Tag: social media

The Social Dilemma: Why I’m not deleting my Facebook account (yet)

In the last week, I’ve seen two friends announce they watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and are deleting their social media accounts. I understand the sentiment. I’ve thought about deleting my social media accounts on several occasions! But I still haven’t quite been pushed over the edge just yet. The positives have always (just about) outweighed the negatives. So – was The Social Dilemma enough to convince me?

In a word, no. Let me give a few reasons why I’m not going to be deleting my social media accounts yet.

There was no new information

A year or two ago, I watched a documentary on the BBC about social media. Almost every point made by The Social Dilemma had already been made in that documentary. In fact, for that reason I felt The Social Dilemma felt a little outdated already. It felt 3-4 years old, which is probably not surprising given that most of the people who were interviewed for it left the big social media companies a few years ago.

This is not to say that their warnings do not apply today, but I do feel that social media companies have started to make changes. For example, I think Facebook has become aware of being a political echo chamber – lately I’ve seen more posts on my news feed which I disagree with. (Actually that’s why I blogged about hiding political memes).

You can mitigate against some of the problems

As I said, all of the issues raised by The Social Dilemma I was already aware of. In fact, it actually inspired me to created a couple of videos about smartphone addiction. This one below, and another one looking at a more Biblical angle.

That video was recorded a year ago, and I think even since then things have changed: Facebook and Twitter are becoming more and more annoying. The ads are getting in the way more and more. It’s becoming less easy to simply connect with other people, which is its main selling point. In other words, these days I find myself much less tempted to use it.

And for me personally, I found it really helpful to think about it from their perspective. When I knew that they were deliberately trying to get me to stay on their site for as long as possible, all the annoying things made sense. And I stopped giving into it so much… maybe it’s because I’m a contrarian, but that knowledge was very helpful.

The problems were all human problems

A long time ago, I was involved in an internet discussion forum for DJs. One day the owner of the forum basically packed up and decided to go on a year-long trip round the world. He didn’t let anyone know before he went, and the forum moderators didn’t have very much power to keep order. As you can imagine, things went a bit crazy – I remember people falling out, accusing each other of things, all that sort of thing. When he returned, after things settled down, the blame game started: was he to blame, for leaving the forum without giving appropriate power to the moderators? Or were the people to blame who’d actually done the things they shouldn’t have done?

I argued then, as I would now, that – at the end of the day – circumstances do not cause people to do wrong. They may be a contributory factor. But we all face the choice of doing right or wrong – human beings have dignity and responsibility (as I argued last time).

I think it’s exactly the same with social media. The fact that social media may be an echo chamber doesn’t mean that we have to hate people who have different views. That’s something which is not the fault of social media – even if social media exacerbates the problem, it doesn’t cause it. Social media has been designed to be addictive – but the weakness lies within human beings.

And this is the key point: social media only has as much power as we give it. It doesn’t have to become all-consuming or divisive. It only will if we let it.

There are still positives

There are still a few positives to social media. It’s nice to be able to see photos of what other people have been up to, especially if they’re friends or family who don’t live nearby. I also appreciate the Facebook groups – I’m in a couple of groups which are really useful. And the nice thing about groups is, it doesn’t suffer so much from the algorithm problem – Facebook doesn’t hide posts which it thinks I will disagree with.

I also find Twitter a helpful resource – if you use an app like Tweetdeck rather than the standard Twitter app, it won’t prioritise tweets it thinks you will like. You’ll just be able to see your “vanilla” feed, without promoted tweets etc. Twitter is still a really good resource to find articles and pieces which I wouldn’t see otherwise.

So I think social media still has its uses, even if there are real issues with it to contend with.

It’s important to be a witness

As a Christian, I think it’s important to be salt and light in the world. Basically what this means is, I think it’s important for Christians to try and show the world the right way of doing things – however imperfectly. We need to try to love each other, even our enemies. I don’t think social media is so irredeemably broken at the moment that it cannot be used in the right way. I think Christians should use it, but try to use it in a right and godly way.

For example: not calling someone names if they disagree with you or even are rude to you. Not getting into fights about trivial issues. Trying to seek the truth rather than post fake news.

At the moment, I think it’s possible to use social media in a good and godly way. If it becomes impossible, I think that would be the moment to leave.

