Are social networks a good place to follow the news?

Nowadays, social media occupy such a strong place in our society that even if one doesn’t have any of these apps on their phone, they’re still going to be somehow influenced by them. We often hear this, but how often do we truly stop to think about it? After all, is it really fair?

This is a complex topic. There are a lot of things to say, which are not all positive but not all negative either. In fact, it is absolutely amazing to be able to communicate with people with so much ease thanks to social media, and AI’s potential is even beyond what words can express. However, we know that people could live without these tools before their invention. Can we do the same? This is one of the questions. My opinions about it are not necessarily very optimistic. I believe that we’ve reached a point where we can’t live without it, as if this technology entered our brains. 

Let’s take one specific example: information. How did people get informed before the era of smartphones? Television and newspapers. Nowadays, people get informed on social media. We might think that it’s actually a good thing, as social media networks give the opportunity to speak to everyone, thereby presenting lots of different opinions. However, since social networks were initially designed for unserious matters, they don’t have the right design to allow people to inform themselves in the proper way. On social networks, news comes to you, often when you were not especially expecting it because you were just scrolling through funny Instagram Reels. Therefore, you are not going to pay the same attention you would if you watched the news on TV: you’re just going to skim through the article and think you understood everything correctly when you barely have the general idea of what you read. 

Personally, I believe that social networks are designed in such a way that every video we see is extremely convincing, even when it’s just someone giving their opinion, and this is dangerous. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the algorithm, which analyses what we might want to see before trapping us into a dimension made of one single opinion, often preventing us from being confronted with opposing views. This is how many people follow ideas without having stopped and reflected about whether they truly believe in them first: social media can be so convincing and opinions can be so widespread that it almost seems a sin not to follow them. 

The problem is that this mitigates diversity in opinions, which directly hinders evolution in mentality. We should encourage people to leave their phones behind when it comes to getting informed and to turn on their television instead. Let me reiterate what I precisely think: no, social networks are not the worst thing on Earth. They are actually great to communicate with friends and to spend some free time, but they cannot replace the news on TV or newspapers.