Over the last thirty years the World Wide Web has grown, with much of the growth fueled by funds from advertising. The web would have grown during that time but it may not have grown as fast or had as much impact on our life. There are positive aspects, such as access to larger amounts of data, increasing convenience and communication around the world. There have also been negative impacts that are still being assessed as technology evolves and changes. This article describes some of these impacts on our lives. These impacts are based partly on articles and partly on my own observations and personal opinions. This is a partial list, there are links at the end of the article with more information.
Positive Impact
There are many stories about the negative impacts of social media funded by advertising. However, if social media really is that bad, why do so many people use it? That question made me realize that there must be some positive impacts otherwise people would have stopped using the various social media platforms long ago. Some of the platforms no longer operate but new platforms keep appearing to replace them. The following is a short list of some of the positive aspects I have noticed. These have been enabled by the free access to social media sites that advertising has enabled.
I believe that the positive impacts do need to be recognized and that social media, in some form, is here to stay. If everyone deleted their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and other accounts, new social media would start up to replace the functionality of these sites. This influences actions people can take to maximize the positive and take action to reduce the negative for any social media site.
Increased geographical social circles – Social media sites allow people access to other people in any part of the world where there is an Internet connection. In the past, there were limited methods of communicating with people from other places and cultures. Social media allows searching for people with similar interests who may not be located in the same geographical location as others. By communicating with other people outside of a physical community, there is an opportunity to learn about other cultures and societies. These cultures do not have to be associated with a country, they may be parts of a different groups within a country, such as women, people of color, disabled, and other minority communities. This exposure to other ideas of how to live can help to open people’s minds. It can also help them find a community where they don’t feel as out of place or unusual.
Easier communication for friends and family – With the ease of sharing messages, photos and videos, family and friends get an increased sense of participation in loved one’s lives. For families who are separated by distance, this method of socializing can help to make up for not seeing people in person. In the past, letters and phone calls were used to stay in touch, now people can easily contact someone, for little or no cost, and have a larger involvement in their lives. This sharing can lead to a sense of closeness or an opportunity to learn more about other parts of the family.
Large audience size for small businesses for low cost – With the low price of advertising and better response rate, social media sites offer a low cost method for fledgling businesses to reach their customers. Social media sites offer methods for people with similar interests to gather and share information. This grouping can also be accessed by small business to target a larger set of potential customers for a better return of investment of their advertising dollars. I have seen several small businesses that have started pages on social media and used the tools and advertising to grow their customer base and increase their business. The improved data collection for advertising allow these small businesses to stay small while reaching an audience that previous generations only dreamed of.
Increased access to the Web for more people – Improved software, bandwidth and smart phones made the web accessible to many people that don’t have the technical expertise required for web access thirty years ago. In the way that personal computers made computing accessible to more people, the world wide web opened up document sharing and access in ways that are still being explored. This increased audience includes people who did not always have a voice that could be heard by many other people Now people are hearing of different experiences directly from people instead of what radio, publishers, newspapers, and television might have chosen for them to listen to. This access also allows access to powerful people that is unusual in past times. While not every famous person, celebrity or politician will respond directly to people who contact them, the contact does have an impact on how the famous person interacts in the world. People and opinions have been changed due to this direct contact. This kind of direct access is usually only seen in very small towns, is now it is available to almost everyone
Negative Impact
As with most things humans invent, there are negative impacts of social media combined with advertising. Advertising evolved to become the focus of social media platforms since the ads helped to provide the majority of funding for the company. While advertising became the focus, this turned the users of the sites from customers into products. The users data, their browsing habits, the content they posted, this all became the basis of data that is used to better target advertising towards those same users.
The new customers for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, reddit and others were businesses who wanted access to millions, even billions of people, that they could sell their product to. As mentioned in my previous article about advertising, social media sites gradually built up profiles that allowed businesses to pinpoint an audience and buy advertising for display to that audience. For the users of these ‘free’ sites, this meant that their experience was not as important unless it helped to sell more advertising. This change in focus helped to lead to negative impacts listed below. This list focuses on the negative impacts caused by advertising, there are other impacts that are not included, such as cyberbullying.
Misuse of data – While using social media, your data may be used in unexpected ways. When users accept a Terms of Service (TOS) agreement for a site, they are often allowing the use of their data and that it can be sold to 3rd party vendors. The data may be anonymized, but it may not be either. Even for anonymized data, it may be possible to associate with specific individuals if it is linked to other data. Companies that gather personal data may not have adequate security setup to protect the data so if the site is hacked, the data may be gathered by criminals and used for identity theft. Current laws and regulations have little or no protect for consumers. Companies includes the cost of fines in their accounting as a cost of doing business due to negative publicity about security breaches or the misuse of data.
