Social Media Is Destroying Us

Social media started out as a place where you could connect with people personally and professionally, keep in touch with friends and family, and share what you were up to as well as see what was going on in others’ lives.

It all started out rather harmlessly but it wouldn’t last. Social media rapidly devolved into a cesspool of greed, conflict, and disinformation the likes of which could only happen on platforms with no controls, an easy barrier to entry, and owners that didn’t care about anything but power and money.

There were fundamental flaws with social media that led to the havoc we now suffer from. Let’s look at how it happened.

Putting Profits over People and Society

Social media companies have shown us that they don’t care about the common good. They are businesses whose sole reason for existence is to make money. That’s why they designed systems that would hook us like a slot machine and keep us addicted to perpetually scrolling for the next hit of dopamine. The owners of these companies don’t care about the negative personal and social impact their platforms have, they just want to maximize earnings.

How Social Media Destroys Us

• It allows people to spread hate.
• It thrives on conflict.
• It allows disinformation.
• It creates a distorted, unrealistic view of people’s lives.
• It promotes superficial connections.
• People compare themselves to others.
• It lowers people’s self-esteem.
• It intrusively uses your data to sell you things.
• It eradicates privacy.
• It promotes conspiracy theories.
• It provides a gathering place for all kinds of malefactors.
• It preys on people’s psychological weaknesses.
• It allows unstable people to create instability.
• It doesn’t vet content effectively or conscientiously.
• Profit comes before the greater good.
• It rewards people’s worst instincts and behaviors.
• It rewards negative behavior.
• It destabilizes democracy.

It didn’t have to be this way. Social media company owners and lawmakers could have come up with guidelines to emphasize the positive things these platforms can provide while preventing the destruction of so many people and society as a whole.

How to Create Healthy Social Media

• Prohibit hate speech and disinformation.
• Prohibit discrimination and prejudice.
• Don’t allow people to join who have a destabilizing agenda.
• Require content related to positive human attributes like kindness and empathy.
• Require people to participate in good faith.
• Block profanity.
• Prohibit bullying and belittling of people.
• Prohibit anti-democracy activity.
• Promote unity and collaboration.
• Reward positive participation.
• Promote the greater good.

Social media companies and their supporters will inevitably say that you can’t curb free speech or tell people what to do, but that’s a false narrative. Societies put in place all kinds of rules to protect people and ensure they don’t harm each other. Social media companies, along with feckless, unscrupulous lawmakers, created this mess, but it didn’t have to be this way; they could have just as easily created a system based on positive human interactions.

What Healthy Social Media Would Be Like

• People would keep in touch with people they like.
• People would be encouraged to be kind and empathetic.
• People would talk about positive things.
• We would work collaboratively to solve problems.
• We would become closer to one another.
• We’d build each other up.
• We’d create a supportive atmosphere.
• We’d emphasize and practice positive, healthy behaviors.
• We’d build bridges.
• We’d promote love.
• We’d champion the greater good.

The fallacy human beings have operated under for most of history is that you can’t build a world where people behave kindly and empathically toward one another. So we create horrible messes like social media instead. If you think about it, these online platforms are simply a reflection of how unhealthy people are and what they will do if all that’s encouraged is negative behavior.

We could change all of this tomorrow if we had laws in place to make it happen. While you can’t control everything people do, you can set up rules and guidelines to encourage positive behavior. We could create social media that is solely focused on the positive rather than the negative, which would then become the societal standard. The only reason there is so much dysfunction and chaos in the online world is because we have created and condoned it.

From time immemorial, humans have based their interactions on preservation of resources and competition with others, two of the most unhelpful, divisive instincts. Yet we are a species that can do other things instead of fight each other over everything. We are beings capable of incredible acts of altruism and love. Countless people treat each other with great care and kindness every single day all over the world. We’ve proven time and time again that we don’t have to be tribal and tear each other down, that when we empathize with each other and work together there is no limit to what we can achieve.

Social media is simply a reflection of who we are, and it currently looks like what we value most as a society is making money and tearing ourselves and each other down. We could change all of this very quickly if we had lawmakers in place who would support positive behaviors and enact legislation that directs companies to structure their platforms to promote unity, collaboration, and building a better world together. Healthy social media is possible, it just requires following our better nature. What are your thoughts?