The harmful impact social media platforms has on consumers.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Tumblr, Wattpad, Reddit and LinkedIn currently, hold up to 4.66 billion users, which is more than 51% of the entire global population. 24

From the late 1990s onward, social media was used for the greater good, as a means of reuniting loved ones, finding donors for surgeries, connecting with peers and work colleges, and like-minded individuals on the Internet, via real-time live chats, messaging bulletin boards, and email using services like CompuServe America and Prodigy, from which emerged, Myspace, Blogger and Facebook, and as the years passed, more networking sites emerged, and somewhere along the path, it became very manipulative and unhealthy. When mobile phones and wireless internet became more widespread, smart phones emerged, enabling users to connect wherever they went.

Phones with built-in cameras have emerged, allowing users to communicate via broadcast at any point. Many various types of companies have benefited as a result by advertising their products via social media platforms and this became a revolutionary means of purchasing and selling products and services, this benefited social media platforms equally, as a way to gain monetisation (money) through sponsored ads. Since the formation of the social media industry, brands/marketers have focused primarily on social media marketing advertising rather than media such as television, radio, mail, billboards, and magazines. They used to use social media platforms predominantly as a source of advertisement, but now they use influencers and celebrities or anyone who held a large following, that either charge a fee or receive free merchandise in exchange for endorsing a product to their trusting followers within their own account niche. 25

From watching the ‘Social Dilemma’ on Netflix I've gathered a few things which I wanted to share.

1, If you assume that social media applications are only used to communicate, check up with each other, and upload pieces of your lives, you are mistaken, just as if you believe that Google, Yahoo, and Bing are just search engines. All of these social media corporations are seeking all the attention and time they can hold of ours. “How much of your life can we get you to give to us?” TIM KENDALL. Our attention is the product which is sold as well as the “gradual change of our behaviour” (Jaron Leiner) which affects us physically and emotionally. Since the 1960s so many things have advanced by 1 trillion amount million amount of billion about but the only thing that has stayed the same is our brains they have not evolved and due to this, they are easily manipulated.

2, If you set aside the ever-changing beauty standard, the business model of these businesses is to make sure their advertisements are as popular as possible, which is aided by the use of the Algorithmic behaviour modification tool," it's becoming a marketplace that trades in human futures," Shoshana Zuboff says. It's also worrying because we depend on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which essentially knows all there is to know about us and can anticipate our next move, but we do have no leverage over it. There are three main goals of technology companies: 1) engagement, which keeps us online and scrawling, 2) growth, which keeps us coming back and inviting others to join the app, and 3) advertising, which, whereas companies within the first two want to insure that they can make as much revenue from advertising as possible. This is carried out by individuals whose responsibility it is to get into people's minds in order to boost registrations, engagement, and activity.

3, Social media and media companies are becoming comfortable for everyone, for example back in the day when kids would watch cartoons parents would say you can't advertise it in certain things but it's not appropriate and then YouTube created YouTube for kids, which now kind of takes up a whole generation because all kids are now exposed to YouTube for kids so there's no room for protection regulations anymore. There is something for each age group and each gender, media companies are becoming available and it's quite dangerous as it trains and conditions a whole generation of people who are anxious stressed and alone for which they have social media which has become a digital pacifier so people can deal but it's unhealthy as it becomes addictive just like alcohol and drugs and from social media there are withdrawal symptoms and It works off the dopamine effect using the excuse of just wanting to communicate with others. it realistically takes over people's self-worth and sense of identity. It's really scary because the services are killing people and actually causing people to kill themselves as well.

4, We've created the tools to dishabille and erode the fabric of society in all countries at the same time everywhere," tech experts are slowly acknowledging what they've produced and how it's having the most adverse effect on the world. For example, major tech experts from organisations including Facebook, Twitter, and Google testified before Congress in 2016 about whether or not their applications were involved in Russia's election interference, and as Marco Rubio stated “We are a nation of people that no longer speak to each other. We are a nation of people who have stopped being friends with people because of who they voted for in the last election. We are a nation of people who have isolated ourselves to only watch channels that tell us that we’re right.”

5, Tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Firefox seem worried about their own development, implying that they never anticipated what has happened and "they had no idea what the flip side of social networking was going to be" and that they often fall victim to their own creation. According to tech analysts, developers have almost lost control of the system and all they once controlled is now controlling them and the whole world.

It's on every social media news feed; fake news is everywhere, and it's becoming very difficult to determine what's legitimate and what's not. Since such posts receive more engagement, such as views, comments, and shares/reposts, conspiracy theories and false news are so popular and ahead of the truth. It has proven to be quite problematic as it can lead to violent off-line outbreaks, plus a handful of other adverse off-line retaliations, this has been happening for many years and it's based of any topic in the whole world, whether it be about a celebrity, business, media, politics, or the beauty world. For example, when the Coronavirus got announced, more than half people believed that that Coronavirus wasn't real and it is due to a five generation (5G) network, which was being released around the same time so in America and many other places 5G wireless cell towers were literally burnt and broken down. “This is the problem beneath other problems because if we can’t agree on what’s true, then we can’t navigate out of any of our problems.” We've gradually lost control over who we are, what we think, and the fact that we'll believe and trust anything on social media just because the algorithm has shown it numerous times and it has become familiar. Toxic algorithms are getting so good at manipulating us that they generate and drive false news to the front lines, and we believe it because we are so confused into accepting the lies, and as I sourced from Tristan Harris, "If we don't agree to what is real or that there is such a thing as truth, we're toast." As quick as people are to believe everything, they are also quick to debunk everything. Everything is turning into a hoax, and everyone is pitted against everyone in protests and riots, and it's very disturbing to think about what the world will become in the future.

