The Future of Social Media: Trends and Impact

One of those costs is that it's fraying their attention because they get interrupted when they're doing tasks that matter .

One of the other things is , when we talk about complex or contentious or politically polarizing issues , is that social media as a medium flattens information into things that have very little , if any , nuance , into things that have very little , if any nuance , things that have very clear sides , and very few of the complex issues that these young people are going to

inherit cleanly fit into a hashtag or can be summed up in a single picture .

And it seems to me , when you take we're getting close to the election right now and we just had this incredible brouhaha around Haitian immigrants eating people's pets in Springfield , ohio , which just seemed to be an absurd , absurd point of view that , on its face , people would normally challenge why aren't we seeing kind of critical pushback ?

Are we more gullible than we've been in the past ?

That's all the news for tonight , and that changes things , because people don't behave as if we are part of one shared national community where we have shared facts about which we all have different feelings . We don't even agree on the facts at this point .

There's so much misinformation to the point that a candidate for a major political party can have somebody you know with misinformation talking into his , his ear before a presidential debate about dogs and cats in Springfield . Did make for some fantastic Simpsons memes .

They are absolutely producing content , they absolutely have a role to play in combating misinformation and disinformation on their platforms , but they're not legally required to do it , and so they quote unquote self-regulate .

You know , as I say , I also teach in the comm department and you know , one of the things that I find is as bad as social media is mainstream media just leaves out anything that doesn't follow the narrative . The trust levels of the big media is the lowest it's ever been and , by the way , the same thing's true in Europe .

The difference is that , because we don't know how the algorithms work , they don't know why they're getting this news story from the New York Times , not that news story from the New York Times , whereas somebody who's actually visiting the main page can sort of navigate and differentiate what they want .

I will say that I've spent this past year interviewing Jewish American students all over the country , undergraduates and their non-Jewish friends , with whom they've had good conversations about the conflicts in the Middle East and conditions in the US on campuses .

They are often very thoughtful consumers and one of the ways that they do that is that they don't count on any one news source . Not to be biased .

They read widely , they read international versus domestic , they read things that they know will be kind of left of center , right of center , but they really feel like they're creating a media ecosystem of their own because they don't think there is one source that's going to give them the news .

How prevalent do we sense that is as a reaction , Because the sense that I get is kind of the opposite , which is that people decide oh okay , the magnetism of this particular medium is going to draw me in , I'm going to become an acolyte or a zealot of that particular perspective and lock out the other perspectives .

So this discriminating behavior , do you think it's widespread ? Do you think it's or do you think it's not prevalent ?

There's way too much coming from social media versus other sources , and the more that people rely on social media as their primary part of their diet , the more likely they are to not have , you know , sort of basic political literacy about things that are going on , to not know current events , and they're more likely to have heard conspiracy theories .

So , it's like doubly bad , and so that's definitely happening , it's definitely in play . But no group of people are a monolith . So when it comes to an issue that they care about a lot like young Jews around the Middle East conflict around what's happening on campuses they go much broader .

information in other ways . There have been articles which have said that , for instance , tiktok has really led to a very strong anti-Israel orientation . I mean , is there some way in which that this kind of thing is particularly dangerous for people who maybe are starting off with sort of less literacy ?

Maybe they didn't come from a house which , like some of us , were two , three newspapers landing on the driveway every morning ?

So just the likelihood , given that we don't know the algorithms are black boxed , we don't know why certain people are getting certain things and others aren't , but the likelihood that you're getting feeds that have much more content that presents one side versus both is enormous . And what does that do ? Right , what ? What does it do ? What does it ?

Tiktok , would seem to me , and that kind of content around an issue that is as central to American foreign policy and to American identity as a question of Israel and Palestine , feels like a very good candidate to me for that sort of thing . Palestine feels like a very good candidate to me for that sort of thing .