It’s where people are

The final thing I wanted to say is, it’s just where people are at the moment. A lot of people do spend a lot of their time online.

As a Christian minister, I think it’s important to be with people where they are. That’s what Jesus did: he didn’t stay in the synagogues and preach there. He went into the towns and villages. His most famous sermon is the Sermon on the Mount – because it was preached outside! Where would the equivalent location be today? I don’t know, but I think social media would be part of it.

My other site Understand the Bible started life as a YouTube channel. I wanted to make videos that would reach people where they were. These days I also upload videos to Facebook. Social media is actually a good platform for sharing the gospel – it allows a lot more people to see and interact with Christian content.

A few weeks ago I read an article where someone was talking about the Reformation. They mentioned that the printing press was a key part of the Reformation. I think social media could be something foundational for a new, 21st-century reformation: Lord knows we need one! Social media means the gospel can get into people’s homes, onto every computer and smartphone. Who wouldn’t want that opportunity?

As Paul says in Ephesians 5:

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

September 19, 2020
Why is social media so toxic at the moment?

A lot of people are talking about how social media seems to have become toxic lately. Rachel Riley posted up on Twitter a poll earlier today:

Interesting feedback for @TwitterSupport.

3 in 5 @Twitter users would rather the app never existed.

As clear a sign as any they should do more to combat hate speech and abuse. https://t.co/10HdO2MmUm
— Rachel Riley MBE 💙 (@RachelRileyRR) July 25, 2020

I had an interesting discussion the other day on Facebook about how social media has changed the world. It was sparked off by this article by the former Prime Minister of Iceland, where he says:

Leaving aside the reasons for the collapse of that particular government, it has become clear that things that previously might have been considered minor or defused in a matter of days in the media (or over several years in an enquiry) now have the potential to start a ‘nuclear chain reaction’. This is the new political reality. The speed and unpredictability of modern communications means that an infinite number of issues, big or small, have the capacity to take on a life of their own. They have the potential to start social trends, provoke riots, and bring down governments or even start wars.

Those are big words – can social media bring down governments or start wars? It’s certainly caused a lot of upset, e.g. people who’ve had to resign over “twitterstorms”. I’ve blogged before about the dark side of social media and whether Twitter makes us dumb and angry. It wasn’t always like this; it seems like things have changed a lot in the past ten years or so. When I first joined Twitter back in 2009 it had a much more positive vibe about it.

What’s happened?

Let’s explore some of the reasons why I think social media has become toxic of late. I don’t claim this is an exhaustive list, but I think these are all contributing factors. I’m sure there are more – let me know in the comments what you would add.

1. Big things going on politically

The first thing is, over the last ten years we’ve had a lot of polarising decisions as a country. It was kicked off by the financial crash of 2008, and then the austerity programme. A lot of people were very unhappy about austerity, and took to social media to express it.

Then we had Brexit, and now the coronavirus – all things which split opinion. Particularly Brexit – which is the nature of an in/out referendum.

I wanted to start with this because I do wonder whether things would have been half as bad if we hadn’t had so much to contend with as a country. It’s the same with anything – when everything’s fine, it’s easier to be generous with those you disagree with. When you’re under pressure, it’s much harder.

As a country we have been divided before – the civil war was pretty divisive! – so division is something which occurs with or without social media. As such I don’t think that social media causes division – but I do think it can exacerbate it. Let’s look at a few reasons why that is.

2. Social media merges the personal and political

Let me describe an experience I’ve had many times: You meet someone in real life and get on well. You’re quite happy to talk about all sorts of things – kids, partners, life, jobs, etc. Eventually you become friends on Facebook… and you find that their Facebook is full of political messages which you don’t agree with. Over time this colours your view of them as a person.

Does that experience ring any bells? I’d be willing to bet it’s something which has happened to a lot of people.

Before I was on social media, I hardly ever had a conversation about politics outside of my own group of friends. I’ve had far more conversations about politics (and various other contentious issues) with people I barely know on social media than I’ve had in real life.

This simply isn’t the way it’s meant to be: on the internet, it’s so easy to see a screen and reply without considering the person behind. You can say things online which you’d never be bold enough to say in person – and that’s not a good thing!

3. Social media amplifies the minority

One of the things which social media does is amplify the opinions of people who shout the loudest. If a handful of people are vocal about a particular opinion, then – even if that only represents (say) 1% of your friends list – it will feel like ‘everyone’ shares that opinion.

