Quote:
Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby
Correlation doesn't equal causation, Bucco, you know this.
According to the CDC, the youth suicide rate in this country increased by 56% between 2007 and 2017.
Social media predates the increase of the suicide rate by a decade. Facebook founded in 2004. MySpace 2003. Twitter, 2006. Social media certainly has contributed to the suicide rate, but it is not the singular cause of the increase. Remember 2007 was the year the Great Recession began. Millions of families went from prosperity to poverty overnight, lost their homes, their savings. Divorce rates went up as well, as a result. Social media didn't cause this. Corrupt bankers caused this. And that was a HUGE contributing factor to the increase in suicide rates in kids, who had to grow up in the midst of it all.
Americans are more politically divided than ever. We’re currently witnessing levels of social unrest not seen since the ‘60s (pick your century — 1960s or 1860s). And yet - Social media didn't exist in the 1960's or 1860's. They didn't have social media to propel their civil unrest. The difference between then and now is - now it happens instantaneously. Previously they had to take time to plan.
Income inequality has never been higher. Has it been lower? Are you able to point to a time when income inequality was lower, and say "yup - that's because there was no social media"? Or were there other reasons why it was lower (if it ever was lower)?
In Myanmar, military personnel used Facebook to incite genocide against ethnic minorities. That is an actual causation. So point taken on that one item, specifically.
Jeff Orlowski’s new documentary The Social Dilemma ... I haven't seen it, and don't have a Netflix account so I can't see it even if I wanted to, presently.
But there's no doubt in my mind, at all, that social media IS used to manipulate people's thinking. Thing is, so is ALL media. Why do you think there are 400,000 different brands of cereal? Why do you think most of them sell so well? What we call social media manipulation now, we used to call public relations then. Convincing people to your way of thinking, or to buy your product, or to believe your truth, or accept your lies - is EVERYTHING you see on TV that isn't livestreaming. If you aren't watching it happen live, you are being manipulated.
And - even if you ARE watching it live - the camera is manipulating you by making you see it from that very specific perspective, that angle, that lighting, that lens, that text scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
All media is manipulation of some kind or another. Social media has become a much more efficient vehicle for it, because it can be created in an instant and reach hundreds of millions of people at the same time, 24/7.
But no, social media manipulation is nothing new, and no one should be surprised by it. We learned how to manipulate our readers when I was a student of journalism in college, in the 1970's.
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I agree with some and disagree with others.
Frankly, if it didn't orphan your post, I would delete it. That was an opinion piece that just caught my eye.
However, never have I seen, on this forum and others more people drawn to these platforms....Facebook, YouTube, twitter...what have you for news, and use them to validate whatever, and more sadly vilify the mainstream media as "fake" or lies.
By the way, in reading one of your posts here, made me recall the Commodore 64, and Prodigy. Recall them ? I thought my Commodore 64 could never be equaled 😁