A new study out of Yale University has found that people tend to become angrier the more they spend time on their social media. Facebook and Twitter were pointed out to be among the worst for this kind of thing.
The fact that people are angry is really nothing new. Before, though, people didn’t have the extensive networks available to them to share with others their anger. They had their friends, family, and co-workers maybe, but beyond that, they had no bully-pulpit they could take advantage of to seek out, meet, and interact with anonymous others who were also angry.
They do now, and it makes a huge difference.
Unfortunately, just like the news, negative is a better sell than positive and results in a greater number of clicks and “likes,” which is the currency of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. People like to be noticed more than they like to be ignored, so those likes are like gold to them, positive reinforcement for a negative thing. This teaches people that negative is good, that anger is attractive, and that being even angrier can bring more positive attention. Pavlov and his dog would understand this readily.
People just lose their minds and whatever civility they may have had. What started out as a place for family pictures and relationship status has morphed into a place of darkness where large dollops of bigotry, racism, misogyny, sexism, and all the worst of society lurks.
These platforms have been rightly referred to as “echo-chambers” in that users tend to see things, and meet people, who are as angry and conspiratorially suspicious as they are themselves. Also, the platform algorithms place before a user content that would appeal to them, and if anger is their past-time, then that’s the kind of thing they’re going to have put in front of them as content.
Facebook and Twitter especially need to be reined in somehow to mitigate the negative social impact that they have on our society, and governments around the world have been wrestling with these two titans to force them to become better corporate citizens. Twitter may blow up and go away on its own due to the futile mismanagement of its buffoon owner, billionaire Elon Musk. And the other billionaire Mark Zuckerberg isn’t much better. Neither gives one fig about the damage they do, they just like counting money.
People are always harping about freedom of speech, and I’m all for it too, but with reasonable restrictions. I don’t oppose free speech, I oppose free hate speech. And that seems to be the most vile aspect of these platforms, as equally vile as the disposition of these platform owners to do absolutely nothing about it.
I’ve been running Facebook and Twitter accounts for clients for many years, for as long as these things have been around. In my opinion, these two awesome communication platforms have fallen victim to basic human darkness like anger, hate, and vitriol, and the people “in charge” are unwilling to do anything about it.
I earnestly hope that changes.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 