I think it can work like that with disagreements online as well. A week or two ago I had a discussion about face masks on Facebook. A few people joined in, probably not more than about ten people in total. A few of them were quite vocal about disagreeing with me. Now, there are over 200 people on my Facebook friends list – so the number of people who engaged with what I wrote was less than 5% of the number of contacts I have.

But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like more of a battle than it should have done. One or two more aggressive comments carry much more weight than they should. I’m sure there’s something psychological there!

I’ve heard it said of the current ‘culture wars’ – “both sides think they’re losing”. This is the problem with social media: it can amplify the voices which oppose you and, outside the context of a relationship, make it seem much worse than it is. It’s very difficult to be objective about it.

4. Social media makes it harder to stand out

We human beings are social animals. We find it hard to stand out from a crowd. There’s a famous psychology experiment called the Asch Conformity Experiment. In these experiments, subjects would conform their understanding to a group, even though they knew it was wrong.

Now, those trials were done back in the mid-20th century, before social media had even be conceived. Peer pressure is something that existed back then – but imagine how powerful it is now that we’re always connected to each other!

If it was hard to stand out back in the 1950s, think about what it’s like now. Think about what it’s like when, for example, you are scrolling through Facebook and see lots of your friends have changed their profile picture to support a particular cause. Do you want to be the one who stands out?

Coupled with the previous point, I think this makes social media very dangerous: it’s easy to think that ‘everybody’ thinks in the way that vocal activists think. But this is far from the truth. It’s just that the people who think differently are staying quiet…

5. Social media encourages superficial point-scoring

While I was writing this blog post, I opened up Facebook and saw this meme posted by a friend of mine.

This, to me, is typical of the political memes I see on Facebook. There’s no real political argument. There’s no looking into the nuances of an issues, the shades of grey… it’s just “blame whoever-you-don’t-like”.

“Our side” gets portrayed as the distillation of everything pure and good, while “their side” gets portrayed as the distillation of everything evil.

I am very aware in writing this post that only a handful of people will read it. But a meme like that could be seen by hundreds or thousands of people. It’s pithy, it makes a point, people will click the “retweet” or “share” button – even though it doesn’t actually further the discussion in any meaningful way. All it says is “my group good; that group bad”.

And that leads into the final point.

6. Social media encourages tribalism

One of the things which emerged a few years ago is that social media companies were intentionally feeding people news and links which they thought that person would like. Facebook admitted, for example, trying to determine someone’s political preferences and then trying to show them things which matched their preferences.

This lead to what became known as an ‘echo chamber’ – where you only ever really saw and engaged with views you already agreed with.

Now I think this is complicated: I see plenty of views which are different to my own political preferences. But, as we saw in the previous point, a lot of political memes aren’t about trying to actually persuade with logic and reason – they’re about trying to shame or bully the ‘other side’ into agreeing.

New Labour, New Danger poster from 1997

This kind of thing has been happening for a long time (e.g. I remember the Tories election poster back in 1997 “New Labour New Danger”). I can well imagine if social media had been around then, that would have been shared all over!

But, back then, that kind of thing was restricted to billboards and bus shelters and the like. You could leave it behind when you got home. These days, you can’t escape from it.

Summing up

The problems that I have highlighted here all existed prior to the advent of social media. All that social media does is take an existing problem and amplify it. This is what’s happened with technological innovation all through history: there are good sides and there are bad sides. The steam engine and the industrial revolution had many positive effects, but there were negative ones too. It’s the same with everything: there’s good and bad.

We human beings are tribal by nature, we like to have an “us” and “them”. Social media simply takes that instinct and puts it on steroids. We human beings find it easier to point the finger at “them” rather than listen to their arguments. And on it goes. Social media simply takes the human problem and puts it on a larger scale.

What can we do about it?

There’s a quote which I often go back to: “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.” Social media, or any technological innovation, isn’t good or bad in and of itself – the problem lies in the hearts of those who use it.

G. K. Chesterton was once asked to contribute to a newspaper piece “what is wrong with the world today”. He simply wrote, “Dear Sir, I am.”

The problem isn’t with social media – it’s with you and me. The Bible diagnoses this problem as sin – a failure to love God and our neighbour. We don’t treat people with kindness, we don’t listen to them, we want to put ourselves and our own interests first.