There's been a lot written around the Chinese long game of the 100-year marathon by Michael Pillsbury as an example , which basically points out that the Chinese are intentionally using these techniques to weaken the fabric of US society so that they can make gains politically a lot more easily .

So the question then becomes If the net result of all of this Tower of Babel noise is the destruction of trust in institutions , is there any strategy you can think of to get it back other than draconian , you know , crackdowns on media , which nobody wants to do ?

And I think you know one of my contentions is one of the places we can act to interrupt this is in classrooms . It's you know , a lot of people have looked , rightfully , at what's you know happened on college campuses in the last year and said where are the adults ? You know , these are teachable moments .

I mean , there are young people who have protested on college campuses , who are motivated by , you know , sort of righteous moral , you know sort of horror at the idea of women and children .

You know , in harm's way , there's a moment there to teach about how we engage each other in rigorous civil discourse in ways that don't mean that we're shouting down another side or saying one side's children is more important than another side's . We've missed those for the most part .

And the crackdowns from college campuses on , you know those kinds of conversations , or just shuffling people off college campuses on , you know those kinds of conversations or just shuffling people off campus so that you know , graduations look good and everything else . We haven't taught them anything , we haven't challenged them , we haven't intervened .

Classrooms are where this has to happen . We have to start teaching young people how to get comfortable being uncomfortable . We need to teach them that there's no one way to look at any issue , even if one side's got more evidence than others the difference between empathy right where I try to understand a view I don't agree with and sympathy .

We have to start taking this generation more seriously and demanding that they take themselves more seriously , because they're inheriting a world that's complex and connected in ways that have never happened before .

It's going to require serious people to lead it and we're not going to manage that if we throw our hands up and say well , you know , social media has rotted all their brains . Well , it's time for the humans to step in and throw and throw up some friction right , well , and hopefully .

Let's battle it out with uncivil discourse in whatever medium you want outside of the classroom . I'm a little leery of the potential for us to really affect that in any meaningful way .

I think we can take people who have a predilection toward intelligent , analytical , civil discourse and help mold them , but I'm just concerned about whether that's just setting them up to , uh , to fail in the real world .

You know , like one of my favorite students and I gave her an A , she's very smart who said , well , the problem for women is Western capitalism . And I said , well , there may be some case there , but have you ever been to China ? Have you ever been to Japan ? Have you ever been to Saudi Arabia ?

I think the advances of women in liberal capitalist societies are considerably better than they are other places . But if you're getting teachers who are just giving them this point of view , how are they ever gonna do it ? And so my worry is are too many professors we don't have to name names basically caving in to the short attention span idea ?

There was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education where they basically said well , don't expect them to read and don't expect them to do anything other than sort of the most minimal kind of regurgitation . Is that a pressure that somehow is difficult to resist ?

There's never one side of anything and these young people should be learning that there are different perspectives and then that you weigh the evidence rather than opinions . I tell my students all the time you don't have to go to college to have opinions . My five-year-old has opinions . He has a lot of them .

And I said I'm a showrunner , really is the way I view my world . Right , I have to engage my audience in compelling ways that actually cater to the fact that they're consuming information and communication in a way that they way that I'm not used to right .

So I will use AI in the classroom or use virtual reality in the classroom to get them to focus on a particular issue , to then unlock their ability to talk .

But I don't know a lot of professors that are willing to go out of their comfort zone to be able to restructure the way they teach , to be able to engage people , and so that's a problem on the teacher side as well as the student side .

I walked in on October 9th and metaphorically sort of cleared the desk and said okay , we're going to talk about how political worldviews get formed somewhere else . And that class was an experimental course because I've taught it at Rutgers for years but hadn't taught it here . There are two Jewish students , no other students that had contact with the Middle East .

And I said for the rest of the semester well , what we're going to do , I'm not derailing the rest of the class , but I want you to see how what we've learned so far about political polarization helps you understand what we're about to see in real time . And I gave them the option . It was totally their choice .