An example of unintended uses of data is the prediction of traffic jams. I had wondered for years how Google tracked traffic patterns and showed where slow traffic is on freeways. Google has published articles that they use traffic sensors and data from phones to predict traffic patterns and possible slow traffic on highways and streets. An artist decided to use that information to trick Google into a traffic jam alert. He got 99 used phones, put them in a cart and slowly moved them up and down a street. There were no cars on the street, however Google Maps showed a traffic jam at the location. The automated software used the data from the phones and interpreted it to mean traffic was blocked on the street.
There are other examples where the use of personal data caused problems. In another instance, Google had to shut off a feature for customizing maps due to people vandalizing it and misusing it. Microsoft attempted to have a chat bot on Twitter that would learn from users and respond. They had to remove it within 24 hours because it had started spewing racist comments and insulting everyone who accessed. These are instances that are known based on some data that is publicly shared by companies. This manipulation of data can have real world effects, such as rerouting traffic or used to attack someone on social media. There is a large amount of data that we are not aware of or of how it is getting used. This means we have no way to judge the accuracy or check for misuse of data in other ways. There is also not enough transparency on how our data is getting used and sold between companies.
Virtual Reality View of the World – In order to keep people on a site as long as possible, social media sites focused on making a news feed as engaging as possible to users. With the use of custom news feeds for each user, they are used to create a unique view of the world for each person on the site. Two people could be browsing the same site at the same time and each person will see different content depending on their likes and responses to other content. In effect, the news feed is creating a virtual reality based on content from the real world, tailored to engage each user in different ways.
The focus of this optimization is to keep the user on the site as long as possible to maximize exposure to ads. This custom content will also focus on subjects that keep people engaged and viewing/responding to displayed ads. Social media sites have found that content which evokes emotions is the strongest draw for news feeds. The evoked emotions might be positive, such as happiness at viewing cute animal photos, but often times emotions like anger keep people on a site longer. With businesses attempting to engage people on their news feeds and push their own organic ads, this leads to a battle for users/consumers. Unfortunately, this battle has led to very different versions of reality that are presented to each user depending on what they engage with on the platform. The use of like buttons, karma and other methods of interacting are also measures of engagement and help to drive the algorithm on what to display or not display to a specific user.
If a user is not aware of this focus, they build a view of the world that contains certain bias and inaccurate interpretation of current events. Each Like and link clicked increases the importance of these types of posts and the algorithm displays similar posts. These reports build on each other the more a user engages with them and reinforces what they want to see in the world, whether it is envision virtual reality as requiring goggles connected to a computer. In my opinion, virtual reality exists, I.e. a unique reality for each person, that is reinforced for each person on social media and other types of media as they choose what to engage with. I think of the scene from the animated film “Wall-e” on the space ship filled with humans moving about on motorized chairs always focused on a screen in front of them. When a woman has her screen turned off, she turns around and says she didn’t realize they had a pool. A part of reality, the pool, was not seen by her as she viewed her own version of reality on the screen. Social media can do the same thing, present a view of the world that eliminates other views that might distract from viewing advertising.
Addictive Qualities – As social media platforms focus on keeping people engaged with their platform, this engagement can become addictive for some people. The design of social media which encourages users to stay on the site seem similar to behavior noted in people who use drugs, can’t stop gambling and other addictions we are more familiar with. An obsession with social media can lead to a lack of focus on real life. It can lead to a loss of connection with people in real life, who can’t live up to the hype or lure of social media posts. People can get drawn in , waiting for likes on their posts and notifications that others are interested in their apparent lives on social media. Connections have been made with an increase of depression and anxiety with people who use social media too much. Yet it’s hard to break this connection due to the strategies that social media sites use to keep people on the site. The interactions are designed to trigger responses, like drugs, that keep people connecting and checking for the latest news. This makes it difficult for some people to break away from social media as they try to fill needs that aren’t met in real life.
Loss of Control Over Business Communication with Audience – While social media has helped to boost small businesses, it has a cost associated with it. As social media built up in importance and pulled in more businesses, the rules started to change on engagement. Early businesses built up audiences based on a model of free sharing of posts. As revenue from advertising became more important, the rules shifted and social media sites required businesses to pay in order to have their posts appear in users feeds. If a . With a drop in viewers, businesses are forced to pay for their posts to appear in users feeds in order to keep up the level of engagement.