No technology can solve that problem. But – mercifully – there is a solution. This is what God says in the Bible:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26

Although our hearts may be ‘stony’ – although we don’t love as we should – God, the expert at hearts, can give us new hearts, hearts which love as we should and treat God and others as we should.

The problem with social media isn’t one which can be defeated by better technology or algorithms: the only way it can be overcome is through the new hearts that only God can offer us.

The Church: What it should be like…

I am very struck by how the church is called to be very different to the way social media often is:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28

The church is called not to be petty, not to be tribal, to value everyone as those made in the image of God. Of course, no church is ever perfect. But I think in the church I belong to, however much we get it wrong, God is still at work in helping us to love each other.

So – my final thought: if you want to be part of a community to join which isn’t tribal, petty, divisive, and so on – find a good local church to join.

July 26, 2020
Social Media, #BlackLivesMatter and being consistent

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.
Proverbs 31:8-9

One of the things I am fascinated by – as I mentioned again recently – is social media and the way it has changed the world in ways we have only just begun to understand. I think the recent killing of George Floyd and the subsequent #BlackLivesMatter response is a good case in point.

The facts are fairly well known: George Floyd, a black man, was held by a police officer until he was asphyxiated. This has provoked a backlash of responses against police brutality and racism – even in the UK (e.g. the BBC reported that thousands turned out for anti-racist protests in the UK).

There has been a Christian response too, and I’ve seen a range of videos and blogs about it from a Christian perspective – e.g. this video from Speak Life, which I thought was very helpful. Many of my friends on social media a couple of days ago posted up black images with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. I’ve even seen today (Sunday) that a number of clergy in groups I belong to have been preaching about racism.

I’m not going to talk here about Black Lives Matter, or about the responses to it – I think racism is wrong and it’s right to speak up against it publicly. But I really want to focus on one thing which has intrigued me, and that is consistency.

To my mind, this issue has brought out issues of consistency like no other in recent times. What I mean by that is, speaking up on this particular issue and not speaking up on other issues. You see, the Christians who have been joining in with #BlackLivesMatter have been communicating a message – that racism is wrong. I get that. And, although I disagree with aspects of the protests (rioting, of course, as well as breaking of social distancing rules during a pandemic) – I think it is right to communicate the message that racism is wrong.

I just want to flag up at the outside, lest anyone should be mistaken, that I am in now way agreeing with racism or trying to silence the protests!

However. What intrigues me is why people – and especially Christians – are joining in loudly with the protests now, and preaching against racism etc – when other things seem to pass without comment. Let me give a few examples.

#1: Grooming Gangs

At the end of last year the Independent published an article which said: “More than 18,700 suspected victims of child sexual exploitation were identified by local authorities in 2018-19, up from 3,300 five years before.” And it’s the same old, same old – apparently “lessons have been learned” but nothing seems to change.

Where are the hashtags #WhiteWorkingClassGirlsMatter? Where are the protests against the police and the government, who have largely brushed the issue under the carpet? Where is the Archbishop of Canterbury to stand in support of those who have been abused?

I can’t think of a church leader who made a public statement about this – possibly because there wasn’t a big outcry at the time. It all seemed to fly below the radar. How something like this can happen without being a national scandal, I don’t know – especially when the media can spend a full week venting fury at Dominic Cummings for possibly breaking lockdown rules.

#2: French police and Gilets Jaunes

Have you heard anything about the police brutality that’s been happening in France? Here’s an excerpt from an article on Spiked:

The scale of police violence was astonishing and stomach-churning. Between November 2018 and June 2019, according to figures compiled by Médiapart, 860 protesters were injured by the police – 315 suffered head injuries; 24 lost the use of an eye; and five had hands torn off. In December 2018, an elderly woman who had no involvement in the protests was killed when police threw a grenade into her flat.
Among these victims are not only protesters but also journalists and medics. Police have been filmed beating elderly and disabled people, as well as using tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters. The main source of injuries was ‘Flashball’ rubber bullets – a non-lethal weapon that has been banned in every EU country except France. More than 13,000 of these bullets were fired in the first three months of the protests. Another extreme weapon used by police was the GLI-F4 – a teargas grenade which contains explosives that maimed numerous protesters. The grenade was eventually banned by the French government in early 2020.
Things got so bad that the UN called for a ‘full investigation’ into the police’s ‘excessive use of force’. Similarly, the Council of Europe’s human-rights commissioner called for an end to the use of Flashballs against protesters. Amnesty International denounced the ‘extremely heavy-handed’ policing deployed against peaceful protesters. Eventually, even the French government acknowledged it had a problem with police violence.