Algorithms and recommendations are pretty much synonymous, as when you like a video or comment on a video, you'll start to see some of those videos or photos, which will continue to occur in your TikTok For You page, Instagram Explore page, and Twitter homepage, apart from the odd part, being something you've been talking about, texting about or searching about, will also come into your recommendations, it proves that we are being monitored. The algorithm behaviour modification tool is a system that keeps you hooked on social media by rewarding you with small treats like a like, comment, or retweet of your post, which refers to the dopamine effect that I previously mentioned. Personally, before I disabled my accounts, I gradually turned off my social notifications so that I wouldn't be alerted if someone liked my photos, commented on my posts, or tagged me in a photo; the only thing I'd know is if someone had texted or called me, which helped in some cases.

Surveillance capitalism works by watching, tracking, recording, and measuring everything you do online, from the apps you use, how long you scroll, how long you stay on a single post for, and which post you stop and look at, as explained in the ‘Social Dilemma’ documentary is mind-boggling. For example, whether we're looking at a snapshot of our pet and then return to our social media apps, there will be pictures of cats on our explore page or an advertisement for cat food, and even if we're talking to a friend or family member about cats and then return to our social media apps, there will be something or another relevant to cats. Silicon Valley has effectively “created a society where internet connections are primarily, and these people who are intoxicated with social media just know that the essence of contact and community equals manipulation,” as Jaron Leiner notes. When people return home from school, college, university, or a job, how do they spend their time? They're on their phones.

That's a whole new wave of people who are more anxious, vulnerable, and depressed, far less willing to take risks; there's a significant change of people getting their Driving License, and the number of people who go out on real dates has been declining. These can be defined as simple algorithms, but they're so complicated that you'd call them intelligent algorithms, they're opinions embedded in code, created by very smart people who know exactly what they're doing and how their embedding can harm social media users. An algorithm is equivalent to a definition of success. Having said that, the algorithm seems to have a mind of its own, even though someone writes intelligently, the algorithm can modify. One of the things I took away from watching the ‘Social Dilemma’ documentary was how these tech experts generally meant no harm and how important it is for social media apps to have laws and regulations similar to how phone companies do so that privacy is maintained, accountability is in place, and things don't get out of hand the way they have and how they juggle the idea of maintaining data collection. It is comforting to know that tech experts are talking about making changes not only favouring the elite and considering the interests of the masses who use social media platforms.

“Getting a few people to delete their accounts matters a lot, and the reason why is that this creates the space for a conversation because I want there to be enough people out in the society who are free of the manipulation engines to have a societal conversation that isn’t bounded by the manipulation engines.” - JL 23,3,4,

As I read in 10 arguments to delete your social media accounts, “to a degree, you're an animal in a behaviour behaviourists experimental cage”, 4 and it makes so much sense, if you read from my first section of my essay you notice I was very confused about why the social media companies are making us feel this way and since doing research way before I deleted my accounts I understood this very slowly. I simply can't stress how unhealthy all of these beauty standards are, I wish more people understood the harmful mass of it and the harmful side of it and used it in a productive way and I really hope that at least one person understood that as of this moment we all live in a society that profits of making each other feel bad and insecure.

If what I wrote above applies to you in anyway, you should consider either taking a break or trying taking your mind off social media or even deleting your accounts because I believe the more you stay on social media the more, you are psychologically and emotionally draining yourself and as I wrote in my personal experience, I often thought what is social media doing for us? so that would get someone thinking, and something I read from the source of this information “If we all put as much effort into our real life interactions as we did our online ones, who knows? Maybe we’d find ourselves a whole lot better off” - CATRIONA HARVEY-JENNER 21

Bibliography :

3. The Social Dilemma. 2020. [film] Available at: The Social Dilemma [Accessed 15 May 2021].

4. Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. Lanier, J., 2018. Available at: Ten Arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now [Accessed 15 May 2021].

21. Harvey-Jenner, C., 2017. The weird thing that happens to your brain when you get a like on social media. [online] Cosmopolitan. Available at: The psychology behind likes on social media: are they causing mental health issues? [Accessed 16 May 2021].

23. Prendergast, C., 2020. The Social Dilemma: Is Social Media Really Affecting Our Mental Health?. [online] British Vogue. Available at:

www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/the-social-dilemma [Accessed 16 May 2021]

24. Chaffey, D., 2021. Global social media statistics research summary [updated 2021]. [online] Smart Insights. Available at: Global social media statistics research summary [updated 2021] [Accessed 17 May 2021]

25. Maryville Online. 2021. The Evolution of Social Media: How Did It Begin and Where Could It Go Next?. [online] Available at: The Evolution of Social Media: How Did It Begin and Where Could It Go Next? [Accessed 17 May 2021].