Should we really ban social media?

Also read: Regulating social media for minors: no simple fix

According to the World Economic Forum's 2024 Global Risk Report, India was ranked the highest for online misinformation and disinformation risk. At this point, it is common knowledge that pockets of social media channels, whether on Instagram, Facebook or X, exclusively deal with peddling propaganda to sway people towards certain ideologies and beliefs. With deepfakes and AI-generated content thrown into the mix, the ability to trust the evidence of one's senses is under siege.

The worst outcomes are already playing out

Romania held its Presidential Election in November 2024, and its citizens were in for a shock when they discovered that Călin Georgescu, a far-right candidate that very few had heard of and who had been polling at 5 percent previously, suddenly shot to the top of the polls and became the frontrunner for President. What was more concerning was that he had campaigned as an independent leader, had not joined any TV debates and had held no rallies. His sole platform for outreach was TikTok. Over two years, he generated a following of 400,000 followers on the platform to use it to sway voter opinion and spread propaganda. His controversial statements praising historical Nazi figures and open admiration for Putin are now a cause for concern for a country that hosts a NATO military base and shares a border with Ukraine. After allegations that his campaign used fake accounts to manipulate social media activity came to light, the country's constitutional court ordered a recount and has subsequently deferred the decision to annul the results of the first round. As the situation develops, citizens and political experts are stunned at the results of this campaign and what it could mean for the country's future.

However, what's now abundantly clear is that democratic societies are woefully under-prepared to tackle the issues created by the proliferation and widespread adoption of social media. While certain countries have begun taking measures to restrict access to these platforms, the new social order that these platforms have created is inundated with news, soundbites and images, all teetering at the edge of virality, and is rewiring models of thinking and communication, thus reshaping society in its image. The problem of trust in media, lack of sanguine debates, and the hyper risk of fake news have perplexed those who worry about the future of democracies.

Also read: Why social media watchdogs are necessary to battle disinformation and polarisation of society

The predictions of such a tribalist mentality of today's social media world were presciently made over sixty years ago by the media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who is widely known as the 'prophet' of media. McLuhan said, "All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values." In 1964, he published the book Understanding Media, which had the seminal idea that "the medium is the message." This idea meant that it was not the content of any medium that mattered but the medium itself. Using the example of 'electric light', he said that its invention created avenues that didn't exist earlier, such as brain surgery or nighttime sporting events. But these avenues can then be interpreted as the "content" of the electric light, seeing as they wouldn't exist without it, meaning that the "medium" itself matters most, not the content that it engenders.

From old to young, the world is falling prey to new mediums via the incredible technology of mobile phones, surpassing any other tool of human life in its ubiquity. Renowned social psychologist Jonathan Haidt said smartphones and social media have "rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale." His theory is McLuhan's message repackaged for the 21st-century audience that smartphones are changing human consciousness as we know it. Haidt said the answer is simply to regulate Internet and social media access and pass legislation to enforce the change. That is exactly what Australia seems to have done, and perhaps more need to follow and implement. 

About the authors: Prof. Vineeta Dwivedi is a former media professional who teaches Communication and Negotiations at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR).

Abhishek Choudhary is a product manager at Unilever and an alum of SPJIMR.

Views are personal.