Where are the #FrenchLivesMatter hashtags? Where are the instagram pictures in solidarity? Where are the church leaders standing up for those oppressed by the police in France?

#3: Working Class Discrimination

The church in the UK has a problem with class, as I talked about before. The other day I was watching a video by Duncan Forbes, “Are lower classes welcome at churches?” In that video he starts by telling a few stories about how he has been made to feel like an outsider and discriminated against because of being working class.

Now I do feel like the church is slowly beginning to wake up to class problems in the church – but it’s something that not many Christian leaders have actually spoken up about.

In fact, I think one of the most ironic things is that many of the people at the Black Lives Matter protests will are from the more affluent middle classes who have just spent the last four years telling Brexiteers how ignorant and racist they are. Black lives matter – the white working class can safely be sidelined and ignored.

Being consistent

All in all, what we choose not to stand up and protest about speaks as much as what we do protest. If we protest, loudly, one particular thing – and yet fail to speak out on another issue – what message are we sending about what, or who, we value?

I started this post by quoting Proverbs 31, which I will quote again because I think it’s so helpful:

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Who, in our current culture, cannot speak for themselves, who are destitute? I’d suggest the working class, especially the white working class, have as good a case as any. The police have been hopeless when it comes to actually stopping some of these grooming gangs from abusing working class young women. Many have spoken about how the school system seems to be failing working class boys. The church is dominated by middle-class culture.

If we speak when it’s easy to speak out – it’s not exactly controversial to join the Black Lives Matter protests at the moment – and yet fail to speak out on issues which society does not speak out on, aren’t we failing the Proverbs 31 test? If we only speak out on issues that are approved by the Guardian, or by social media, we’re going to say a lot about a small number of things but miss a lot of things which Christians really should speak up about.

Let me finish by, again, clarifying what I am and am not saying – just because this is an issue which it’s so difficult to speak about.

I am not saying it’s wrong to protest. However, I am saying we should be careful about what we protest and what we don’t protest. Especially in a world of social media where perspective can be be so distorted (what’s important on social media is not what’s important to the country, let alone to God!)

I am not saying racism is unimportant. However, I am saying that society is saying a lot about racism at the moment but very little about the other issues I’ve mentioned. I think Christians have a duty to speak out on issues where society is not speaking (the issue of abortion comes to mind, but there are many other examples).

I am not saying we have to stop talking about racism, or pretend the church has a flawless record in this area. We should be realistic about everything. But I do feel we could have a more level-headed approach which is less directed by the social media mob.

I’m going to finish with some words from Psalm 12, which really jumped out at me recently as I read it:

“Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord.
“I will protect them from those who malign them.”
And the words of the Lord are flawless,
like silver purified in a crucible,
like gold refined seven times.
You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
and will protect us forever from the wicked,
who freely strut about
when what is vile is honored by the human race.
Psalm 12:5-8

The Lord shows no partiality – he is fair, and he is just, and ultimately he is the one who will ensure those who are needy will be protected and kept safe. I pray that we will learn to be like him.

June 7, 2020
The Social Media Pandemic

I am fascinated by social media. I just find it amazing how it seems to have changed the world so fast in so little time, I don’t think we have grasped how much difference it has made to our society. I think you can really see the difference it has made with the response to covid-19 in all sorts of ways.

1. It dominates the news

In the days before social media, a news item may have dominated in the press – but it wouldn’t have been in your face 24/7. These days, you can’t look at Facebook or Twitter for very long without seeing something about the pandemic.

This is one of the features of social media I find most difficult: you just can’t escape from the news!

And, of course, because most of our journalists and broadcasters are on social media, it’s a vicious circle: everyone’s talking about it, so it makes the news, so everyone talks about it…

2. Fear spreads on social media

A few years ago I talked about how outrage spreads on social media. After this last few weeks, I’d add another emotion that spreads on social media: fear. A couple of weeks ago, when I was in the supermarket, I saw someone wearing an actual gas mask. That’s a rare occurence, but a lot of people are wearing masks, gloves, etc. Now some of this may be sensible precaution – but it seems to me that a lot of people are doing these things because they are terrified.

