David Halliday: Any history of the 21st century will be a history of social media. During the pandemic, while we were socially distancing, social media took on a new feeling of urgency. Where would we have been during Covid-19 without our hourly scroll through our social media feeds letting us know that practically every other person on the planet was feeling the same isolation, feeling the same sense of trepidation? During that time, social media was less a technological tool to be remarked upon and more an ocean within which we all swam.
For years, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok have all provided us with avenues for self-expression and connectivity, most importantly for disenfranchised communities. As we’ve seen during the pandemic years, these platforms have the potential to strengthen social capital and reduce a sense of isolation.
But we’ve been seeing downsides, most evident in the last few years. In 2021, whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen released a trove of documents to The Wall Street Journal giving insight into the internal workings of the world’s largest social media company. Perhaps the most concerning element of Facebook Papers was its internal research on the negative effects its products were having on teen mental health, particularly girls.
A slide from one internal presentation in 2019 said: ‘We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls’. And a slide from a similar presentation in March 2020: ‘Thirty-two per cent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.’ Another slide: ‘Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.’
Haugen revealed that the social media companies themselves — specifically Facebook and Instagram, both part of Meta — know their products are harming users and have sought to downplay knowledge of that harm. It renewed calls for legislation around social media, especially after Haugen testified before US and UK lawmakers, with calls to hold the trillion-dollar company to account. Haugen called for greater transparency, greater regulation and more external scrutiny of algorithms.
'Beyond largely silencing a moderate majority, social media has proven the ideal breeding ground for fake news, propaganda, and disruptive and anti-social ideologies, and has been an effective tool for steering groups towards a particular way of thinking.'
In New Zealand last month, five tech giants including Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Twitter, Google