Is Social Media a real enemy?
I am currently reading Nexus by Yuval Noah Harrari and just finished the first part--out of three--of the book. This part is about information networks and how, throughout human history, political ideologies such as totalitarianism, authoritarianism and democracy controls the flow of information. For example totalitarian government forces the information to flow through one channel, i.e government, resulting in the centralization of the information, thus of the power. No one can ask any questions or spread the information. Free media is not a thing in this situation.
The flow of information in a democratic government is, in contrast, decentralized. Information can flow freely, and therefore, free media is very important. Press, a reliable source, can report and disseminate any news to the public, and people are free to criticize the government.
After experiencing the brutal past, we, the people, slowly moved from totalitarian/authoritarian governments toward democratic governments. However, in recent times, there has been a clear backward shift in many countries, including the US as well as EU countries. I won't go too much into details, but you can check out this book.
Now, what amused me in this discussion is imagining the whole society as an information network and how social media such as Facebook (Meta now) can influence this network. The former is an interesting Physics problem, while the latter is a very hot topic nowadays. I will focus on the latter in this post because, due to my travels, I think I have an interesting perspective to share.
I grew up in a remote part of India, but due to research work, I needed to move around a lot. I spent my early twenties in different states of India: from Mumbai to Punjab. For the past six years, I was living in Poland, and during this time, I got a chance to travel to other EU countries, meet people, and observe the influence of social networks in the EU as well as in my home, India.
The EU and India have very different societies. While EU countries are very open to change (it still takes a lot of work from people), India is very static due to its ancient past, making it resilient to any new change. However, please note that it's not very easy to compare any two societies due to their different social structures. There always exist some similarities as well. For instance capital cities of any country are often very open to new technology and fashion. So let's compare average non-capital cities.
While I partly agree with the current narrative that social media destroys society and manipulates people, I have also found that it resolves some problems. Of course, the nature of these problems is different in these societies. For instance, the problem of loneliness is minimal in Indian homes--especially in smaller cities--due to social interactions, but it helps to kill boredom, while in the EU, social networks are a good short-term cure of loneliness as well as boredom. My parents in India are not lonely, but whenever they are bored, it's easy for them to slip into the blackhole of reels. In the EU, people--including me and my friends--are more independent, which could lead to a lack of social interaction, resulting in isolation and loneliness.
Despite these subtle differences in social fabric, the implications of social media on all societies are similarly destructive. My reasoning here might have many gaps, so if you have any ideas, feel free to let me know. I would love to hear it.