And the reason that they are terrified is because they keep hearing how many deaths there are of covid-19. Day after day, it’s relentless: the media is fixated on the ‘peak’, on how many deaths there are… in the UK as I write there have been 17,337 deaths with covid-19 – although many more have recovered. I’ve seen quite a few people say, “Why don’t they report the number of people who have recovered?”

The problem is, the data is not entirely straightforward – Will Jones has been doing sterling work examining the evidence on the Faith and Politics blog, e.g. what is really killing people, and are we more immune than we think. It seems that the data does not actually support the apocalyptic note about covid-19 that we hear so much from the media. But, as Peter Hitchens found out, dissenting from the ‘correct’ opinion on covid-19 can bring the mob down on you.

And this is the problem with social media: if people believe a particular thing (e.g. that covid-19 is a deadly virus which is going to kill us all), then they’re going to believe it despite the evidence. Fear wins out. And I think that is, to some extent, what is happening at the moment.

3. Over-the-top responses

I’ve written before about virtue signalling – that is, saying something on social media to appear virtuous without actually having to be virtuous. I think it’s one of the most ugly sides of social media. Sadly, I think it’s been all too evident in the responses to the crisis from the top down:

Firstly: The Government. The UK didn’t initially go into lockdown, initially the government pursued a strategy of advising people to handwash and avoid unnecessary contact and journeys etc – but businesses remained open. Why did they make the change? Part of the reason for the change was the (dubious) study from Imperial College London.

Personally I think a lot of it was due to the government wanting to be seen to play it safe. MPs get so much flack on social media these days for just about anything – particularly conservative MPs. Politics has become so toxic that I think MPs and the government want to do what they can to avoid criticism. Who wouldn’t? And, make no mistake, a lot of people were calling for a lockdown and being very critical of the government for not acting sooner. (Maybe because of the climate of fear I talked about!)

The problem is, I think it’s driven them to impose a policy which looks like it is cracking down hard on covid-19, but actually – on closer inspection – will probably do more harm than good. In other words, the lockdown is a knee-jerk response to the crisis because the government want to be seen to be cracking down hard.

Secondly: Shops. The other day I went to Sainsbury’s, and I had to queue outside – they’d stuck little ‘foot’ stickers on the floor outside, two metres apart, and we had to wait dutifully in line. They were limiting the number of people in the shop. It all just felt so ridiculous. When you go into the shop, you have to touch things (which is a far more effective way to transmit the virus). You can’t stay two metres away from others in a confined space, even if you limit the numbers. And there’s precious little evidence that ‘social distancing’ actually works to contain the virus.

So… why are shops doing it?

In addition, some shops introduced an hour only for NHS staff, or only for the over-70s. Which sounds like a great idea, except for the fact that it’s caused long queues and – so I’ve heard – actually made things more difficult for some of the over-70s.

The problem is, I think a lot of shops want to be seen to be cracking down the hardest on covid-19. “Come to us, we’ll keep you safe! We’re the toughest on the virus!” And it just seems they’re trying to outdo each other in a bid to see how many ridiculous measures they can introduce. Our local Tesco has introduced an enormous entrance queue (like you might find at an amusement park), and a one-way system!

All in all, to my mind, the last few weeks have demonstrated a lot of what is wrong with society at the moment. I genuinely hope that things will change, and that – as social media becomes more established – we’ll realise some of the downsides to it and change the way we do things.

I do hope that good will come out of this crisis – and I think in some small way it has: a lot of churches have been using social media to spread good news, e.g. livestreaming services (as we’ve been doing on the Great Clacton YouTube channel). I think God is using these events to bring about good – even if, for the moment, it shows up a lot of what is bad in society. Let’s hope and pray that this is the case.

April 22, 2020
Does social media stifle debate?
Has it really come to this in our society? Has it really come to the point where we seem utterly unable to believe that someone can hold another opinion on a difficult issue without believing that they are a moral monster?

