The Demise of Social Media
At the point when Facebook first went online in 2004 there’s simply a juvenile site, from that point forward the internet based life arrange has caught more than 2 billion remarkable month to month clients, as a result of this Facebook has been a web-based social networking symbol for the past decade swallowing Instagram and Whatsapp in its wake.
In any case, of late demeanors towards Facebook are changing and subsequently, Facebook is kicking the bucket from allegations of making mental harm to data and security concerns, Everyone appears to have had it with the social media mammoth, and the pattern is developing past Facebook.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at the surprising new statistics of how people are leaving Facebook, then we’ll see why it’s happening and then in end with a fascinating look at social media in general and how it’s affecting our society.
How Social Media Ripped Apart A Generation
So how exactly is Facebook dying, young people are leaving Facebook in droves, according to recent data by the Pew Research Center that sampled the U.S, Facebook users aged 18 and up, 42% have taken a break from the social network for several weeks or more, to add to this 44% of users aged 18 to 29 deleted Facebook’s app in recent months it might take some time for Facebook to myspace itself, but 44 percent of young Americans deleting the app is very alarming for Facebook.
It demonstrates a mind-blowing shift in mentality, In truth I’d state a great deal of the remaining of the general population on Facebook just keep the application for the Messenger function or the Events Page include this exploration information could be an obvious driving pointer for the organization and social media overall individuals are simply over Facebook and some are becoming sick of social media-based life in general.
So let’s take a look at some reasons why the social media giant is rapidly falling out of favor,
Destruction Of Human Empathy
Empathy is the ability to feel or understand another person’s perspective, it’s putting yourself in someone else’s shoes basically asking ourselves internally what if that was me. Empathy is one of the major elements of humanity that prevents us from displaying animalistic tendencies, Social media has obliterated empathy in the past few years and it’s beginning to demonstrate a barefaced negligence for human life.
Terrible but familiar things happen when empathy goes away, As empathy destruction continues, You’ll start seeing angry swarms of people demanding death to another person without fully understanding the circumstances or taking the effort to comprehend how the accused was feeling when they did or said something controversial.
You’ve probably seen this kind of thing all over the internet recently, Of course, there are political and social movements riding on top of this, but I have a hunch that empathy destruction is close to the heart of why this is happening, the reduction of empathy is even more evident in younger developing minds.
Another study found that modern students seem to be much more self-concerned, individualistic, competitive, and confident. While some of these traits are good in small doses, when over-represented they can be quite negative. On average 18 to 24-year-olds spend 12% of their life on social media with that kind of numbers there has to be some impact, high social media use has been linked to anxiety, depression, and stress.
In a 2015 report by Penn State University’s Center for mental health, recorded a drastic rise in the three diagnoses, The reason for this state of affairs can be described as follows:
When on social media our expectations of life are sky-high and that’s because of what we see, everybody looks and is perfect they’re always doing something cool and it becomes oh so easy to ask oneself why isn’t my life like that.
It can be said that comparison is the depletion of joy, to add to this Millennials and Generations-Z have a tough a lot in life, lower earnings, inflation, and scarce job prospects make a dream lifestyle difficult. There becomes this disconnect between reality and perceived reality which can resolve in great sorrow.
But the truth is those perfect moments that are posted by others are very carefully selected and things may not be so perfect behind the scenes most social media platforms and Facebook, in particular, take part in hacking human nature engineers at these companies have exploited the biological dopamine reward pathways in our brains, just to get us to spend more time on these sites, for example,a person might continue to scroll on Facebook because finding a post that they enjoy releases doe for me so they’ll keep scrolling until they find it.
Like, comments and shares also release dopamine in our brains unfortunately for some this can lead to a very real addiction similar to chemical dependency on drugs.
You’ve probably noticed that the Internet is turning more and more divisive nobody can seem to talk to each other without getting angry but why??
Apart from low empathy causing detachment from other points of view, there might be another additional reason is the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect was proposed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999.
It states that if a person has limited knowledge on a topic they’ll be extremely confident in what they’re saying and grossly overestimate their abilities, but as the person gains more knowledge they might begin to realize that things are much more complicated than they first thought.
As more knowledge is gained one becomes less sure about what they’re talking about, They only start to become confident again when they approach expert levels of knowledge, as you can imagine internet discussions aren’t full of experts, So if we apply this theory to social media conversations we should expect to see this the people who know the least will be commenting the most, because they’re the most confident and those who have the most knowledge will be more likely to stay out of comment wars, because they’re less confident.
As for the true experts, they’re few and far between, the Dunning-Kruger effect combined with empathy destruction and create an environment where those with the least knowledge of the most vocal yet are unable to comprehend opposing points of view and at the same time, the more informed people are likely to stay silent.
So, Ladies and Gentlemen, that’s social media in a nutshell. Never before have we seen the Dunning-Kruger effect so widespread, globally and I think people are starting to get tired of the nonsense that it creates but combining this phenomenon with social media makes this problem go a whole lot further.
Here Ex-Facebook Exec Chamath Palihapitiya talking truthfully about how social media is ripping the every fabric of society apart.
Mental health concerns and the disintegration of civil conversation have been brewing for years, but I think the most recent reason for the Exodus and Facebook was due to the Cambridge Analytical scandal, people just didn’t like their personal information being taken and sold in the open market this was the straw that broke Facebook’s back, As the privacy concerns that finally woke people up.
So what can we conclude from all of this at first, it seems a little confronting but on the bright side people are starting to understand that social media, isn’t healthy.
If misused or overused and that’s generally how society works we discover something new and then realize that it’s not good for us and then eventually we swing back to an equilibrium.
Even Google and Apple have implemented something called digital well-being, in their latest versions of their smartphone software its aim is to encourage people to use their phones less as a whole it seems like we’re reaching a turning point with social media people are sick of how they feel when they use it so hearing all of this you might get the idea that social media is inherently bad but it’s not for example Facebook is great for keeping in contact with friends and family in other countries.
It’s important to remember the following social media isn’t the enemy it’s just a tool that’s an amplified reflection of us. We need to take responsibility for ourselves hopefully Blogs like this might spread awareness in the emerging problems that we’re starting to see we need empathy we have to be willing to imagine what other people who are different from us experienced.
If you don’t want to do this at least give it a thought, if not we’ll be giving in to impulsive animal-like instincts and we’re better than them.
As for Facebook, their ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp may be integral to their survival in the future ultimately we’ll have to wait and see what happens. So that’s it that was a look at Facebook social media in general and it’s darker side
I’ll catch you again soon for the next blog cheers guys have a good time.