I gave them extra things to read , extra things to listen to . Again , go to ways that they like to learn . Podcasts can be obviously very powerful educational tools . I don't have to tell you that , and I gave them the option of coming in 15 minutes early and that we'd go 10 minutes into class with their questions and ideas .

They didn't miss for the rest of the term oh , that's great .

We've even invited some people to be on this podcast who have said no , I don't want to risk being on a podcast talking about these kinds of issues because I don't want to be associated with controversy . Well , guess what Time to do that ?

Right Time to step up and I think students seeing professors visibly taking positions and visibly participating in the public debate will inspire them to do the same thing .

What I'm going to teach you is how to evaluate and understand things on all sides , but and this part's crucial , and we've gotten away from this kind of language with moral bright lines there are some things that are still better and worse than other things are , and so before we start talking about in my class this term , we're going to talk about campus protest .

We're going to talk about where responsibilities emerge when you have freedom to do certain things . It's not freedom from responsibilities . And where does that all happen ? We're going to talk about the conflict in the Middle East and how it plays out here .

We're going to agree on moral bright lines around those things , what things are out of bounds for civil conversation , what's outside the realm , because everything else should be in , but there still have to be these lines of if you are celebrating or denying the pain of the death of children , that's outside the lines .

I mean , politicians are among the most boring and least interesting people that you can ever talk to . That's why I don't tend to cover politics .

Because what we're finding is tremendous relationship between , for instance , when you understand whether they're on the right or the left these people are . They're mentally disturbed some of them .

The idea of techno-pugilism , I think , is a really important idea , for two reasons . Number one , I think when we have these debates about whether social media are bad for young people and researchers know , researchers say well , we don't have clear evidence of a link . It depends which kids have a bad , have negative effects , which kids have positive ones .

You know , I think one of the unmeasured because it's very hard to measure effects of this is how it's fraying social trust and so the social fabric , what it means to see other people ripping each other to pieces online and how unlikely that makes you to engage in or attempt to engage in a conversation about serious things that matter to you , either with that

person or with people in general , because it cultivates this idea that no one is going to be reasonable , so why bother trying ? So that's the one thing with regards to pugilism . The other is if you are a boxing fan or another form of fight .

It's a good metaphor Because the two people slugging it out in the ring , there's an audience around them that's quiet . They're not fighting , but they're observing the fight . And that's actually what happens with politics on social media .

It's so well written and I recommend it to everybody . But he points out in there that 3% of Americans , on a scale from one to seven , put themselves at a one or at a seven . 3% on each side . Extremely conservative , extremely liberal .

But then you ask people what proportion of people on the other side of the aisle they think are extremely conservative , extremely liberal , taff . How do we end up with such distortions ? Because of who uses social media and posts political information ?

It's the deeply involved , it's the extremes , because moderates don't post , they consume , because they have too much to lose reputationally If they get things wrong or if they don't understand an issue , they can get into trouble with friends , with family , with work .

absolutely right . They don't because the numbers are not there , but that just creates a more and more extreme environment from a crafting of the actual words that go into the posts .

In other words , you can't just be a conservative or a moderate , you're either far left or far right . And then the same thing you see with on the right , where you know Kamala Harris , is many things you know , but besides you know , being basically an unimpressive person she's , you know she's not a communist , she's not a , you know she's not .

You know Frank , for you know Trump to say , well , she's a Marxist . But but if you read the , the heart , the , the , the further left and the further right press that you live in that sort of a universe which is bifurcated between extreme this and extreme that , and I can tell you from a business point of view , it's very hard to sell being in the middle .

I'll find that pieces that I write that have a edge one way or the other tend to do much better than pieces that are more moderate .

This is why I labeled it techno-pugilism , because it involves some degree of force , right , and the only force that people know is just disruptive insults and , um , emotional pain . Right , they don't have .

The vast majority of us are a three , four or five Right , right , and the vast majority of Americans actually don't engage deeply with politics . They're not what .

It just sort of floats beneath . They don't check the news all the time .