It started out two or three years ago with same-sex marriage. The media loved to portray everyone who disagreed with the redefinition of marriage as a bigot, pure and simple. Real debate was stifled, because any argument for traditional marriage had to be ruled out a priori – because, you know, it’s bigoted.

Then, more recently, a debate on abortion at Oxford University was shut down because a rather militant group of people (via Facebook) decided that they were going to cause trouble if the debate went ahead.

And then we came to the general election. One of the things which has really got to me over the last few weeks is the way that the Tories have been constantly vilified and accused of more or less being morally bankrupt. Not just that, but if you believe most of what is put on Twitter, the only person who would vote for the Tories is someone who cares nothing for the poor, someone who essentially has no moral compass and deserves nothing but contempt by any right thinking person.

Many people have spilled ink writing about the rights and wrongs of this – for example this article – so I will try not to rehash old ground.

Instead, I think it is worth reflecting on just what it is that is making our society so hostile to opposing views. How has it suddenly become normal in our society, a society which prides itself on free speech, to demonise whole sections of people and even make them scared of speaking out? (Witness the phenomenon of the ‘shy Tory’). Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about politics, and as I’ve been considering I’ve been coming more and more round to the conservative way of thinking (material for a future blog post, perhaps). The thing is, I would actually genuinely hesitate before expressing that particular view on Twitter or Facebook, mainly because of the amount of hatred and bile spewed at the conservative party by what seems like the vast majority of Twitter (certainly I don’t recall seeing many pro-Tory posts – although perhaps that’s to do with the people I follow).

It seems to me that social media, rather than encouraging debate, is actually stifling it. I’m not sure as to why that is, but I think there might be a few reasons:
- I think Twitter and Facebook enable ‘herd mentality’ to kick in. It’s very hard to express a dissenting opinion when everyone around you is expressing a particular view. Especially when that view is portrayed as being crazy, immoral, ridiculous, and so on.
- Twitter and (to a lesser extent) Facebook also make it very easy to find like minded people. The problem is, what you end up with is basically conversing with people who agree with you. You don’t have to converse with anyone you disagree with apart from the purposes of shouting abuse at them. OK, this is a caricature, but is it that far removed from the truth? I don’t really see much actual engagement on Twitter between those of different political persuasions, it’s simply people who already agree with each other slapping each other on the back. Rather than trying to understand where the ‘other side’ are coming from, it is simply assumed that they are wrong and acting out of selfish / immoral / absurd motives (etc). This is quite probably because of the following point.
- The 140 character limit of Twitter makes it very hard to express much more than a soundbite. This is very unfortunate, because it seems that what spreads well in soundbites is usually a watered down version of the truth (i.e. one side of an argument) without any nuance or a chance for qualification.
- Following on from this – I think misinformation spreads very quickly on Twitter. Over the past few months, I’ve seen graphs and statistics that say all sorts of different things about our country and economy. Some of them say that things have improved, some of them say that things haven’t. Some of them portray the Tories in a positive light, some of them don’t. I think a big part of the problem is the way you cut the data – the way you interpret it. (The old adage about lies, damned lies and statistics comes to mind). But what I think tends to happen is that the statistics / graphs which support the prevailing notion (i.e. that the Tories are evil) tend to get retweeted a lot, whereas the statistics and graphs which might show something different don’t get shared as much.
A few months ago I thought about the dark side of social media when it came to the Top Gear Patagonia Special. And the longer time goes on, I see more of this kind of thing going on. I’m wondering whether social media might actually be having a detrimental effect on our society in general.

I don’t think that social media itself is a bad thing, but I do feel that the way it is set up – especially Twitter – makes it very easy to ignore other opinions and simply to convince oneself that one’s opinion is correct with all the accompanying self-righteousness. Although all this was and is possible without the help of social media, it simply exacerbates the issue.

So if this is a problem, how do we solve it? I think one of the biggest problems with the stifling of debate is the lack of understanding and empathy for opposing views. It seems to me that social media would be a lot better if people took some time to seriously understand the view they were criticising before criticising it. If it could be understood that on some issues different views can be held with complete integrity, and those should be respected. Perhaps this is a simply unrealistic dream in this day and age – but I think as we see the effects of this stifling of debate play out more and more in society, perhaps people will realise that actually we need understanding rather than polarisation and demonisation.
May 11, 2015
Top Gear Patagonia Special: The dark side of social media?
I’ve just finished watching the Top Gear Patagonia Special (and, not that it really matters with Top Gear, but if you’re still planning to watch it this will discuss the episode content and should come with a spoiler warning). The end of the second part is pretty intense – a nationalist gang in Argentina essentially forced the Top Gear film crew out of the country, and attacked them on the way out – throwing rocks at the cars and breaking windows. At one point there was apparently a gang of 300 people waiting to assault the TG crew as they came through the town.

