Can social media change how we behave?
Well, yes and no. I’ll explain the nuance.
Since increasing in popularity in the early 2000s social media has become widespread across several cultures. In the United Kingdom, there are 57.6 million social media users comprising 84.3% of the population. Platforms have evolved from being text-based to multimedia, and are now used as search engines by over 40% of Gen Z (born between the 1990s – 2010s).
Before we get into it, it’s important to note that there’s no single definition of social media. A quick internet search will tell you that the Oxford, Cambridge and Collins dictionaries all have different definitions of what the term “social media” actually means. We should also remember that social media platforms are not universal or homogenous.
Anthropologists at UCL have defined social media as a form of ‘scalable sociality’. A space between private communication (think telephone calls) and public parameters (a television show) – both give you information but the scale of what is public and private is very different. When using social media, we can be as public or as private as we want, and as sociality is the way in which people associate with each other to form social relations and societies, social media allows us to engage in ‘scalable sociality’. In societies where social media and its criticisms are becoming more prominent, how can we understand its impact?
Social media and society
Over the last few years, several studies have pointed to the negative influences of social media on society, including those that report an increase in dissatisfaction with one’s appearance and a desire to change it. But, studies on the impact of media on human behaviour don’t correlate media interventions to a change in individual beliefs. Instead, they attribute behaviour change by media’s ability to influence the social norm.
What does this actually mean? Well, platforms show us content that we perceive to be normal, think Instagram filters. The perception of what’s “normal” impacts what we believe, e.g. pictures of aesthetic offices might lead you to think that “everyone has such an organised desk”. How you choose to respond to that will differ depending on your internal belief system so, “I need to clean my desk” vs. “I find creative inspiration in the chaos”.
For example, a recent Guardian article titled, “Social media triggers children to dislike their own bodies, says study” warns of the risks from social media to the health of today’s young generation. What did the study actually find?
“Nearly half of all children and young people aged from 12 to 21 questioned said they have become withdrawn, started exercising excessively, stopped socialising completely or self-harmed because they are regularly bullied or trolled online about their physical appearance”.
So, nearly 50% of children asked said that their mental health has been impacted by online bullying. The question is, is this social media’s fault? One can argue that the proliferation of social media has meant that bullying that would traditionally take place in the playground now happens online. The intrusion of social media into our homes means we’re less likely to escape it, but the impact of bullying on a child would likely remain the same irrespective of how it’s taking place. The study is actually telling us that children are being negatively impacted by the content on social media platforms as opposed to the platforms themselves.
Why is this important?
A number of reasons. Firstly, most studies of the internet and social media are based on research methods that assume we can generalise across different groups, which isn’t true. In a longitudinal study across nine field sites, UCL anthropologists found content on social media varied greatly depending on the country, and people using each platform. The lack of nuance in our understanding of, and approach to social media is detrimental to our society, because we can’t “fix” what we don’t know.
Children can become particularly vulnerable because of the content that social media platforms show them. In the UK this became clear after an inquest found that harmful content pushed by algorithms on Instagram contributed to death of fourteen year old Molly Russell. Molly’s experience isn’t novel, researchers found that on TikTok, videos relating to body image, mental health and eating disorders were shown to “vulnerable” accounts three times more than to standard accounts. Profiles that even so much as “paused briefly” on this kind of content were effectively bombarded with it. When we link this to what we know about media’s ability to influence what we percieve to be the norm, this becomes a massive problem.
Children are more vulnerable across society – there are safeguarding procedures for children, rules on what film content they’re allowed to consume, a child isn’t allowed into a nightclub, watershed was still an important marker of television in my childhood – so is social media really the problem?
Personally, I don’t think so. Social media is no different to the other forms of media. Platforms can be used as a source of community, entertainment, and ‘edutainment’ which has been hypothesised to positively influence behaviour and learning. What we should ask ourselves is, how can we ensure that social media is used to help shape the societies that we want to live in?
We’re always looking for value-aligned organisations to collaborate with. If you’re interested in using social media as a force for good, get in touch.
Image: Mario Klingemann, Memories of Passersby I, 2019