The Social Media Disconnect
As we live in a age of constant technological advancement, more and more people have access to the internet and all of its applications. Although this sounds like a great advantage toward our societies, there are also many glaring problems that have come to light. On the one hand, the undeniable advantage of widely accessible internet is that it connects you to people all around the world. However, this also leads to many unfiltered hate comments and harmful speech on the internet, and especially on social media platforms. According to the DC Report, 95% of children and adolescents in the United States are using social media platforms almost constantly, and according to the Pew Research Center 69% of adults use social media. This constant usage of social media contributes to social comparisons, unrealistically high expectations, and negative mental health effects.
Change needs to be made in order to save the young generations from mental health issues caused by social media. That is why I am calling to action a new policy that could help put an end to all of these mental health cases. With the implementation of new algorithms, closer monitoring of hateful speech, and better privacy, we can get one step closer from ending social media caused depression.
1st Focus Area: The problem of algorithms on social media platforms
- Do algorithms cause mental health issues on social media?
- by changing the algorithms this could lead to a decrease in mental health problems
2nd Focus Area: Hateful Speech
- Some platforms sensor profane videos and images but does that have an effect?
- Implement methods that monitor hate speech on posts and comments
3rd Focus area: privacy
- how can we improve privacy on social media?
- what is the current state of privacy
- make it so not everyone can comment on a public post and have it filtered for hate speech
Plan: The Social Media Act: Federal bill that creates new rules that all platforms must follow in order to keep social media safe from hateful speech and mental health issues.
Advantages: This bill provides a safe place for people of all ages to navigate, with the reduction of words, images, and video that could potentially cause any mental health issues.