It’s mind-numbingly obvious that social media is a huge part of the lives of students today. Everyone knows about social media, most people partake in it, and it affects every Camosun student.
There are social media meetups. There are networking and career-advancing opportunities.
There was the Arab Spring.
There is also the destruction of self-esteem. There is endless distraction.
There are suicides.
There’s confusion: do we believe it when we see a Facebook post where someone claims “for every share I’ll plant a tree”? Do we believe every link that’s shared on Twitter from a news blog that doesn’t check its facts and has no credibility?
Every social phenomenon has two sides to it, and social media is no exception. While some students embrace it as a vital part of their future and their career-to-be, some experts are warning that if we don’t change our relationship with social media, the consequences will be dire.
Take the bad with the good
Raffi Cavoukian is one of the people saying social media needs to go through a serious stage of reform, that we need to gain control of it before it gains control of us. The popular children’s singer is also an advocate for change, and, as he points out in his new book, #lightwebdarkweb: Three Reasons to Reform Social Media Be4 it Re-forms Us, he embraces advances in technology, but he advocates reforming it.
The idea of reforming what has become such an enormous thing is a daunting one, but Cavoukian says that’s no excuse to not do it, via regulation, like how other forms of media are regulated.
“The need to reform has to be weighed on its own merits,” he says. “How realistic is almost a secondary question. If something needs to change, it must be changed. ‘Are there good reasons to reform social media?’ is the way I would approach your question, although I appreciate the question as you’ve formed it. How many teen suicides must it take before society as a whole wakes up to the need for social media reform for safety?”
In his book, Cavoukian cites three reasons why social media must be reformed: safety, intelligence, and sustainability. “Reforming social media without delay is critical,” he says in the book. But before reform even happens, there are steps people can take to make social media a safer place. And while his book is geared towards parents who have kids, he says the advice in it also applies to adults.
“The advice for younger kids also holds true for college students,” says Cavoukian. “Use social media wisely, with discernment, not compulsively. And never while drinking or in an altered state. Never while driving. Those points have to made; that has to be your base from which you start.”
And once you’ve started, think about what you’re doing on social media, he says.
“When you’re using social media, have your goal be to inform, to enliven, and to uplift,” he says. “You can have a lot of fun; humour is a great thing we can share in social media. Not to harm. Always to uplift.”
And while a person talking in catchphrases is usually a fast track to annoyance, with Cavoukian, his sincerity shines through as he urges: “Shine your light. Grow the lightweb.”
Camosun communications instructor Lois Fernyhough says that the way to make social media a safer place is through education.
“We’ve talked in the past about media literacy; social media literacy, we need to work on that,” she says. “Kids today have grown up with digital technology, and because they’ve grown up with it, they accept it, and they don’t question it. So it’s just assumed it does what it does, so people just take it for granted and perhaps don’t realize how powerful it can be or some of the problems it can pose.”
Fernyhough says that she teaches students that it’s not always them using the technology… sometimes, it’s the technology using them. The attitudes she faces when talking about this surprise her.
“I’m very surprised that college students are aware that there isn’t much private on the internet, but they don’t seem to be that concerned about it,” she says. “I try to show them how corporations are using their personal information to sell them stuff online, and even that doesn’t seem to faze them much.”
Take the good with the bad
Safe to say, Holmes likes social media.
“I guess you could say that, sure,” he says with a laugh. “I was in IT for 20 years. I’m 40, and I was always really interested in communications technology. When I was 13 years old, before the internet was something people did, I was running BBSes.”
Holmes says that even though he’s a champion for social media, he’s not blind to its problems. Yet he feels there’s more positive than negative about the phenomenon.
“When I hear of some of the amazing things, and I’ve heard a lot running these conferences every year, some of the amazing things happening around the world and here with individuals and stuff using these tools and connecting with people, I still believe the positive far outweighs the negative. We as a society have to figure out a way to deal with the negative. Some of it’s just going to be social changes.”
Camosun’s Fernyhough points to the Arab Spring as an example of how social media, on a larger scale, can lead to great things.
“Twitter was used to bring together people who were protesting the Egyptian regime at that time, and other things that were happening across the Arab countries at that time,” she says. “Twitter was being used as a force to unify the opposition to the political regime and to organize the people and sort of get them to figure out, ‘We’ll meet here, we’ll organize here, we need medical assistance there,’ that sort of thing. So an instantaneous social messaging system can be used in those sorts of ways as well.”
That’s on a global scale; on a micro level, Fernyhough says that social media can be used to build positive communities, and to help advance potential careers through networking.
“Social media is a way for like-minded people to come together, and it can be for the purposes of evil, but it can also be for positive things,” she says. “So it’s a way for people to get together, to communicate, to share ideas. It can definitely be used educationally, and in a career sense, and you can build up a network of people who are working in the same area that you’re working in, or, as a student, that you want to work in. So it can be a wonderful networking tool. You can meet and be connected to so many more people than if you, say, just went to a business mixer in Victoria.”
The power is in our hands
It’s very important to note that social media isn’t all negative. It has the power to create incredible change on a global scale, can be utilized to help advance careers, and is just a lot of simple, mindless fun.
“Revolutions have started on social media,” says Holmes. “The tools of human communication have become far faster and far more effective to reach wide audiences, and it becomes a very liberating tool in a very real sense around the world.”
And it’s also important to note that, ultimately, it’s not whether social media has good or bad intentions. It’s whether the people using social media have good or bad intentions.
“Bullying is a human problem, not a social media problem,” says Holmes. “To imply that without the tool bad behaviour wouldn’t happen is pretty naive. So in facing those challenges, we have to look at solutions that work within the framework of modern society.”
For Cavoukian, it comes down to using the tools of social media wisely. He still hopes for a large-scale reform of safety and privacy issues with social media, but in the meantime, he says this: don’t be stupid.
“Why would we use social media, anyway? What are we doing when we’re using it? We’re reaching out, making new acquaintances. Learning, sharing, right? But, again, when we do that with a conscious mind, rather than the compulsive dependency or addiction, which we don’t want, that gives us the best chance to use the web in a smart way,” he says. “You want to be a smart social media user, not a dumb one, to put it bluntly. You don’t want to be social media stupid, because it’s an unforgiving medium. You make mistakes on social media, and it’s there for life.”