After consolidation of social media to a few companies, this reduce the options for moving to other platforms. Moving to another platform would likely result in a loss of the audience they had built over time. Staying on the platform, even after paying for advertising, doesn’t always work. For popular businesses, they may become targets of attack and get closed down due to reports of poor conduct. For a business who is dependent on the connection with customers, closing down their access to a social media site can turn into closing the business down. Businesses have reported trying to reach out to social media companies to resolve these issues but too often the resolution process is slow and uncertain and they lose access time and audience.
Constant focus on advertising and marketing – With a constant focus on advertising in our culture, there also seems to be a constant focus on marketing and advertising in all aspects of life. Years ago, after I was laid off from a company, I attended a class on how to improve my resume. Before this class, I had thought of a resume as a document that summarized my experience and provided a set of facts that a hiring manager could use to judge if I might be fitted for a job opening. During the class, the focus was on how to market ourselves and stand out from the crowd. As I listened, I realized that my resume was not a list of my experience, but an advertisement, a piece of marketing material to use in selling myself to an employer, whether I was qualified or not. Social media is another aspect of marketing ourselves. What people choose to post is how they want others to view them. Not everyone is conscious of this aspect, but for those on social media who are building a following, this is a very important part of their social media posts. What appears on social media isn’t a view that we can always trust. When interacting with others in real life, it can be hard to hide every aspect, especially if people are around each other every day. On social media, it’s much easier to hide those parts of ourselves.
Social Media Advertising in Politics – When thinking about advertising, thoughts tend to turn to selling things like food, clothes, refrigerators and other products. Many years ago ads were prohibited for certain things like drugs or for services offered by doctors and lawyers. Advertising has increased in many areas, including politics. Ads for a political candidate or legal measure are not meant to sell a product but a specific viewpoint of how government should be managed. Advertising occurs with television, radio, and other method that are clearly defined as advertising. There are other ways that advertising occurs, such as when people post signs for a candidate or a position, wear shirts with a political message, or support a candidate by calling voters to persuade them to vote for a specific candidate or position. Social media added a new medium for political advertising that included new methods of reaching voters. Some of these methods are not always obvious as advertising. Political movements can start groups to support a specific purpose, setup accounts to support certain views and buy ads to direct people to these groups or accounts. These accounts are used to create an aura of support for a political position in order to encourage others to join in. These accounts may be automated or run by several individuals while appearing as a ‘regular’ voter who just happens to like the group. Since there is no regulation on these activities, the information appearing in the posts in groups may not be factual. In addition, by focusing on the addictive qualities, these groups may post content that engages the emotions and attracts people not because of rational reasoning but due to gut reactions that are not based on science or evidence. The Internet can be accessed from anywhere in the world, so individuals or countries may choose to use these methods in an attempt to influence an election. While the source may be different, the final outcome is the same, people are influenced by emotional appeals rather than facts and rational thought.
‘Jane Smith’ who reports that she is from your town and agrees with you on your political positions may actually be someone working in another country who is gathering information and working to change attitudes. Or she may be a person who is from your home town, but with current technology it is difficult to tell from a quick glance. Research can help to sift out real people from sock puppet accounts, but most people aren’t interested or don’t have time to perform this research. It is all too easy to appear to be something that you aren’t on the Internet and there are many people, groups and countries who are taking advantage of this. There is also information reported recently that social media companies could do more to stop this type of behavior but choose not to because it would reduce their profits.
Unfortunately, this lack of information about accounts and groups and their true purpose is causing many problems, in elections and how are communities are governed. A study performed in 2019 found 70 countries that used social media for propaganda. Seven countries, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela use the platforms to influence global audiences. Facebook is the platform of choice for social media manipulation based on use by 56 countries for organized computational propaganda campaigns. With these countries using social media in this way, it becomes difficult for ordinary people to understand that they are targeted in order to influence how a country is governed. Depending on the country’s goals, they may be trying to obtain a range of goals, from improving relations with another country to causing division and chaos in order to avoid penalties for their behavior in the world. If the goal is divisiveness, this is created by emphasizing differences and minimizing similarities of people within the target country. Through the use of memes, common talking points, and other content, a group can be used to create fractured viewpoints, and a loss of community for people who live in an area. With emotions getting triggered, this carries into the real world and can lead to a lack of compromise when working to solve community issues. A democracy works because people are willing to compromise, if this tool is damaged due to a lack of trust in others, gridlock can result and the appearance that government doesn’t work. As the process continues, as emotions are pushed farther into anger and fear, government functions less and it becomes self fulfilling prophecy that government doesn’t work. Humans often find it easier to focus on the negative aspects and this can lead to a spiral to the bottom that becomes more difficult to change.
