The rise of Social media has been skyrocketing in the most recent years. As of November 2014 figures stated that a whopping 1.35 billion people use Facebook, and 284 million use Twitter. Social network sites have received criticism recently about how easily they have allowed terrorist communication and its role in helping organise riots.
What we have now allowed to be created is a way of making access to information - true or false - extremely easy. With just a click of a button we can send, share or promote articles and videos and produce 'trends'.
Many social networks, including Facebook, have made their big bucks on selling private information to companies. In this way, when Google knows that you've said to your friend that you love Not On The High Street's jewellery collections: guess what comes up in your adverts?
The Government have been trying their efforts to encourage young people to get involved with politics, so naturally the next move has been for them to start posting on social media. This could well have had a positive impact on people, all that knowledge right at their fingertips. In contrast, there has now been a huge number of uneducated people reading something biased and writing viciously in comments about politicians, celebrities, and of course each other.
The problem with spreading information has always been the Chinese Whispers effect. Sites like Facebook have allowed stories to circulate, morph, be presented by users in a certain way. It's become an unhealthy way of expressing news stories. It has created anger and hateful speech about things that a) probably aren't 100% true and b) people knew nothing about to begin with.
Positive news stories become negative. Take for example, Keira Knightley's decision to bare all for a photo shoot and show her body without any editing. This was a big gesture to women with smaller frames feeling intimidated by the new 'big booty' craze. As well as that, Knightley has received criticism and photoshop on her body through her whole career.
It was her way of saying, we all have different bodies and every one is beautiful in its own right. This was then circulated by many people as saying she was unattractive and taking the opportunity to laugh at her body. It's given shallow people a chance to be cruel quicker and in view of more people.
However most of the content we see on social media has a higher volume of people from unreliable sources, such as blogging. There was a video released on my news feed a few days ago, which shows a young woman dressed in heels walking around Hollywood Boulevard, acting drunk. The video shows clips of different men trying to get her to go home with them. People were commenting on the video saying it was 'disgusting' and 'horrifying' and speaking about how men have no morals.
Huge generalised comments. Then today, a source came out, saying the men involved had each come forward to say they had been asked by the camera crew to take part in what they called a 'student film'. They were asked to make it look like they wanted to take her home and were very unhappy with how they came across in the finished article. You simply cannot trust anything you read or watch on the internet.
If this could become a positive, all it requires is for people to think seriously before they comment or encourage anything online. Especially if it is negative. The highest ignorance we can have in life is to think we are not ignorant. It is vital that we understand that pretty much every human on the planet knows nothing for sure. All it takes is a pinch of salt.
