One of the ways social media can be beneficial to mental health is in finding community (at least if it is a healthy one, and not toxic like in the last section). For example, if you are bullied at school (and by classmates on some social media platform), you might find a different online community online that supports you. Or take the example of Professor Casey Fiesler finding a community that shared her interests (see also her article):

“If [social media] was just bad, I’d just tell all the kids to throw their phone in the ocean, and it’d be really easy. The problem is it - we are hyper-connected, and we’re lonely. We’re overstimulated, and we’re numb. We’re expressing our self, and we’re objectifying ourselves. So I think it just sort of widens and deepens the experiences of what kids are going through.

This way of managing disabilities puts the burden fully on disabled people to manage their disability in a world that was not designed for them, trying to fit in with “normal” people.

In some cases we might want a social media company to be able to see our “private” messages, such as if someone was sending us death threats. We might want to report that user to the social media company for a ban, or to law enforcement (though many people have found law enforcement to be not helpful), and we want to open access to those “private” messages to prove that they were sent.

One of the main goals of social media sites is to increase the time users are spending on their social media sites. The more time users spend, the more money the site can get from ads, and also the more power and influence those social media sites have over those users. So social media sites use the data they collect to try and figure out what keeps people using their site, and what can they do to convince those users they need to open it again later.

By looking at enough data in enough different ways, you can find evidence for pretty much any conclusion you want. This is because sometimes different pieces of data line up coincidentally (coincidences happen), and if you try enough combinations, you can find the coincidence that lines up with your conclusion.

By looking at enough data in enough different ways, you can find evidence for pretty much any conclusion you want. This is because sometimes different pieces of data line up coincidentally (coincidences happen), and if you try enough combinations, you can find the coincidence that lines up with your conclusion.

Film Crit Hulk goes on to say that the “don’t feed the trolls” advice puts the burden on victims of abuse to stop being abused, giving all the power to trolls. Instead, Film Crit Hulk suggests giving power to the victims and using “skilled moderation and the willingness to kick people off platforms for violating rules about abuse”

Inauthentic behavior is when the reality doesn’t match what is being presented. Inauthenticity has, of course, existed throughout human history, from Ea-nasir complaining in 1750 BCE that the copper he ordered was not the high quality he had been promised, to 1917 CE in England when Arthur Conan Doyle (the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories) was fooled by photographs that appeared to be of a child next to fairies.

Authenticity in connection requires honesty about who we are and what we’re doing; it also requires that there be some sort of reality to the connection that is supposedly being made between parties. Authentic connections frequently place high value on a sense of proximity and intimacy. Someone who pretends to be your friend, but does not spend time with you (proximity) or does not open themselves up to trusting mutual interdependence (intimacy) is offering one kind of connection (being an acquaintance) under the guise of a different kind of connection (friendship).

Facebook was launched in 2004 and soon put most of its competitors out of business, while YouTube, launched in 2005 became a different sort of social networking site built around video.

Thus, when designers of social media systems make decisions about how data will be saved and what constraints will be put on the data, they are making decisions about who will get a better experience. Based on these decisions, some people will fit naturally into the data system, while others will have to put in extra work to make themselves fit, and others will have to modify themselves or misrepresent themselves to fit into the system.

One classic example is the tendency to overlook the interests of children and/or people abroad when we post about travels, especially when fundraising for ‘charity tourism’. One could go abroad, and take a picture of a cute kid running through a field, or a selfie with kids one had traveled to help out. I

Note that sometimes people use “bots” to mean inauthentically run accounts, such as those run by actual humans, but are paid to post things like advertisements or political content. We will not consider those to be bots, since they aren’t run by a computer. Though we might consider these to be run by “human computers” who are following the instructions given to them, such as in a click farm: