Social Media… The Downfall of Democracy
Today we discussed how essential it is that humans are active participants in their political communities and that by communicating to those around you, you are preserving our democracy as we know it today. By participating in our modern democracy, here in the United States, we are able to continue to govern ourselves rather than be governed by some out of touch ruler. Now, depending on our political stances, one could say this is happening now, but that is for a different time, and a different blog post. Today we need to focus on participating in our democracy, whether that is by voting, engaging in civic activities such as protesting, or lobbying our elected officials on a certain bill or topic. But what we need to realize now more than ever, is that we are at a turning point, the United States is facing challenges currently like never before. The country has become increasingly divided on issues such as abortion, voting rights, among others. What is really concerning however, is that there is not a consensus on condemning QAnon or white supremacy along with admitting there is racism within the United States. This all can be related back to social media.
Every morning people wake up to get ready for the day, they shower, brush their teeth, and get dressed. Yet for some reason, one of the tasks when people wake up is to check social media, whether that is Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter. Americans have become social media fiends, it is something that many people can not live without, as we are finding ourselves on our technological devices more and more. This has been an issue for the past couple of years, but has now surged with the outbreak of COVID-19 and social media users will continue to use an insane amount of their daily lives scrolling through new posts. And the issue with social media is that we are not communicating to each other as we would in-person, things are said that we would not normally even fathom saying to someone in real life essentially. Social media has become a place where hideous ideas and name calling has become apparent and by normalizing this on social media, people believe that some of these things are okay to say in public.
With quarantine being extended for a prolonged amount of time due to the inability to contain COVID-19 by the current presidential administration, social media has taken over the United States. Every week there is a tweet, a post on TikTok, or a picture on Facebook that garners national attention from public everyday citizens to media outlets to foreign governments. This not only helps divide the United States, but helps solidify relationships between members of our society that would not normally take place, ideally. More people believe in alt-right conspiracy theories, that the Black Lives Matter movement is headed by Antifa, and that America is under attack my American socialists with an agenda to destroy democracy as we know it. What people need to realize however, is that none of this is true, rather the social media platforms, and social media itself is the thing undermining our democracy. We no longer receive satisfaction from interacting with people in-person, rather all of our communication is through Zoom, text messages, or comments on posts. If we do not change how we are acting now, and remove social media from controlling our lives, one can only imagine what form of government the United States will assume next.
