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On social media it can be very easy to track and leak peoples personal information. This can lead to certain groups of people that go after victims on a rampage of attacks. It is usually hard to completely ensure the safety of data and information of an individual person. These attacks can form into hate groups attacking innocent citizens leading to a split of society as they fight towards the right actions to take.
I agree that it is very easy to be in danger of somebody leaking your personal information and it is important to stay safe and never post your address or phone number
Yes although that can happen, there are certain apps people can download to keep everything and everyone safe. Also while bad things may be happening, good things can come out. For example, meeting new friends and seeing a new perspective on things.
Yes people may create friends on social media. But those friends may be the ones that are preying on them. There are many instances of older men trying to meet up with young women over the claims of being their close friend.
yes this is a danger of social media and it has happened in the past, but that is why you should not make friends online and you should always call your friends if you get haked to tell them.
This is true, however, many systems have been made to counteract these attacks. For example Amber Alerts, and other public safety systems have been made to make awareness of issues such as this.
Kaparthi - I think that social media is good for democracy mainly because using social media can spread awareness about a lot of things such as voting, social movements and activists.
I agree with this statement as social media is not just an effective way of mainstream media and news sources it also empowers the underrepresented/minority and serve as a magnifying voice for underreported issues. Most commonly through hashtags.
Although it helped promote a campaign for good. It can also help promote words of hate and falsity used to break down those good campaigns. Leading to debates or rivalries. An example of a severe hate group is named Stop lying which is an active facebook group on the topic of their hate of Muslims.
Even though it's true that there's a lot of bad on social media, without social media that hate is still there, all of those negative thoughts are still there, that's why social media is good since it's a place where all of that can get called out and give support to those that are receiving the negativity
While you may be correct, what about the awareness on things that don't contain factual information? Adults nowadays have apparently lost the ability to fact check something before deciding it is correct, and once they think its correct, they will spread the information to the young children who will agree just because they were taught to listen to your elders.
Although it is true that some people have absolutely no critical thinking skills, false information can only be spread so far until somebody encourages you to fact check it and then you can spread the correct information
Social Media is a powerful tool for activists and their movements.
People who are trying their best to start a movement and really get their beliefs to be heard by the public, often post material on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and more. Footage of certain consequential results will be posted if action is not taken. This can be used to turn an audience against something and show the public what they are doing wrong by not joining a movement. Take the feminist movements for example: women across the world will do whatever they can to fight for their rights as women. Singers release songs such as "Kings and Queens" by Ava Max, create political cartoons, drawings, empowering paintings, and more, creating a successful movement. This shows how quickly ideas can be spread, and what we might be able to do to help this country as a democracy whether it be political issues, environmental issues, and more.
That happened with the "Defund The Police" shortly after the Gorge Floyd incident due to his death by cop. A white cop. Not only did people come after cops, but they really began to boss up on white people too. The main focus of attack was on the cops though.
Although many people have access to fact checking it is sometimes not desirable of those that simply wanted to check their daily news. Many people don't want to look further into things or seem to be very trustworthy of certain news channels.
Although for some people Facebook is their only was of getting news (including fake news), and they might not be able to check if it is true/false or biased information.
I don't think that some people's only way of getting news is facebook. Since you can use google, look at the news on TV, maybe even look at newspapers, and for iphone users there is an app called "news" that tells you important things that are going on
Social media can cause people to not feel like themselves anymore, and young kids/teens can get the wrong image and think that they aren’t getting what other people are getting.
Social media can promote misinformation. You might come across someone posting about how vaccines don’t work and they’ll give you autism blah blah blah. People who have not done their research correctly and being lied to at a young age can lead to them not believing the professionals.
That's exactly why there are multiple types of social media that can help us to fact check. That will help people to be more aware on whether or not the information is correct
Most people under the age of 13 aren't allowed on most social media sites anyway so if you are too young you shouldn't be on social media in the first place. Continuing on while social media can have misinformation it doesn't promote it, even if it did unbiased information gets promoted as well. For your example about vaccines causing autism the general audience of people online can discern this as nonsense, even if someone did believe it, it is not the fault of social media but the fault of the individual as you stated yourself "People who have not done their research correctly". (Does that make sense?)
Your voice is heard. Since so many people scroll through social media every day, if you post something about a topic that you are really passionate and think it needs to be heard, there is a very high chance that it will be seen. - Barrero
Yes, that's great. However, most social media can easily be used for misinformation. If someone doesn’t know about a subject, and they learn something based from fear, they are more likely to accept that as true. With that, they can spread that to others, and voila, misinformation.
social media is good for democracy because democracy is all about the opinion of the people that social media helps the people share their opinions with each other.
Yes. Some information you could be receiving has a chance of being altered, over exaggerated, or just completely false, and that can change how you view things from your perspective.
People being manipulated by social media is commonly caused by peer pressure or judgement by the public, which leads to fear of being turned down, disagreed with, or even attacked.
In terms of democracy it can bring large groups together helping spark movements that people care about (movements which may be promoting to change laws or get rid of corrupt politicians), such as the Women’s Movements, the Black Lives Matter movements, etc
Social is bad for our democracy because it isolates people from others and their point of views, giving them a skewed sense of reality and making them less tolerant of others, which also adds to why they believe misinformation so easily and why its spreads so quickly. An example of this is in the article Social Media reinforces negative biases, it says, " For all the hope that comes from connecting with new people and new ideas, researchers have found that online behavior is dominated by “homophily”: a tendency to listen to and associate with people like yourself, and to exclude outsiders. Social networks are bad at helping you empathize with people unlike you, but good at surrounding you with those who share your outlook. The new information ecosystem does not challenge biases; it reinforces them."
