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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sorry:
We need to change certain aspect of social media, not throw it out.
[/quote]

It isn't social media that needs to change.  Social media only reflects people.  Change people and change social media.  So it is parenting and friendships that need to be looked at.[/quote]

Social media exploits the aspects of human behavior, and human impulses, in order to get users and engagement. You are not going to change the way people fundamentally are.

Example: the "like" function on social media was created specifically to exploit the way people get a little dopamine hit when they receive some form of personal validation. Social media companies figured this out early on and realized it would be a good way to get people to engage on their platforms more, stay for longer, and connect to more people. All of which serves the interest of social media companies, which is to gather as much data about users as possible.

You are NEVER going to somehow master this impulse in humans. It's innate. It's stronger in some people than in others, and there are individuals who can train themselves not to see likes as a form of validation, or to recognize it as an empty form of validation, but that's pretty rare. So if this aspect of social media negative impacts people (and it does, look at the research on teenage girls and Instagram, in particular) then the only way to remove that negative impact is to remove that aspect of social media.

The social media companies themselves know this, btw. Instagram actually played around with altering the like function specifically to try and address the negative impact it has on people, by making likes private (only the user could see both who liked a photo and how many people liked it) which would have a direct positive impact on teen girls and others who wind up measuring their social status and self-worth by comparing likes or looking to see who liked what. But this was around the time that Instagram lost it's independent leadership (it was owned by Meta already but for a time operated separately from Facebook) and these shifts were scrapped when Facebook took over, for what I think should be obvious reasons.

It would honestly not be that hard to create social media platforms that promoted connectivity without exploiting human insecurities and tendencies in a way that harmed people. But it would be less profitable, at least using the current profit model. Like you could have social media that discouraged scrolling and spending long periods of time on it, or where cyberstalking was basically impossible or at least harder to do. It is not in the companies' interest, even though it would be in ours. [/quote]

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