In nearly two decades, the social media has gone from being an entertaining extra to a fully integrated part of nearly every aspect of our daily lives, thus revolutionizing the way we communicate, interact and socialize. As a result, it has created a huge impact on the social fabric of our society and the nature of social relationships. Recent statistics suggests that there are more than three billion active social media users and the number is growing by 9% annually. This makes social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter some of the most influential contexts regarding diffusion of information.

In the modern digitalized world, social media has ‘given a voice to the people’. However, the debate about whether social media is cultivating global collaboration and facilitating a pursuit for a better world, or instead cultivating polarization and fragmentation is just beginning.

In this context, we will try to understand what constitutes social media, how social media over the years has benefitted various sections and segments of society, should social media be regulated, if yes then, what are the reasons for it, what are the challenges associated with the regulation of social media and In what ways a more responsible, useful and purposeful social media can be created for the emerging digital era with a more informed society.

What Constitutes Social Media?

Social media can be basically defined as a grouping of interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities.

Web 2.0 (also known as Participatory or Social Web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability for end users. This is in contrasts to the first generation Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to viewing content in a passive manner.

It can be categorized into six types: Joint projects like Wikipedia, Blogs like Twitter, Content Communities like YouTube, Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Effective Game Worlds like World of War craft and Virtual Social Worlds like Second Life.

Other than this, social media technologies may also include: picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowd sourcing, voice over IP and many more.

Social media is different from traditional media in a sense that it has a broader reach, allows two-way conversation and immediate exchange of information, is generally free of cost and lacks any entry barriers.

Today, Social networks are one of the fastest growing industries in the world with a projected 34% annual growth over the next 5 years.

How Social Media has Benefitted the society?

The fundamentals of social media come down to a simple basic human desire: the need to connect with other humans, and to be part of a group. At first, social media simply existed to help end users connect digitally with friends, colleagues, family members, and like-minded individuals. But over the years it has transformed into a multifaceted platform that is being used as a tool for marketing, news reporting, social activism, customer feedback, entertainment, political outreach, recruitment etc. In this regard some specific benefits that social media has in today’s society are:-

For Youth and Adults

For Youth and Adults

Political Empowerment: Social media has proven to be a solution to the challenge of declining youth political engagement as it has provided a new medium of communication through which established political institutions and actors can reach out to young citizens. Alternatively, young citizens are using social media to find new ways to express their political preferences and their opinion on a particular policy. 

For example, Election commission of India runs Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme through different modes and media to educate citizens, electors and voters about the electoral process.

Economic empowerment: Social media is facilitating access to customized information about jobs and employment opportunities and is overwhelmingly perceived as an important tool for businesses in general, and specifically for start-ups and social enterprises.  

A transformational tool for education: Social media has gained incredible popularity over the past few years as an open source of information and knowledge sharing platform. For instance, educational institutions are using social media space to interact with young minds and enhance the overall teaching-learning process.

• It has also enhanced peer collaborations facilitating team-building and communication skills, opinion formation along with practical and application based learning.

• For younger children, developmental benefits through online play schools or educational computer games include Literacy skills, Numeracy skills and Social Skills alongside intellectual benefits like developing problem-solving and critical thinking.

For vulnerable sections of society

For vulnerable sections of society

Platform for marginalised communities to fight for their rights: Social media provides a great platform to marginalised communities to express their feelings, issues, problems and organise themselves to raise their voice against oppression. For example: Use of rainbow profile filters on Facebook enhanced feelings of belonging in LGBTQ community and acted as a means of showing support for the community. 

#LockdownCasteAtrocities is also one such social media campaign by Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network (DHRDNet) that aims to share stories of pain, plight and struggle of Dalits during the COVID lockdown.

Women empowerment and bridging gender divide: Social media has proved to be a powerful vehicle for bringing women’s rights issues to the attention of a wider public, challenging discrimination and stereotypes and encouraging policy makers to step up commitments to gender equality.

