The cautionary tales and dangers of Social media that lurk and impact the lives of many.

Hello everyone I came here today to talk with you about a topic that is not only affecting all of us but manipulating our daily lives in a way that we all have never imagined. Before introducing myself and my topic I would like first to ask you a question that might seem absurd. Do you use social media? And how many days per week and how many hours per day? And for what purpose? Almost all of us not only use social media on daily basis but almost most of the day and for many purposes.

Let me first introduce myself to you. I am Rodaina Elgeneady and I am doing a master's degree in business administration and I will talk with you about the negative effect of social media on our lives. Most of you now will ask what relates and qualify me to talk about this topic. Well, I am not an expert in this topic but I have done my research as I work in conference and event planning and one of my main roles is topics selection and content verification where social media and its effects on people lives and societies have been always one of the top priorities that I have worked on.

I believe that social media has a tremendous negative influence and impact on society and the next generations because of cyberbullying, a false sense of connection, and privacy as social media is now mostly used for destructive rather than beneficial purposes. Addiction to social media has had a detrimental influence on the concentration, particularly among young people, and security for women is failing as a result of the creation of fake ids and false reports.

Although those tools have created some wonderful things like they reunited lost family members, they found organ donors and other good things which looks positive but the flip side of the coin is different and I am going to prove that now.

The flip side is that; based on the latest studies. Some of the interrelated problems:

At first let’s have a look at the business model of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and companies like this to get the big image. Their business model is to keep people engaged on the screen, to get people’s attention as much as they can, and to get most of your time, actually most of your life. This means that we are products to those platforms, not users, our attention, thoughts, and lives are what they get paid for from the advertisers. The product here is the gradual, slight and imperceptible change in our behavior and perception. It is about changing what we do, how we think, who we are. They simply trade exclusively in our future. Roger McNamee, Facebook's early investor venture capitalist, said that in the first 50 years of Silicon Valley, the industry made products and sold them to customers but for the last 10 years, the biggest companies in Silicon Valley have been selling their users.

How is this possible? How can we be the products?

Well, everything you do on the internet is being monitored, tracked, and measured. Every single tiny action you take is carefully tracked and recorded. What image you stop and stare at, for how long, what interests you, when you do what, etc...

Through all this they knew everything about you, they study you when you are lonely, depressed, excited, what type of personality you are, how much money you are earning, willing to spend, and way more. They have information about you more than has been ever imagined in human history! And what we are doing? We are just pouring out all this information into the system that almost has no human supervision and that is making better and better and better and better predictions about what we’re going to do and who we are. By this information, they build models that predict our actions.

All the things we have done, all the clicks we have ever made, all the videos we have watched, all the likes, reacts and shares help in developing a more and more accurate model for each one of us. That later can predict what kind of videos we will keep watching, what products we will be willing to purchase, what news we are willing to share, and to what extent they can manipulate with all of that and the most terrifying is predicting what kinds of emotions tend to trigger us.

Else more Billions are hopelessly addicted to social platforms on their electronic devices and can isolate themselves in a bubble. This is mostly because, rather than utilizing social media as a tool, individuals have begun to use it to replace their social lives, believing that engaging on social media is equivalent to engaging in person. Although social media has helped individuals exchange a lot of material, it has also generated a false feeling of belief in people's minds that relationships can be founded on such exchanges. Tim Kendall, Facebook's former executive, and Pinterest's former president, most of the time he got not be able to get off his phone and pay more attention to his two young kids who needed more of his love and attention, and even in many other moments he felt a prey for this addiction and faced a lot of problems with his family.

Also, excessive usage affects your mental health and also causes depression in people and especially children and teenagers. Based on some studies 69 percent of those who suffer mental illness and commit suicide have been linked to Cyberbullying and of course, there is cyberbullying on Facebook and Instagram. One of the most popular forms of bullying on Facebook is harsh comments on users' self-photos (selfies). It's a vicious cycle because people who share images are frequently hoping for positive affirmation and instead receive the reverse. Other examples are the Tiktok and Instagram filters that are nowadays making people feel depressed about how they look and pushing them to think about cosmetic procedures to look like themselves in those filters which can cause severe health problems. Alex, Former senior vice president of engineering at Twitter, does not allow his kids to use social media at all and it is a rule.

Other main negative impacts of social media are insecurity and a lack of privacy protection. Because everything is accessible on social media platforms, people's privacy could be abused for negative purposes. We share a lot of stuff on social media without thinking about our personal information or events in our lives. This could be hazardous to our safety. people now are addicted to putting countless moments of their lives into these platforms in the form of images, post updates, and map updates. It makes them easily trackable and monitored and can help criminals in committing terrible crimes such as stalking, rapping, kidnapping, and murders. Also, social platforms policies make the account information public and people can often not be aware of that when they blindly allow and permit access. Irresponsible behavior can lead to privacy breaches and unacceptable sharing of content that leads to serious consequences like hacking of their social media accounts and sometimes even bank accounts as well.

The spread of fake news becomes so more advanced that it can ruin a whole society; The disaster is it is not only just fake news but actually, it is fake news with consequences. Some of them may lead to depression, others to racism, and extremes to political conflicts and even wars. For instance, blasphemy and hate speech is on the rise as a result of the misuse of social media. People's religious values are being challenged in the guise of freedom of expression. As a result, society is torn apart and destroyed. Another example is the untrustworthy medical websites that put your health in danger. Google has now blocked several websites that provide visitors with incorrect and unconfirmed medical advice. Spam and rumors containing data, on the other hand, continue to exist. And this has the potential to cause significant harm to genuine human life.

In the end, most individuals consider social messaging to be more of a benefit than a disadvantage, however, it can potentially be damaging. Most people use social media in an excessive way that separates them from the real-life and instead of having a face-to-face conversation and hanging together, they prefer to text or go on social media instead. Even Some people become addicted and find it impossible to comprehend living without social media that have negative consequences, such as cyberbullying, educational compromise, and a negative impact on social skills.

I have to say that I do not hate social media, I just want us to have our own free will and not to be manipulated and shaped by those platforms. I know very well that I’m not going to get you all to delete your social media accounts, but at least try to reduce the number of notifications you get, uninstall apps that are wasting your time, and never accept a video, ad, or similar stuff that are recommended to you by those platforms, always choose. Also, before sharing, check facts, consider the sources and do extra research and make sure you get a different kind of information in your life from those you dislike and those you do. Simply expose yourself to different opinions. Get your device out of your room before sleeping at a certain time, talk and communicate with your kids about the reasonable time to spend on social media.

Use Social media less, get out in society and be free of the manipulation engines, and have a societal conversation that is not bound by the manipulation engines. Help in social media awareness. The world is really beautiful, please get out of this system, start now, quit your social media for today, and explore around... it’s great out there…

Rodaina Elgeneady