Social Media: Twitter & Instagram
“The big 3” of social media in my opinion are Facebook, twitter & Instagram. I have essentially stopped using Facebook daily, and only use it for community events or gatherings.
That is why I want to focus on Twitter and Instagram, which I believe do more harm than good to young minds. Both of these apps are shown by the ledger of harms to be bad for us.
Twitter – Ledger of harms
Attention – Possibly the fastest updating social media, twitter prioritizes instant updates in its form of tweets. This leads people into loops of constantly refreshing, checking and tweeting, completely taking our attention away from reality.
Mental Health – To public figures or anyone caught in drama or a scandal, hundreds of thousands of tweets can be a barrage of negative and demeaning words. Tweet storms of hate and death threats are very common from the anonymous masses online, each message feeling like a dagger to the recipient. The mental health of constantly attempting to be caught up in our world can have a detrimental effect on the average twitter user as well.
Relationships – Para-social relationships are very common in any online space, but i believe twitter amplifies this. Instead of sending a message or an email, twitter has instant communication via its tweets and replies. This can lead people to believe they have a close relationship with someone they have never, or has never met, them.
Democracy – one of the statistics listed in the ledger of harms for this harm says that 18.5% of total tweets from the top 50k active users on Twitter came from bots, during the 2016 presidential election. This can have an adverse effect on people when they think they are viewing tweets from someone who is real, when in reality they are a robot, leading to more division.
Children – Most children are not using twitter
Do unto others – I couldn’t find any statements, but i think it would be a safe guess to assume that higher ups at twitter hq understand the negative effects of their app, but have no problem administering it.
Overall, Twitter is pretty bad for the mental health and other factors of its users. I don’t think its inherently bad, but the anonymous potential and instant transmission of tweets reflects how people will treat each other when they know they wont be found out.
Instagram – Ledger of harms
Attention – much like other apps, attention is focused solely on your phone, and people can be scrolling for hours, viewing the selective highlights someone chooses to post
Mental Health – In my opinion Instagram does the most damage to the mental health of its users. Like i said before, you are viewing the chosen high points that someone wants to display. This can lead to the user believing that this person does live this perfect life, and that they aren’t also an imperfect human. Body image issues are also an important factor in this, as most people would not choose to upload an unflattering photo of themselves. Like before, this can lead young people with developing minds the believe they have to look exactly like these curated images.
Relationships – The selective choosing of images can also have a negative impact on relationships. If a depressed person only chooses to upload happy and seemingly perfect pictures, no one could ever suspect they are going through a tough time. Im not trying to say that this is the fault of the poster, but as before, people can paint completely different images of themselves then they are in real life.
Democracy – I dont see a way that Instagram infringes on democracy
Children – many teenager and younger children use Instagram, and as stated above, these perfect curated snapshots can do damage to their developing minds who don’t know that nothing is inherently that perfect yet.
Do unto others – im sure Instagram knows that people who might be unattractive, out of shape, or any other issue most likely dread Instagram. Constantly looking at peoples seemingly perfect lives can do damage to oneself.
Overall, I dont think either of these apps are outright evil or bad, but the process in which content is distributed is the problem. The instant transmission of tweets and news on twitter can lead someone to try to be constantly up to date, and feel as if any disconnect from this stream of information is bad somehow. Instagram’s process of curated, often-staged snapshots of someones life can, and often does, lead to people having thoughts about their life compared to someone else’s, and negative reflection.
One of the ways the humane design guide could try to rectify this, would be removing likes or any other “rewarding” feature. This has been rumored before, and I believe this is a good idea. Likes on twitter and especially Instagram are synonymous with someone agreeing or enjoying your content. Therefore, If you don’t get many likes, no one must agree or enjoy you, right? Removing this dopamine fueling system of likes could attempt to fix one of the many issues these apps have.
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