It started out so optimistically. Everyone thought the internet would make the world a better place. Anyone could start their own website and post what they wanted, information would flow freely and we no longer had to rely upon a few media companies to get the news. And for a while it was great, but social media and the algorithms that power it changed all of that.
Twenty years ago it would be hard to find someone who believed the Earth was flat. Believing that the Earth is a flat disc is ludicrous, and that idea wasn’t getting around 20 years ago. Today, people who believe the earth is flat have conventions every year.
The theory is outlandish, but it’s not hard to find videos on YouTube that go into detail telling you why the Earth is flat. It’s also easy to stumble upon those videos. You could simply do a search on YouTube asking why people believe the Earth is flat, and within an hour you’d be watching videos that "prove" the Earth is flat.
The internet is the great democratizer. Everyone has a voice, no matter how incredulous or harmful their ideas. But it wasn’t until social media that fringe ideas were able to gain any traction. Before YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, conspiracy theorists would have to make their own website and then somehow draw people to it. Many did make those websites, but the traffic did not follow. Not many people believed those conspiracy theories in the late 90s and early 2000s, so not many people would specifically seek out websites like that.
But social media has changed that. Anyone can make a video and put it up on YouTube or create a group on Facebook. These social media sites have an algorithm that determines what to show you next. That algorithm's only job is to keep you engaged on the site for as long as possible. The longer you stay, the more ads you see, the more money the company makes. It’s this algorithm that shows you more and more extreme content because that’s what keeps us engaged.
In the case of YouTube and our example from earlier, a person might wonder why anyone would believe the Earth was flat. The first video they get could be one explaining that humans have known the Earth is round for thousands of years and that the idea the Earth is flat is relatively recent. The next recommended video might be a documentary about flat earthers and their conventions. Eventually the next recommended video will be from a flat earther telling us why the Earth is flat, and they’ll sound like an expert.
That slow descent from mundane, harmless content to wild theories makes it easier to convince someone of the extreme idea. This is how we end up going from there being almost no flat earthers to there being conventions for it in 15 years.
It’s a problem and it’s one of the reasons that our society has become so polarized, and it’s dangerous. Conspiracy groups like QAnon gain new followers every week, and their nonsense caused thousands of their members to invade the U.S. Capitol and get five people killed. The spread of anti-vaccination ideas is responsible for many more than that.
No one is immune to this kind of indoctrination. Intelligence doesn’t protect you; a geophysicist from Colorado was among those who invaded the Capitol. The only way to avoid this idealistic slippery slope is to stay off social media altogether.
I haven’t been on it in years and my mental health is better for it. There are plenty of alternate ways to stay connected with loved ones. You can create shared albums in your photos apps. You can use tools like Skype and Facetime to video chat with them.
Social media isn’t necessary and I would ask you to join me in avoiding it.
