What is the first thing you do when you wake up? I am pretty sure you start checking your phone. We live in a world where we can potentially be virtually connected to every other person via social media which has become a part and parcel of our day–to–day life connecting people with diverse cultures, religions and ethnicity with each other. Social media is an umbrella term used for many online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others that are used to share information with people around the world. People no longer need a personal handshake or face-to-face meeting, even relationships begin, grow and end on social media. Undoubtedly media shapes us and our ideas, policies and politics. It tells us who we are, and what we can be. Unsurprisingly over the last 10 years, social media has grown in terms of the number of platforms as well as users exponentially across the world, and at present there are over 101 social networking sites operating.
As per the Statistics revealed by the Digital 2022 April Global STATSHORT Report on STATISTA, approximately 4.59 billion users used social networking sites and apps in 2022. That equates to 58.7% of the global population. And, with the increased use of mobile devices, this number is likely to cross the 5 billion mark by 2025. Social media is a very powerful means of freedom of speech and expression. It has become a voice for the voiceless and has been an incredible tool for empowering people to speak, express and promote their ideas that benefit the larger society. At the same time, it is a place for sexist, racist, homophobic and other violent behaviour and this context is easily expressed and affects our social system significantly. One of the most surprising developments of the last 20 years has been the dramatic shift away from choosing social media over the potential of real experience. We choose to connect online rather than to connect with the human being thereby making us unsocial, killing the actual spirit of relationships and replacing experiences. Social media has changed the way we live our lives, from the way we get news, to the way we interact with loved ones. It is everywhere, powerful and it is growing. According to the Global Web Index, we spent an average of two hours a day on social media and it is increasing at a rate of two minutes per day. Over the course of a lifetime, it is 5 years and 4 months on social media which is 43,187 hours.
Sociologically putting in every society multiple factors are responsible for crime causation and the nature and novelty of offence determine the moral standards of a particular society. The same may be true with Kashmir society which is in turmoil and conflict for the last five decades but the existence of such events as suicides, knife attacks, sex scandals and minor rapes perhaps points to rampant societal moral decay among young adults in erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir. Ironically, the biggest problem with the majority of this young generation today is to have accepted such behaviours as normal. It requires us to question, where have morals and social values gone from Kashmir society which was once a place of love, tranquillity, serenity, peace and meditation. The spirit of humanity, sociability, brotherhood, harmony among diverse religious sects and cultures, nobility and humility reflected Kashmir society. Despite, being badly hit by consistent instability, turmoil and conflict, Kashmir as a society had always been a place where religion and philosophy take their highest honour and traditionally straight and simple people had always maintained the highest values of social and moral responsibilities in the toughest and more challenging circumstances. Maybe, you will not agree with me, but I must say sarcastically that the storm of social media has shaken the moral foundations of this society and moral values and ethics here have washed away with the flood of networking sites and applications.
If generally viewed, what role social media has had on the obvious rot of morals among the youth? And although social media also have some positive impacts on its users across the world, studies have shown that the present situation and discourse of events happening in Kashmir post the 5th August 2019 decision suggested exposure to social networking sites is largely responsible for moral degeneration among the youth. Religious experts and analysts having expertise on various matters believe this demoralization primarily caused due to social media, is becoming the biggest threat to the future of Jammu and Kashmir. This decay primarily emerges from influences from Western culture that young people absorb via different social media platforms and applications. As a result, many young boys are now involved in diverse immoral activities blindly aped from the various networking sites. Let me explain my argument in detail.
In the beginning when there was YouTube and a few other social media platforms with certain restrictions to users to subscribe or scroll down through the internet, but feeling the pressure of market competition and the emergence of new platforms with more flexibilities and discounts to its subscribers, many social networking sites like YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and even Facebook which claims it has some of the best technologies, software and safeguards to shield the platform from objectionable content, have been allowing users to host nudity, indecency, violence, rape and pornographic videos under the pretext of freedom of expression. Nearly every social media platform, including Facebook, has been initially dealing strictly with violent content on its platform for several years. These platforms and apps were continuously monitoring the platform and trying to address the problem by hiring staff and pouring resources. Facebook had also relieved its AI algorithm to detect offensive and objectionable videos like other platforms to regularly monitor and remove them. However, it looks like it now has to deal with a barrage of adult and pornographic content. It appears some Facebook pages are camouflaging their identity by using random people’s names, hashtags, or titles such as “funny videos” or “viral videos”. Some of these pages have also been listed as gaming creators. Facebook is increasingly and brazenly being used to stream adult content. These videos and other questionable or objectionable content are streaming on Facebook Watch and “For You” sections. Meta-owned Facebook, the current social media behemoth is facing a growing problem of explicit content. The obviously unsuitable and inappropriate content is being snuck through Facebook pages. The platform has a dedicated “Watch Section” on the platform. Here, the users can find videos recommended for them such as Live Streaming, Reels, Music, Gaming and from people and pages they follow. If the users open the ‘live tab’ on ‘Facebook Watch’, they will see a centralized feed with live videos from different pages and creators. It is this section of Facebook, on several pages, where adult content is being streamed. The questionable videos are reportedly shared with captions such as “Top Movies NETIFLIX 2023” and even using Mark Zuckerberg as the hashtag. Needless to say, the text-based detection mechanism or the algorithm won’t be able to identify adult content, and reportedly adult videos are clearly bypassing Facebook’s built-in detectors.
FACEBOOK AI ALGORITHM
The Facebook algorithm is a set of rules that rank content across the platform. It determines what people see every time they check Facebook, and in what order that content shows up. Facebook calls this “Personalized Ranking”. Essentially, the Facebook algorithm evaluates every post, ad, story and reel. It scores content and then arranges it in descending, non-chronological order of interests for each individual user. This process happens every time a user refreshes their feed. Facebook has a whole team of people working as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Part of their work is to improve the algorithm that connects Facebook users with the most valuable content for them. Over the years, algorithm ranking signals have been added, removed, and had their importance adjusted. As of 2023, the Facebook algorithm determines which content is most relevant to a particular user based on 3 ranking signals – Who posted it, type of content, and interactions with the post.
WHO CONTROLS YOUR FACEBOOK FEED
Every time you open Facebook, one of the world’s most influential, controversial and misunderstood algorithms springs into action. It scans and collects everything posted in the past week by each of your friends, everyone you follow, each group you belong to and every Facebook page you have liked. For the average Facebook user that is more than 1500 posts. If you have several hundred friends, it could be as many as 10,000. Then, according to a closely guarded and constantly shifting formula, Facebook’s news feed algorithm ranks them all, in what it believes to be the precise order of how likely you are to find each post worthwhile. Most users will only ever see the top few hundred.
It is important that we forge ways of bringing back moral values in our life. Young generations ought to be taught to reinforce good morals in their lives and seek ways to keep away from being influenced by what is portrayed on social media sites. This script is not final and the Readers currently reading this are more familiar and knowledgeable than the writer themselves. They know the syndrome as well as the remedy of this social disease but are either helpless or deliberately neglecting their moral responsibilities as parents, teachers, elders, social activists, religious and political leaders, social media influencers, debaters, scholars and doctors in collective society having certain morals and ethics as strong foundations. Unless and until, these moral foundations are concrete and intact in our society, we as a nation are alive and progressing otherwise there is hardly any difference between us and the cattle.
Kitne Honto Se Tabassum Ke Janaazay Lekar
Waqt Har Roz Dabay Paa’un Guzar Jaataa Hai
The writer is M. Tech in Civil Engineering, and can be reached at ow******@***il.com
Social media making us unsocial, leading to moral degeneration among youth