Meanwhile, in the background, these other countries continue to push division, increase negative emotions and keep the targeted country off balance and attention away from their actions. By the use of this targeted propaganda, countries can influence another country and how its government works by affecting voters or elected officials. While not as physically destructive as guns, tanks and bombs, there can be adverse effects in the targeted country.
Overall Impact
The World Wide Web and the current implementation of social media is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Despite the negative impacts and affects on the real world, there are positive aspects that people are unwilling to give up. In looking back at progress, there was a similar impact with the invention of the printing press. Before the printing press, books had to be hand copied which resulted in few books available to many people. Most people could not and did not need to read. What books existed were interpreted by learned people and shared with others, the biggest example being the Christian Bible. With the invention of the printing press, more books were available, which made literacy easier for more people to obtain. It also increased the number of people who had access to the Bible and could interpret it differently. This led to Christianity expanding into new areas instead of staying centralized. With hindsight, we view this as desirable but it did caused disruption and problems in the cultures of the time. The World Wide Web is having that same impact and our generation is the first to try and understand and tame the negative aspects. There are some things that individuals can do to reduce the negative impacts, I will cover those in the final article of this series, State of Social media 2020 – What to Do?
Links and Definitions
The following is a list of articles about the impacts that social media can have on people and our society. As social media is used more in society, studies are getting conducted to assess it’s impact.
Positive Impacts
The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data – An explanation of how the use of phone data is used to predict traffic jams and help motorists find alternative routes on their phones. – https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html
How Social Media Can Move Your Business Forward – Article that explores ways that Social Media can improve small business sales – https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/05/11/how-social-media-can-move-your-business-forward/
A Study on Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media on Society – A review of the positive and negative impacts of social media on our society in areas such as health, community and business – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323903323_A_Study_on_Positive_and_Negative_Effects_of_Social_Media_on_Society
Social media use can be positive for mental health and well-being – A study that shows routine use of social media can be beneficial – https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/social-media-positive-mental-health/
Social Networking Sites and the Positive Impact they have on the Society – An article listing positive impacts on society, such as speedy communication and contact around the world – https://www.technology.org/2019/06/06/social-networking-sites-and-the-positive-impact-they-have-on-the-society/
Negative Impacts
Global Disinformation Order 2019 – A study of how countries are using social media to affect other countries through the use of disinformation and propaganda. https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2019/09/CyberTroop-Report19.pdf
Women and smoking, use of propaganda – An example of how propaganda was used to encourage woman to smoke https://medium.com/politically-speaking/how-social-media-exacerbates-propaganda-4242cabce2c7
Is the attention economy being captured by virtual eyeballs? – An example of how virtual bots can be used to shift things on-line. In this case, bot networks are used to create the appearance that advertising is more affective than it really is. – https://www.economist.com/business/2020/11/28/is-the-attention-economy-being-captured-by-virtual-eyeballs
Tricking Google Maps to show a Traffic Jam – An artisit created a virtual traffic jam by placing many phones on the same street – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/berlin-artist-uses-99-phones-trick-google-maps-traffic-jam-alert
Is it possible to get addicted to social media? – A short article exploring the possibility of addiciton to social media – https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-it-possible-to-become-addicted-to-social-media/
The Trauma Floor – A description of the work conditions for monitors at Facebook. Warning, there are graphic descriptions of the violent content that moderators review which may be a trigger for some people. – https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
Russians are masters of disinformation. Don’t fall for their lie son social media – AN article about how Russians use disinformation on social media in order to influence political campaigns and run psychological operations – https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article246096855.html
FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization – Lawsuit brought by FTC and signed by 48 state attorney generals to sue Facebook for operating an illegal monopoly. The legal complaint includes descriptions of Facebook practices that include focusing on profits and not removing divisive posts or groups due to potential loss of revenue – https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/12/ftc-sues-facebook-illegal-monopolization
Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth – Employees within Facebook are pushing for good content but content that is bad for the world is left since it increases user sessions and engagement. – https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/technology/facebook-election-misinformation.html