As I thought about this, it did strike me that all of this is a pretty good illustration of the power of social media: getting a mob together like that requires a degree of organisation which I don’t think was really possible (at such short notice) before the rise of the internet.

I can imagine how easily social media / the internet allows this kind of thing to happen:
1. Word gets out that Top Gear are coming to the country. If you’re on social media, chances are you’ll see the news – or one of your friends will. This includes members of the nationalist gang.
2. News camera crews film the cars while they’re in the country. Someone spots that the number plate of Jeremy’s car looks like a reference to the Falklands war. Word gets out on Twitter.
3. Members of the Argentinian nationalist gang – who connect via a group on Facebook – start discussing how they’re going to respond.
4. On the day itself, some of the gang find the Top Gear crew and broadcast that information online. They are able to give updates in pretty much real time as events unfold.
5. As the Top Gear crew leave, some of the gang follow on and update with the route.
6. Meanwhile, back on Facebook, the rest of the gang are organising themselves. They come up with a plan, quickly, and share it widely to bring in as many people as possible.
The key thing seems to be the power of communication via social media: it allows a group to organise itself amazingly quickly given the latest information, and then distribute the plan widely. Although I think such a lynch mob would have been just about within the bounds of possibility in pre-internet days, it would have taken massive pre-organisation and I think would have been highly unlikely.

It’s a fake.

But there is another side to this, other than simply practical. This highlights one of the biggest dangers of social media: outrage spreads like wildfire. There is very little more powerful than outrage, especially on social media. One of the most shared photos over the last few months on social media purports to show MPs debating their pay rise (a full house) and debating welfare (an empty house) – the message clearly being “MPs don’t care about the poor or anyone else, they’re just in it for what they can get out of us.” There’s only one tiny problem with the picture: it’s a fake.

And therein lies the problem: on social media you don’t know whether something is true or false. It’s so easy for misinformation to propagate, especially when it plays into the hands of prejudice. In the case of Top Gear, when someone made the connection between Jeremy’s number plate and the Falklands war, it would have spread rapidly – most probably riding on the back of some anti-British sentiment. The MPs image probably spread so fast because many people do not trust politicians. So social media makes our prejudices easily reinforcable. We can share without fact checking. The voices which disagree don’t get a hearing – or we can simply switch off or ignore them. And, in the case of the Top Gear incident, it leads to a mob of 300 people itching to get their pound of flesh.

I wondered a little while ago whether Twitter makes us angry and dumb. I still think that there is a big problem here, which is only going to get worse as people use social media more: if we only listen to the voices which we want to listen to, we don’t hear any disagreement – does that render us incapable of intelligent thought about the subject? If we all know what the ‘right’ answer is, how do we treat someone who gives the ‘wrong’ answer? Social media makes it easy for something to become a ‘right’ answer – the dynamics of a group. There probably were those who doubted that Jeremy Clarkson’s registration plate was a reference to the war, but I doubt they were listened to and quickly came into line with the opinion of the group. And witness what happens on social media if you express the ‘wrong’ opinion about gay marriage, UKIP, or climate change (to name but three examples). Instead of intelligent debate, those with the ‘wrong’ opinions get hounded.

It seems to me there is a connection between what happened to Top Gear and the way the recent abortion debate at Oxford University was shut down.

Social Media is a tool, and – as with all tools – it can be used for good or ill. What’s the solution? I can’t think of any easy options. The problem is not with the tools themselves, but more with the people who use them. The problem lies not in social media but in the human heart. As such, the only solution I can offer is the one which we have just celebrated at Christmas: the coming of Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (John 3:19-21)

The only solution to the problems with social media, ultimately, is the solution to the problem of the human heart. Unless we can do anything about that problem, any technological solution will fall short.

Postscript: The Telegraph has an article about what actually happened… count the number of social media references. Seems like my imaginary scenario isn’t too far off the mark.
December 28, 2014