That's (Virtually) Life

Nicola Biggerstaff

It is now common knowledge just how much harm social media has caused: from political instability, to violence, to a surge in diagnoses of mental health issues including anxiety and eating disorders. Individuals and communities have suffered previously unimaginable harm from constant exposure to distressing content, disinformation, false and scam advertising.

When an epidemic of violence in the early to mid-noughties culminated in Glasgow being named as Europe’s murder capital in 2005, the Scottish Government was praised internationally for their strategy to tackle knife crime as a health issue rooted in poverty. Perhaps now is a good time to ask ourselves, should we start treating social media as a health problem? What measures can we all take to protect ourselves from harm, and whose responsibility should it be to ensure these measures are effective?

My earliest memory of the internet is the infamous noise of the dial-up. I still remember having to co-ordinate access to the single computer in our house, having to check my parents had no important calls to make before I could ask permission to get online to play games.

I’m of the generation that grew up as the internet became intertwined with our everyday lives. Developing technology and increasing reliance became our rites of passage, intertwined with our own milestones. I started with a classic ‘brick’ Nokia phone, then a flip phone, then a sliding phone, graduating to my first smart phone at fifteen.

I always felt a little left out by not using MSN, but the influence it had on young people at the time was striking. Suddenly, much like the purpose of our newly acquired mobile phones, everyone was available, at our fingertips, at any time we wanted them to be. Great for keeping in touch with your BFFs outside of school and social activities, perhaps when a young person is sitting at home and feeling lonely. Not so great for the outcasts, who were suddenly available at their bullies’ discretion, taking the social dynamic and all of its problems from the school setting and transplanting into the wider world, into their homes. When a child doesn’t feel safe in their own home, as we already know, it can lead to devastating mental health problems in later life.

At this age, the rules for internet safety were simple: don’t use your real name, don’t give out your details, and don’t talk to strangers. This was completely usurped when Zuckerberg et al came along, insisting that using our real details was the only way to generate realistic connections online. Only with our full names and pictures available for the whole world to see can we possibly communicate in an authentic manner. It was genius for its time, but, as we now know, this was all a ploy to collect and sell our data, and once you’re in, there’s no getting out. What we learned in the early days of internet safety no longer applies, and not even computer whizzes or social media hermits are safe from their consequences.

The idea of our real, authentic online profiles, being constantly and instantly available, at all hours has created an undue burden of stress, this false idea that everyone needs to know everything we’re doing all of the time. There are people out there now who don’t live their life for the sake of living it, but for seeking clout. Every activity, meal, every waking moment broadcast for all to see, seemingly creating and setting standards by which they think life should be lived.

Created from the desperate, primal human need to fit in, this pressure to keep up with trends is nothing new. Except, we used to be able to close our doors at night and were free to be who we were in the safety and comfort of our homes. Now this exposure is in the palm of our hands, and even our private spaces are not safe from attempts to influence.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) has the collective young psyche in a chokehold in particular. This idea that if you don’t have the latest gadgets in your home, if you don’t eat at that pop-up restaurant, you’re somehow “missing out” on the real human experience. But what could possibly be more human than missing out on trends? Than messily plodding through, being imperfect and embracing the unique? What young people are really missing out on is the chance to discover themselves, their own personalities and quirks, outside of this perfectly curated, algorithmic bubble, one which amplifies or outright imagines problems they may have and tries to sell them the solution, feeding into both the marketing and disinformation machines.

The amount of times I’ve received targeted Facebook adverts for some sort of powdered, pill or gummy supplement to ‘balance my hormones’ would drive me to despair was I not aware of these deceptive tactics. They have my name, age, location and God knows what else, and use this information to gamble that I might somehow need their ineffective, or clearly fake, product.

And all this, of course, leads into another problem we face with social media and the internet. Disinformation culture has blossomed in recent years, and although it effectively brought the issue to the forefront, this did not start with the US Presidential election in 2016. False information has been allowed to run rampant with little or no consequence on the major social media sites, with real life consequences including political instability, serious injury and even deaths.

It was nothing like this when the internet first came around. This vast source of information, the size of which was beyond anyone’s comprehension, simply at the other end of a keyboard. Whole encyclopaedias could now be searched in seconds, questions answered and even holidays booked in minutes. However, with access now more affordable, and with a lack of online regulation, identifying reliable sources online has become increasingly difficult.

We now have people creating content based on their lack of knowledge being passed off as fact. This, in combination with aggressive marketing tactics, the vacuums and echo chambers created by tailored spaces on the internet leads people down rabbit holes previously unimagined. With equal access giving an illusion of equal footing, dangerous conspiracy theories and the people that platform them are becoming mainstream, and given as much weighting as fact and science.

Now we have to spend a lot of our time and energy wading through such content which has been either targeted at us by marketing companies, or created with an alternative agenda in mind, to find what we’re looking for. I couldn’t tell you the last time I conducted a Google search which didn’t have me scrolling halfway down the page to find the first search result which wasn’t an ad.

So what can we do?

Media literacy, being able to identify when a source is reliable and truthful is key to this information being used right. Source analysis is taught in schools, of course, I remember my history and English lessons on the subject fondly. But it took until university for me personally to put the pieces together, transferring those skills to the modern world and developing them through my higher education, when I realised it was a necessary skill to navigate the modern internet. But since this is such a powerful tool that anyone can access, this should not be a skill which is gatekept for degree level.

Revamping of internet safety guidance for young people and parents alike should be considered. Including education on how to spot disinformation, product placements and advertisements through source analysis skills could be a valuable lesson going forward.

In this vein, taking just a little personal responsibility in this manner sounds like it should be, on the face of it, the solution. However, it is not the only one, and it will not work in isolation. Just like any other addiction, the overuse of social media and the internet can be attributed to a combination of any number of lifestyle and economic circumstances, which only when put together create the circumstances for harm.

The truth is the internet is insidious, and much like most insidious habits that exist, becoming problems in our communities; smoking, alcohol, drugs, violence; they cannot be tackled until the issues which drive individuals to engage with them in the first place are also addressed. Why do people feel the need to engage with social media? Are they suffering from loneliness in real life? Do they have mental or physical health problems which would otherwise exclude them from engaging with their local community, and are perhaps in need of additional care?

It's about time we put down our phones and pick up the slack. The ability to communicate instantly has made us lazy in our social endeavours, and we need to relearn how to engage with our local communities again. That is the key to community health, and learning that we don’t need to put our lives into a screen to live them.