And he looked at me and he said you know , professor , it's been like this my whole sentient life . So you and my parents tell me this isn't normal . I have no proof that it isn't . And I looked at him and I thought is he right or am I and am I a fool ?

Maybe this is normal , but I my sense from teaching this , from research with young people and with educators . This is not how people want to be and this is not how most people treat each other .

There's no tech on the desks unless we're using it for a purpose . Yeah , I don't know . Bring it , bring in a notebook . We're going to look at each other , we're going to talk to each other and we're going to talk about politics , and that scares a few people out of the room on day one .

Right we're going to read a lot and you're going to be tested on the reading .

But I think showing them , I always say to them sometimes having your phone , having a laptop , is the way to walk into a meeting . But if they've done any internships , they've been with people me or older who walk into meetings sometimes with nothing or with a notepad .

And I say we don't just do that because we're old , I mean it's also because we're old Well you don't qualify as old .

Where they are all doing that , they notice that this feels different from when they decide individually to walk in with a notepad , because if everyone else is still on their computer , they're not having the engagement that they were looking for and this is what Jonathan Haidt talks about in his new book the Anxious Generation is the power of community around these

things . So whether it's classes of parents who commit that no smartphones till eighth grade that it's not an individual family decision , it's a coordinated choice . We can do that in classrooms , we can do that in other places , and that doesn't mean that we vilify the tech . It doesn't mean that the tech doesn't have its place .

But to teach young people that there are times and spaces that should be sacred and separate , they know it too . Have you noticed how many young people walk around with hard copy books on campus ? They don't read for pleasure on a screen because they know they read differently when they turn the pages . They're figuring it out themselves .

We just have to support them in realizing that the medium is the message and that they feel differently and tapping into that sense of feeling . And we can use classrooms as ways to help them cultivate connection with each other too .

Well , maybe we're seeing a little bit of a rebound effect from , you know , from this media obsession and , uh , hopefully , uh , the the futile future will be a little less futile and maybe futile at least , and maybe we can do a better job of who we end up nominating for president than these you know , clowns we have now .

It's what are you getting given by being able to really focus on another person , being able to really focus on a beautiful place , on an experience , and that , I think , is how we help a generation that COVID took a lot from to draw themselves out and back to each other . I have the students in this class .

They have to go with one other member of the class in a set of questions and get a cup of coffee and they have to ask each other questions about where their own beliefs came from and who's really influenced how they see things and have they really changed their mind ? Who helped them do that ? And I will tell you this part's depressing , marshall , I apologize .

How many of the students after I did that last year came to me at some point in the semester and said that's the first real conversation I've had with anyone since I started college wow because for me that was college right college was all about learning how to socialize and learning how to be sitting in to a community .

Each other about stuff we didn't understand . We did . That's what you did , that's how you formed your base .

I also see far less coupling up between men and women at schools than I did even at Berkeley .

But maybe , in fact , there is some hope that the , that the , the real connections between people , can be the best , the best defense against , against these , uh , you know , peripheral , faux , uh moments of , of , uh , of shared recognition , which is what I think that social media is all about Right ?

None of these things happen on their own , because most kids , if their lives are otherwise full , they simply don't have that kind of time .

So maybe we should focus on providing those opportunities , how we fill them up otherwise , and how we make sure that we are creating space that enable them to be fully human , because that is the best defense against an overly technologized world . What are the things that make us human ?

And it's the real connections we have with other people and what we can do with each other in a classroom , outside of one , across generations , within generations .

I'm convinced from various research projects I've done I mean , I do work with very young kids and creating educational media for very young kids with Sesame , with PBS Kids , work with working class families about what the future of learning and work looks like . And across all these projects , it's this what is it that makes us uniquely human ?

And so much of this is finding these off ramps from the technology . They can bring us together , but we have to get off them and be with each other , and that's when I think things start to get better , is when we start treating each other as whole people , not as posts on a platform .