hands. Kids can start screaming, crying, as well as attacking. These all happen because social media caught them on the web of endless pleasure and they fear getting cut off from the social life.

Content is the key for social media, whether it is healthy or harmful for the consumer doesn’t matter. Posts on social media are both cheap and easy to produce, which has resulted in the production of tons of new accounts that promote their own agenda, for someone’s personal benefit. This is now termed as fake news. In 2018, Facebook identified and disabled 520 million fake accounts in just around 3 months, which were promoting fake news, personal agendas, and scamming people. Now it’s getting even harder to discern whether the given content is fake or real because this fake news has spread even faster and caught the eyes of tons of users.

Every Year we see some strict laws being made in the favor of users in order to protect their privacy, protect them from getting scammed, protect their personal data. The social media are becoming more and more advance with the increase in technology.

We knowingly getting stuck in the web of social media, because it is giving us what we like, what we desire in the form of audio-video content. Still, the children, teenagers, and adolescents are new to it. When they become familiar with it, they might waste their precious life hours during their developmental years watching senseless comedy, stupid TikTok video, clips of comedy videos, chatting with random internet strangers. These activities produce nothing of value for their growth or development, mean nothing to their life, they are just the small packets of pleasure, which doesn’t have a limit. We become addicted to it, and it is becoming more addictive. Removing phones from the hands makes people anxious, violent, and miserable. Although being aware of the fact that depression is the main reason for using social media, which will keep us visualizing the thing that we are not. At a very young age, people started getting mental problems and a large contributor to this is excessive use of social media or getting hands on social media at a very young age. The result is expectations and desire increases so vastly that we get ourselves landed on the web of social media. There is no happiness and satisfaction over social media. They are just providing us meaningless pleasures. These tools are used in the name of relaxation, forgetting of stress, tiredness etc. But in reality, the use of these makes people more vulnerable to mental problems like anxiety, tension, worry, sadness, etc. Just a decade earlier the people who were facing stress, anxiousness, depression, and other mental problems because of their family problems, financial problems, etc. in their late 40s or 50s has now shifted to the early generation in their 20s. As the cause of the problem may differ but the result is the same. So, we must be aware of what we are doing by monitoring our own activities, as in this era everyone is on the web of social media.

Abishek R. Nepal, Nepal

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