Poll: Socs Off!
“Is social media creating a more intolerant and polarized society?”
- 81% Yes
- 19% No
You don’t have to go far to see something outrageous on Twitter. If a post elicits emotion, be it rage or laughter, it finds its way to the top of your feed. We’re now starting to ask the question of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and co., whether this is affecting our emotions offline. The vast majority of the Invstr community believe it is, by a landslide in our poll!
We sure had some respondents who’ve never experienced a world before social media, and others who long for those days back, or just haven’t quite caught up. It seems the intolerance and polarization is worst on Twitter, as we’re exposed to viral posts from across the platform, and then Facebook, too. Snapchat keeps us in touch with our friends; less stranger danger!
It’s up to a platform’s user base to moderate itself, to play nice and not spread misinformation. Reddit’s reddiquette is a good example, but other platforms embrace an anything goes policy to protect free speech. We saw the Zuck struggle with Cambridge Analytica in 2017, promising an end to hate speech while keeping free speech alive.
We may need to wait for social media to bed in more before the IRL looting and rioting stops, but it’s been fifteen years already. It will be interesting to see if Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and whichever company wins TikTok, become sin stocks in the eyes of ESG and SRI investors. We have a problem in society, apparently. Long-term, problems force change!
