Social Media and sense of self. what happens when they become irreversibly intertwined?

Contrary to popular belief, social media is not an inherently bad thing, and we as a society should not treat it as such. Social media is a complex, naunced thing, and is not the 'downfall of society' like many claim. But it does have many downsides I am not denying that. The first of those downsides is the fact that terrorists and terrorist groups (such as ISIS) are able now more than ever to radicalize and groom children/teenagers into their ideologies without ever meeting them face to face. Social media is only actually a collection of ideologies in a trench coat, and while that may be obvious to most people, young children and other vulnerable groups of people are unlikely to recognize this, leaving them open to being preyed on by dangerous people, including terrorist's groomers/paedophiles and bigots. And those are just a few examples, not nearly the full scope of danger that social media poses to children and adults alike.

Reports say that the number of online grooming offenses reported was 1220 by the 3rd month of lockdown. 90 days. 1220 were harmed due to social media in just 90 days. That number is despicable, and the fact that a lot of those could have been prevented had those platforms just had better child safety features is horrible. Being groomed is a traumatic thing to happen for a child and can lead to mental health issues and possibly substance abuse, feeling same for the trauma they went through. These things change someone, and their sense of self. They become more withdrawn, irritable, stressed and anxious and depressed. Social Media is also never held accountable for their lack of supervision of the content that is put on their sites, from terrorist propaganda, adult content being posted in kids chats, to bigotry and severe hatred for groups of people, to the thinspo/proana movements. Thinspo/Proana is a movement that has mostly appeared on Instagram and Tumblr, and it romanticizes the eating disorder anorexia, and the symptoms it has on the human body (hair loss, rotting teeth, low blood pressure, low heartrate etc.) Thinspo is content that persuades people with eating disorders away from getting

help and helps them sink deeper into the claws of their disorder. These groups have been around since at least 2001, and there still has not been anything done to combat the damage these groups have done to so many people. Social media is a platform in which we are expected to project our best, most unrealistic selves in an attempt to compete with others, who are doing the exact same. This leads to ‘smiling depression’ wherein a person is depressed but does not outwardly express that in order to maintain their façade of a perfect life. People curate their social media presence to present the world their very best selves, sweeping under the rug the attributes they deem ‘less presentable’ to an audience. This leads to the belief that other people's lives our so much better than theirs, and they double down on trying to present the most marketable aspects of their lives to an audience. This leads people to stereotyping all social media as a space that fosters negativity and competition between people that have no real need to compete. and while this can and is true in many cases, social media is not entirely bad. Despite all of this, social media is not inherently bad, and stereotyping it as a monolith of anger and hatred is not doing anyone any Favors. It is a method of communication for so many people around the globe, from meeting people your age from different countries to the group chat you have with your family on WhatsApp.

There are many safeguarding procedures people can put in place to keep them and the people around them safe and give them privacy from people and companies alike. Whilst for many people social media is a bad thing, for many it is the opposite. it's a way for people to escape the desolate lives they live in, and they are free to live their life the way they want to, free of the burden of family expectations or peer pressure that exist in the real world. social media allows people of all ages to explore aspects of their personality (gender, sexuality, etc.) that they may not have been able to otherwise. While it can be a space to foster hatred and bigotry, it can also be a place where isolated people can reach out in ways they couldn’t before and allows new avenues of communication to open between people on other sides of the world. Social media isn’t always good yes, but it isn’t always bad either. People need to stop treating it as a monolith and see it as the nuanced complicated place it is. People often argue against social media with the point that ‘it convinces our children that identifying as different genders/sexualities is trendy’ which is just untrue, as any child who does identify as queer, is very much aware of the struggles they will face for doing so, and as such many don’t come out of the closet. Those that do, do not do so for the ‘clout’ but because they wish to express their most authentic self, and should be free to do so.

(The non binary and the Aromantic flags <3) Social media has allowed queer people to connect with others like them, to meet people who understand what it's like, without having to put themselves in danger by coming out of the closet to the people around them, and risking anger and homophobia, both verbal and physical. This communication is what bigots want to silence; they want to isolate queer children in order to convince them that their queerness is something to be ashamed of, something to hide. Coming out of the closet can get people killed, sent to conversion therapy and mutilated. if social media can provide a space where queer people are free to be their most authentic selves then who are you to deny us that?

Bigots argue that the depiction of queer and non-heteronormative relationships in children's shows (most recently Peppa pig, who has a character with 2 mums) are ‘indoctrinating’ the children into an ‘alternative lifestyle’ that they deem unacceptable. They speak out against it because they are unable and unwilling to comprehend that people live different lives and have different experiences, and that the ones they live through are valid, but so are the experiences and lives other people live, and they all deserve to be represented People can be influenced by any one perspective if they are surrounded by it enough: if it is on their Instagram feed, their YouTube ads, their Facebook groups. The invasive techniques in which these points of view are shown to people could influence their opinion on any one topic. This can be used to indoctrinate younger people into neo-Nazi, queerphobic and misogynist ideals, especially if those ideals are perpetuated by people that are looked up to, like celebrities or politicians and other influential people (J.K Rowling is a good example of this, as she uses her twitter following and her status as a famous children's writer to sell people her transphobic ideals.) Social Media is also a place where people can share their stories, have their voices heard, and can be helped as others raise awareness for their plights. The situation in Palestine for example, was a very large movement as Palestinians risked their lives to educate the rest of the world about what Israel was doing. Another example is the anti-hijab protests currently going on in Iran, as Iranian women fight for the right to choose whether to wear their hijab. The same argument is also going on in France, as French women fight for the right to wear their hijab and take part in the traditions of their religion and culture.

Nothing in life is ever purely black and white, there are always shades of gray within the lines, and people need to take into account the complexities of social media rather labelling it as bad and irredemable and then moving on. Social media as a concept is brilliant: having places where family can catch up after a long day, friends can keep in touch after school, people can build new relationships with a person who could like hundreds of miles away from them! Social media itself isnt nessecarily the problem. Its the people that use it to hurt people that are the problem. They take something so amazing and brilliant and use it as a tool to hurt so many people.