Social Media is Anti-Social
Hello, Dear Netizen
Now before the psychologists are furiously typing, I don't mean the actual personality disorder. However, I also don't mean asocial (introvertedness) as well. If anything, social media sometimes causes a lot of extroversion (see the cringe ytbers like logan paul, mr. beast, and whoever the hell).
What I mean when I say "anti-social" is how counterproductive social media is for socializing. You don't really connect to people at all. When people socialize in real life, people are easily able to build connections with each other by simply saying hi. Social media doesn't really offer this connection. Instead, it's used as a tool to follow influencers or follow people you're already friends/acquaintances with IRL. It's just another platform to talk on with people you already built connections with.
Where the "anti" aspect of social media comes from is that it causes an "us vs. them" mentality that spreads across various platforms. More specifically, the popular ones (e.g. tiktok and instagram) creates the divide even further. With the algorithm constantly feeding in biases, echo chambers, and full of crap in general. For some reason, I'm getting a good amount of conservative-leaning crap, probably because it gets more attention regardless of your political leaning. Say the more outrageous stuff, and people will come flocking to you.
It's honestly bad. I wish social media was like this blog, other blogs, webrings and such. Just click on random links online and find cool stuff. You can learn better from Wikipedia than some biased instagram reel, tiktok, or YT short. They don't link their sources for crap, so you have to do actual research on your own to not commit confirmation bias or to outright dismiss what they're saying (unless if yk it's wrong 90%).
Maybe it's just stupid politics intertwined with the internet, but this is also part of the reason why this divide even exists. The "us vs them" mentality. It's full of crap, and i wish people were smarter and more understanding/caring on the internet. Instead, we get ad hominem like "anime pfp detect. opinion rejected." Just say that you don't wanna admit that you're wrong and cope harder, holy hell.
Another way social media is anti-social is we become addicted to it. If a person is "addicted to their phone," then they're really just addicted to social media. Social media tends to give an opposite effect of being social. Since we become engaged to our devices 24/7, we end up just ignoring each other in real life. If you're talking, and a person is on their phone, it's body language for "I don't give a crap about what you're saying right now." It's a conversation-ender.
Image: This is a cover of one of my fav manga of all time. "Liar Game." If you love Death Note, Code Geass, and smart protags in general, then PLS read this manga. It's so good. Let this be your first manga if you haven't read manga at all. I promise you won't regret it. I'm not gonna spoil anything.
