Mainstream media loves talking about how damaging social media is, but the damaging implications of banning a platform? Not so much.
These days, mainstream media and politician’s have gone into overdrive when it comes to pushing for the banning of platforms or arresting the owners/creators of a platform with the hopes of busting up social media platforms in general. What kicked off the latest rounds of social media demonization from both was France’s arrest of Telegram co-founder, Pavlov Durov. While the circumstances of the arrest was never really disclosed, mainstream media pushed the wrong narrative that Durov not only was arrested for content appearing on the platform, but that this should be the reason despite international law having something else to say about that. This over top of the nasty implications of blaming the owner of a platform for the actions of their users.
What ensued was a wave of increased heated rhetoric from both sides of the US political aisle. Convicted felon, Donald Trump, called for the arrest of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. A high ranking Democrat, for his part, called for the arrest of Elon Musk. If that weren’t enough, things spiralled even further into higher levels of absurdity when the Irish Health Minister called for a crack down on not only social media, but also Roblox of all things – a call so absurd, you’d think it would be satire at first until you realize he was actually serious.
For mainstream media, few even really question those calls. Instead, they chose to actively cheer on this totalitarian rhetoric, backing whatever political party affiliation they were most friendly to. As far as they were concerned, it’s all fine and dandy to have politician’s on all sides calling for social media, in general, to shut down completely. Likely, in their eyes, people will then go back to going slack jaw and drool as they watch their broadcasts and believe anything and everything they had to say on their “news” broadcasts. Heck, many of them would practically hail such an event as a victory for democracy when, in fact, it’s the exact opposite.
Here’s the thing, social media has become highly ingrained in modern society. This is especially for generations who grew up with the internet in the first place. Social media is not only a fact of life, but a rite of passage. It’s not really all that surprising that society today has that thinking going on.
Just think about the 2000’s. Computer technology was rapidly expanding in capabilities and people were communicating more than ever before online. While there was some moral panic over how much time people spent in front of screens, it’s hard to really fault people at the time for it. For younger generations going through high school and university, the economy was effectively in the toilet. Many were told in prior years that if you get a university education, you have it made in life. What’s more, there was little reason to believe otherwise at the time. High school education wasn’t enough. Finish university and you basically punched your meal ticket in life.
Many youth, at the time, had considerable pressure to perform well in their studies. They had little time other than chatting with a few friends over the internet. Using online services were their brief moments of respite from intense study. When graduation hit, most honestly thought that they made it in life. The jobs were going to get handed to them and they would experience the high life of owning a house, having a family, and getting a high paying job. When they turned to the job market, they were seriously disappointed. Jobs were not there, housing costs were, at the time, sky rocketing, debt loads were severe, and the only thing that was available to help out was part time, minimum wage jobs. We’re talking about a whole generation who unknowingly got royally screwed by the system.
To compound the problems, the climate crisis wasn’t being treated seriously, political corruption ran rampant, social programs were getting cut, and more and more found themselves living off of food banks. The feeling for many was that they did everything they were told was right and they still are living in poverty. Did they pick the wrong degree? Did they enter into their field at the wrong time? For some, it was hard to say because the data was either not in or it was in and they didn’t know that they were destined to be working two jobs just to put a roof over their heads. The fears that they had somehow failed in life was all too real for many.
So, all of this cemented the habit of using technology. Things like gaming or social media is the source for getting a moment of respite. For example, someone might find themselves feeling depressed at living in a small run down apartment with $250,000 in debt weighing them down, but online, they can talk about how they spent a day at the park with a new pair of sunglasses. They can tell the story how they want. For once in their lives, they feel like they have even a taste of control over their own lives.
Another example might be that someone out there might be working three jobs and worked off their feet all day long, not really getting anywhere in life. Home ownership is little more than pure fantasy, but online, they just snapped a photo of hanging out with friends at a dance club. When you were told that you had to own a house with the famed white picket fence and a full family, normal feels unattainable. However, online, hanging out at a dance club was, in fact, a taste of normalcy that was missing throughout their entire lives.
The bottom line is that people build connections online through things like social media. With everything else on social media, social media is just a normal part of their lives. Cable TV is too expensive and a newspaper is so last century and expensive as all heck to boot. It’s a pointless frivolity that’s just not needed in life when everything you could ever want is on social media.
To compound things, future generations learned from this as well. Cable TV might be a complete waste of money, but an internet connection of some sort is an absolute essential. Children were using social media and whole generations are now growing up on such platforms. The world is going from bad to worse, so where else do you get a sense of normalcy? Online, of course.
For boomer generations and older, this doesn’t make any sense. Cable TV is where it’s at. Why wouldn’t you get a newspaper if it’s available? You want to go meet people, you hang out at a bar. For mainstream media, it’s the perfect opportunity to exploit the older generation – by constantly drilling into their heads that they were the best generation to have ever lived and younger generations are just lazy, stupid, ruining everything. Mainstream media’s audience is continually dwindling, so rather than adapt their business model, they push the narratives that social media is dangerous and a threat to democracy. For some in the older generation, if the news person on TV said it, then it must be true!
