Larry D. Lauer

When television overtook print as the dominant medium many of us studying the media assumed that we now had the technology in place to bring about a happy global village. It seemed obvious that people would easily come together, understand and appreciate each other’s cultures, and world peace would finally be within our reach. The cold war between superpowers was coming to an end, but instead of creating this imagined happy village, television would magnify a wide range of already simmering smaller conflicts. Instead of a better world, television would help create a more dangerous one.

Later, when the digital revolution gave us social media, we once again assumed that media platforms like Google and Facebook would become positive forces. Certainly, Facebook would bring people all over the world together as happy “Facebook friends.” That did happen for a while. “Friending” people became the thing to do, and collecting thousands of them was a source of pride. But eventually angry people would begin using the technology for angry things, and very serious social disruption issues would appear.

Gradually many teenagers are finding that the Internet is robbing them of important face-to-face interaction skills. Their interests are narrowing instead of broadening. Their ability to process complex information is actually fading. Many gradually become lonely, interacting mostly from their bedrooms and texting all day long.

To make matters worse, some of these teens fall under the spell of bullies and sexual predators. As a consequence, a growing number battle depression. Some even consider ending their lives, while others have done so.

Even the social media platforms that provide the rest of us happy and useful family, personal, and professional interactions, are proving they can be time wasters, and even dangerous weapons in the hands of foreign and local adversaries. Suddenly we are all scrambling to learn how to spot the “fake news” that is viciously intended to create social division and discord.

While the benefits of social media platforms are clear, many of those same platforms have damaged their own original benefits by selling access and advertising to the wrong people. Facebook is struggling right now to balance the idea of access based on “freedom of speech” with access based on “fair use policies.” But it may be too late. Populist and terror groups disguised as legitimate organizations have already become experts at using this technology to mobilize their followers.

With an autocrat-determined president who uses Twitter every day to create division, chaos, and fear, it is now virtually impossible to separate truth from lies, and to stop fringe groups from using these tweets to empower themselves to act out their often racist anger. And today’s populists are not just right wingers. They are any extremist group, left or right, that decides to get mad and incite sympathizers to make trouble, and even violence.

Yes, social media really does have a dangerous dark side. And an in-depth civics and media literacy program in every school, college, and community action group, seems to be the most practicable way forward.