A social media ban on minors seems like a drastic move, a cellphone ban in schools during classes, a draconian measure. If you're a baby boomer (62-80 years old) or a gen xer (46-61 years old), social media has likely upended your life. The millennials (30-45 years old) who grew up with smartphones and social media accounts were likely spared of an upheaval.
The Uninvited Danger We Welcomed
We often think of danger as an intruder. It comes uninvited. Sometimes, we forget, we ushered it in, ourselves, became enamored by it and let it stay forever. Danger is disturbingly unrecognizable when it embeds itself into your life. It's called “sleeping with the enemy.”
Social media's unsavory effects are more conspicuous to those who knew of an alternate universe, a better life, a safer world—those who had the privilege of living in a world before the arrival of social media. I get the lack of awareness but perhaps, also the denial. The danger exists—whether you don't see it or you choose to ignore it because you cannot give up something you can no longer live without.
The Rip Tide of Social Media
Social media harmlessly sneaked into our lives some two decades ago but like a rip tide, it suddenly pulled us out into the dark and dangerous world of phishing, hacking, fake profiles, products and job offers, romance and investment scams, identity theft, cyberbullying, predation, radicalization. Now, we have to fight every day to survive unceasing attempts to rob us of our money or our mind or to shatter our soul or break our spirit at every turn. We should not have to live in such a mean and menacing world.
Why Children Are More Vulnerable
Take it from a boomer who's had the fortune to live in a different world and live long enough to tell you about it. If we, adults, who are aware of the malevolent forces that reside on social media, cannot even evade them, how can we expect our children to protect themselves from these dark and diabolical forces when they are not even aware of them?
Those born into the social media age like zoomers (14-29 years old) and gen alphas (2-13 years old) may find it hard to believe that the world they inhabit every day behind their screens is a dangerous world. I don't blame them. They know of no other world. Social media is their source of information. But can they tell fact from fiction? Truth from falsehood? Reality from fabrication?
The Algorithm's Manipulative Grip
If the algorithm decides what you get to see and read, do you recognize how dangerously manipulative social media is? The algorithm shapes your values, your opinions, your views. It decides your choices, likely your votes and now, your needs. Can you see how the algorithm can validate what you believe is right even when you are wrong? Can you still see the objective reality in the fog of algorithmic manipulation? Is there any room left for critical thinking when the algorithm now commands your brain?
But it's not just mindlessness that social media promotes, it's also addiction. It's called digital cocaine for good reason. But here we are, addicts all, unable to escape its grip on us.
The Urgent Need for Drastic Measures
Our unbridled desire to share every moment of our lives on social media and worse, the lives of our minor children who do not have the power to consent is alarming. But so is our infallible belief that every issue requires public commentary and every thought needs to be posted publicly. And I'm talking about the adults here.
A social media ban on minors seems like a drastic move, a cellphone ban during classes, a draconian measure. But, perhaps, drastic moves and draconian measures are necessary for dire and desperate times.