While there are multiple generations enjoying the nice things social media brought into their lives, their world was about to be invaded by angry old people, politicians, and news broadcasters who are hell bent on shutting it all down. Some, like myself, see this happening and are reporting on the developments. Others, however, are completely unaware that efforts are afoot to completely flip their entire world upside down. Armed with conspiracy theories about how social media is destroying people’s minds, politicians and mainstream media are coordinating efforts to put an end to the world of social media. All those fun dance moves, lip syncing, product advice, finding out what friends are up to, and more were about to be ripped away from multiple generations that called social media a digital home away from the awful world of real life.
Indeed, talk to younger generations who are less informed about the news about the dangers of social media and many won’t know what the heck you are talking about. Russian foreign interference? Never seen it because I was watching construction work fails. Chinese government propaganda? Don’t know anything about that. I was watching a dance video. Dangerous trends? What have you been looking at? I was looking at some funny cat pictures on my feed. Right wing propaganda? Maybe on another platform because I was following travel bloggers. Dangerous trends? Not something I saw because I was checking out computer build video’s. Ultimately, if you tell them that the social media platforms they use or heard of shut down, the response is likely going to be a confused (and very understandable) “why?”
Of course, we don’t even have to look very far to see how damaging shutting down access to social media can be. Indeed, we recently saw a judge order the blocking of X/Twitter – a ruling that was upheld by the countries Supreme Court. A move that has definitely stunned the countries population.
So, it is not a huge surprise that the reaction was the feeling of being completely disconnected from he world. From One India:
The blocking of social media platform X in Brazil has sparked a divide among users and politicians regarding the ban’s legitimacy. Many Brazilians faced challenges and uncertainties navigating other social media platforms in its absence.
X is not as popular in Brazil as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. However, it remains an important platform for political debates and is highly influential among politicians, journalists and other opinion makers. It’s also where they share their sense of humour. Many of the country’s most famous memes originate from posts on X before spreading to other social networks.
Pop stars and their fanbases were also hit by Brazilians being left off the platform. “Wait a lot of my fan pages are Brazilian!!! Come back hold up!!,” Cardi B said Friday on X. A fan page dedicated to Timothée Chalamet, known by the handle TimotheeUpdates, said it would temporarily cease updating as all of its administrators are Brazilian.
Ana Júlia Alves de Oliveira, an 18-year-old student, shared that many young people like her no longer watch newscasts or read newspapers, relying solely on social media platforms like X for their news. Without this platform, she felt disconnected.
“I kind of lost touch with what’s going on around the world,” she said. “I saw a lot of entertainment there too, so this is a new reality for me.”
The Associated Press has made similar notes about the situation (though the report tries to sugar coat it by saying that it is “dividing” users:
The blocking of social media platform X in Brazil divided users and politicians over the legitimacy of the ban, and many Brazilians on Saturday had difficulty and doubts over navigating other social media in its absence.
The shutdown of Elon Musk’s platform started early Saturday, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through mobile apps after the billionaire refused to name a legal representative to the country, missing a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The blockade marks an escalation in a monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.
Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with tens of millions of users.
“I’ve got the feeling that I have no idea what’s happening in the world right now. Bizarre,” entertainment writer and heavy X user Chico Barney wrote on Threads. Threads is a text-based app developed by Instagram that Barney was using as an alternative. “This Threads algorithm is like an all-you-can-eat restaurant where the waiter keeps serving things I would never order.”
As we earlier noted, many users are turning to alternatives like BlueSky and Mastodon to try and rebuild their networks following the ban. While those are likely better platforms in the first place, it’s difficult to ignore how damaging it was for X/Twitter users to see their platform of choice so violently ripped away from them.
Say what to want about the problems of X/Twitter (and there’s LOTS of problems with that platform), but the feeling of overall disconnect is nothing new. Indeed, another example was India banning TikTok and the reaction was very similar:
People in India felt a real loss to having TikTok shut down. Young people were angry about their government making nonsense moves.
Of course, it isn’t just average every day consumers that lose a lot in all of this. There are those who took their presence on social media to the next level by creating a whole business model surrounding creating content. Some have gone on to be highly successful, creating a multi-million dollar company and hiring a whole bunch of staff as well to help build and maintain their brands. While it may be easy to say, “well, go find another platform”, that isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
The simple truth is that what may work for one platform may no necessarily work for another platform. A TikTok influencer might try and expand to YouTube shorts and see their content fail miserably even though they got a huge amount of interaction on TikTok. This despite the video formats being the same. It’s a different algorithm that may or may not play well on a different platform. Indeed, there were cases where content creators lost huge amounts of their audience while trying to use an alternative platform.
What’s worse is knowing that there are a contingent of people out there who are more content with just cancelling all influencers because, in their view, posting video’s on the internet is “not a real job”. This despite the countless success stories there are out there. If anything, their success should be celebrated. Instead, they are vilified. So much for celebrating those who pull themselves up by the bootstraps. If anything, the response to people making a living online really boils down to, “No! Not like that!”
At any rate, the more there is a push to ban different social media platforms, the more there is a risk of this cycle of destruction that repeats. A huge number of people find themselves completely disconnected from the world and all of the culture they have grown up with get ripped away from them by the tyranny of arbitrary government internet control. Can they move on to other platforms? Sure. Will they be able to regain what they lost to the government? Possibly, but unlikely.
This is ultimately a side of the story you rarely, if ever, see from mainstream media. You’ll have no problem seeing them scream about how dangerous and awful social media is, but you’ll rarely see anyone cover just how damaging it is to take away a social media platform from an entire generation of people. As a result, the risk of repeating this damaging part of history only increases from here.