It is hard to easily rely on others opinions as many of them are not pushing forward sound information. This can be easily misinterpreted and spread further and further until the original claim is gone. It is also very easy to lie on social media as most people don't really see any consequences to that.
I agree, unlike newspapers or TV stations you don't have nearly as much freedom to view drastically different opinions. Those sources of information restrict the options in a sense of what you can know about a issue.
Social media is especially dangerous for people at a young age. Kids are ready to believe anything they hear, and the fact that they can't fact check anything makes it even more dangerous.
Social media can help with up lifting and supporting people when there going through a hard time in their life. For example Youtubers are able to talk about what their going through and how hard it is, and their supports are their to lift them up and tell them that everything is going to be ok.
Some people use their platform in a good way. But the YouTuber Trisha Payatas has actively used her platform to spread hate and false information for the purpose of attention.
People online are ages 15 - 35 (or even younger), which means that they can see these images of other people and make them feel like they aren't the best person they can be. It can hurt people’s mental health as well. Teens are also forming their identities as well so this can make them feel bad about themselves.
Yes, especially with the rise of photoshop and body shaming; seeing someone on Instagram and they're beautiful or hot and whatnot, and you thinking that you should be like them so you can also be hot and beautiful. Boom: body shaming, anorexia, etc.
Fake news tends to have more attention than real news. If there is a false accusation or event that happened, more people will tend to be tuned into that, most likely because they want to know if that event was true or not. They want to check if their sources are indeed reliable.
Checking the comments is not a good source; you can have people there who also believe those fake things, and if you believe them, you have successfully been fooled. And you can't simply just look up the information. Checking your sources from official websites and statistics
Despite fake news being prevalent it is in the best interest of the people to accurately do their own research. Social media makes it easier than ever to fact check sources and thus make informed choices in matters relating to politics.
While i agree that people should do their own research and fact check their information, i disagree that social media makes it easier to fact check your sources because with all the misinformation that spreads across social media people began to only see their own point of view and fail to think about how this can affect others and their point of view. It begins to make people think that whatever news they see that goes with their beliefs and views is automaticly correct and everything else is wrong. The false information that is spread gives people tunnel vision of only their views and beliefs and pulls them away from what truly matters
Yes, but remember that social media is a platform for people to post their opinions. Its not about whether they post something true or not. Social media is necessary for democracy because it allows people to say what they feel. Democracy means that everyone gets a say.
Social media helps give more people access to voting. For example, Facebook sent a message to its many users reminding them to vote. These kinds of incentives promote the idea that it is important to vote.
I believe social media is good for democracy as it helps in affecting voter turnouts and thus promoting democracy. Spreading the necessity to vote and the amount of voters for important elections or passing laws.
Some information you could be receiving has a chance of being altered, over exaggerated, or just completely false, and that can change how you view things from your perspective.
That's when the source of the information you have received comes into play. We will also have to check whether the source is biased towards someone or something.
Social media can help with keeping people aware of what's really going on all over the world. For example, Mack Zuckerburg states about the women's march that “a grandmother with internet connection took a picture and made a post that led her friends to start a Facebook event that eventually turned into millions of people marching in cities around the world”
The online social network helps to quadruple the effect of the message for instance if you want to spread the message about something happening like an unfair court trial social media can spread your message.
Yes social media is one of the easiest ways to get your point across. But there are many instances that the point is negatively affecting a large group of people instead of helping them.
Also, social media allows for people to be able to voice their opinions without the fear of being criticized and shut out. According to Weston Gobar, “Social media can be good for democracy,” The Cavalier Daily, April 6, 2017, “Twitter has been a valuable tool for activist movements around the world.”
At the same time, people will try to cancel anyone for anything; "Oh you didn't donate enough to charity, you want us to die!" It's hard for people to post their opinion in fear of getting "cancelled".
Cancel culture while prominent, it hardly effects people once a certain awareness threshold is reached, people get canceled all the time even popular celebrities but many people still follow said people. If anything cancelling someone can have the opposite effect and spread information to more people.
Conyers- Social media and other technology systems are good for democracy because it has helped with missing child cases (amber alerts), giving friends to people who are thinking suicide or hurting themselves, and making public safety organizations around the world.
Although it helps solve these cases it may also be the cause of the case. It is very easy for children to have been manipulated on social media by people with alias's. Many kidnappers or human traffickers use similar profiles to those they are trying to attract.
To add to this, there has been something made called Safety Check. What this does is allow family members and friends to check up on you or other family or friends to see if they are okay during a crisis such as a hurricane. "Safety Check has been activated almost 500 times in two years and has already notified people that their families and friends are safe more than a billion times." (Mark Zuckerberg, “Building Global Community,” Facebook, February 16, 2017.)
With the spread of misinformation we have people who blindly follow or agree with what they see on social media without seeing if that information is correct or not or how this can affect others negatively and cause harm. An example of this can the violence in Myanmar where human rights groups were working found that the misleading images that were spread on social media made things more difficult, fueled mistrust, and undermined their work making it more difficult for them to help people.