Hashtag activism which includes various campaigns such as UN Women’s #HeForShe, #MeToo, #DelhiGangRape among others have helped to mobilise public attention on women’s rights and increasing the visibility of issues that are under-reported in mainstream media.

A social support system for elderly population: Social media has facilitated older adults to express themselves, participate in discussions and stay in contact with society. This has empowered older people and provided them with a sense of connectedness, greater control, self-efficacy and reduced loneliness.

For Social Cohesion and better Governance

For Social Cohesion and better Governance

Cultural integration: It has provided a common way of linking people from diverse communities, traditions, opinions and places with each other across the world establishing a sense of belonging to a greater social network other than one’s own local community.

Tool for collective action: Social media has a large and growing impact on philanthropy and action for the common good. Crowdfunding, marketing, advocacy, and promotion of non-profits are some ways social media can advance the cause of a non-profit or social action. Because it is free, social media is accessible to people from all backgrounds who want to make a difference toward what they care about.

Improved governance: Social media provides an interactive two way communication mechanism through which the government can measure public sentiment with respect to new laws or key policy changes. By gathering feedback, ideas, suggestions, and absorbing these into the policy-making process, the government can rejuvenate the concept of direct democracy.

Improved management in the Health Care Sector: Health Care Professionals (HCPs) can use social media to potentially improve health outcomes, develop a professional network, increase personal awareness of news and discoveries, motivate patients, and provide health information to the community.

SHOULD SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS BE REGULATED? IF YES, THEN WHY ?

SHOULD SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS BE REGULATED? IF YES, THEN WHY ?

Social media plays vital roles such as communication, collaboration, education etc and as a result, the associated stakeholders like social media platforms, participating public and governmental authorities assume a critical responsibility of keeping social media safe and secure so that it acts as a progressive tool for society. 

In the light of the de-facto mandate that Social Media has assumed, social media platforms have had to shoulder majority of the responsibility. But despite having internal mechanisms to tackle illegal and inappropriate content, Social media companies have failed to ensure that social media remains a safe space and is not misused. For instance, some of the proven instances of gross failures of Facebook include: the anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka, the violence against Rohingya in Myanmar, harvesting of personal data by Cambridge Analytica etc.The inability of social media platforms calls for their regulation in the interest of users and overall social media space.

With increasing users on these platforms, growing technology and increased propensity to overuse and misuse, social media environment has been generating several dangers which demand an urgent and immediate need of regulation.

Increasing polarisation of society: There is mounting concern that the hyper-personalization bias of social media algorithms contribute to social polarization by creating ‘filter bubbles’ or ‘echo chambers’ that insulate people from opposing views about current events.

People seek 'informed' opinions through filters only from people they trust and look for news that confirms their world view (known as Confirmation Bias) and users are more likely to like and share the more polarizing topics (called the ‘amplification effect’).

Excessive social polarization is undesirable as it erodes the democratic institutions that protect free speech and other basic rights.

Twitter, for example, routinely prompts to follow people who hold a similar viewpoint. This results in people cultivating rigid opinions of issues and narrower world views that are seeping into not only voter behaviour but also everyday personal interactions.

Ethical and privacy concerns: As social media is designed for unrestricted information sharing, protecting privacy becomes very difficult, especially for children and teenagers that represent the largest internet user groups and also other vulnerable groups who do not know how to protect their personal information on the web. This has resulted in unethical and undesirable behaviours such as: 

Financial frauds where people are becoming victim of online scam through social media.

Violation of human rights through online teasing, cyber bullying, posting inflammatory or objectionable content, sexting and trolling.

Online abuse and defamation to trample the dignity of individual for political and personal purposes.

Users being denied rights over their meta-data, with little explicit knowledge or consent on how their data is being collected or used.

Denial of agency, i.e. depriving someone of their ability to exercise freedom of thought. Although the user is still making choices, their decisions ultimately flow from understandings that may suffer from detrimental misconceptions that were promoted by a platform’s algorithms.