I’ve railed on about social media in the past, and rightly so. The news lately on studies and the internal memos of the companies themselves are confirming it – social media is emotionally damaging and even, at times, physically dangerous. Think back to the Facebook whistleblower of just a few months ago. Or have we forgotten her already?
The proof is there though. The effects of these platforms on the adolescent brain leads to overwhelming emotional distress at a time in life that is already fraught with the dangers of what a kid’s body is doing to them. Now throw in platforms that intentionally tell them the other kid is doing so much better than you and you can imagine how that’ll come out.
We can see the physical danger these platforms bring about in the forms of suicide and gun violence, bullying, and lashing out in other ways. Not to mention social media’s role in exhorting people to mob action while targeting the vulnerable, whether to take their money or to make them do something they wouldn’t normally have done in the first place.
Some of us know it’s a lie, but can we convince the others? That’s a hard sell. This comes to mind for me because of the recent Aaron Rodgers kerfuffle. I was listening to a podcast in which the hosts were decrying the platform held by the quarterback for his beliefs about vaccinations, and yet they mocked him by saying, “nobody’s listening to you and your stupid opinions, Aaron.” Well, they can’t have it both ways, and I think they know it. I would love it if people really understood that Aaron Rodgers is no expert when it comes to vaccinations and should be given as much credence for his views as a clerk at the corner 7-Eleven (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But they don’t. People seem to believe that just because a person has a platform in some particular venue (be it on-line or on the football field), that person has some kind of expertise in their words. They don’t really. Weight in one’s words has to be earned.
And there are some exceptions. I might listen more to Bill Gates or George Clooney, because I know these men have used their wealth and fame to actually study the issues and gather the evidence. I’ll listen to them – and yet, I still won’t blindly accept everything they tell me.
And when you think about it, why should some actor or football player get it their way over that guy at the 7-Eleven? Maybe that’s part of our problem – we assign value to people’s opinions based on their station in life and not on what they really know. And maybe to some extent that’s possible. I can see where someone with more access to information would be able to make better arguments for a point. But I think one of our biggest problems is thinking that people actually do the work that leads to intelligent opinions. I’ve known brilliant people who would be content to work at a gas station if they could get away with it. And I’ve known complete idiots who have climbed the ladder of success through sheer luck and the art of the schmooze. They could be good or bad, either way. But whose opinions are actually better?
What I’m saying here is that it still circles back to ourselves and our responsibilities in making informed decisions. Sadly, it seems, we’re just too lazy. We’d rather let someone else make the call for us…as long as what they’re saying generally fits with what we’re already thinking in the first place. And it’s here where the algorithms don’t help. They keep pushing us into the pens in which we would prefer to be enclosed — with the like-minded — and away from those who are not like us (whom I heard referred to long ago as “NLUs”).
But who are they, these NLUs? Strip away our preconceptions, biases, prejudices, and we find that they really don’t exist. I remember my brother telling me something like “my neighbor has a Trump sign on his lawn, and yet we get along just fine.” He takes out his garbage in the morning and calls across the fence “Mornin’ Ralph” just like anyone else.
We have our extremes on both sides – both of whom are capable of great violence for “the cause.” But really, at heart, the general population is not much different from person to person. It’s only when we get on-line (or in our cars) that we seem to lose all filters. And of course, there the problem really is the ability to express oneself precisely – in a way that everyone listening (reading) is going to understand fairly. That just can’t happen, and so the worst comes out. Or, at the least, the worst perception of the other comes out. Just because someone posts something about high taxes, we assume they’re an ignorant Trump voter. Or just because someone thinks that maybe really rich people should pay a lot more than they do, they’re now a socialist sympathizer, bent on taking our country down the dark path of all of the other failed socialist states.
But look around. These are the people to whom you just said “hello” in the parking lot this morning, and you didn’t even notice the horns and the tail. Because they’re not there.
I’ll leave you with the tired old mischaracterization that’s hauled out this time of year and accepted uncritically by far too many of us. It’s the “Thanksgiving with the relatives is awful because of crazy Uncle Bill and his arguments on how gun-control is going to be the end of our nation” line that we are “guaranteed” we’ll have to face yet again this year. Don’t buy it. It’s only a trope foisted upon us by the media we consume. It’s what those on the outlying sides of that bell curve want us to believe is going to happen. Yeah, sometimes a holiday trip to grandma’s house can get a bit tiring. But are we forgetting the joy of the season just because we’re told we absolutely have to expect that some of our relatives are ignorant boobs?
I guess it depends. It depends on if we’re going to buy that line – the line most often fed to us through social media memes — that the world is filled with “NLUs,” and they are the enemy.
Or are we going to call it like it really is and stand up to look our family, friends, and neighbors in the eye and say, “You know what? Outside of the things that make us all unique, in reality, I’m just like you.”