It’s common for a group of friends to gather in a local pub to put the world right over a few beverages. Whenever such a group gets talking about global priorities, conflicts, politics, the economy, the climate, the press, social media, AI, or the routine ups and downs of modern life, discussion can become quite lively. While relaxing in his local pub with a relative recently, the Badger sat close to a group of seven people, obviously friends, discussing the above topics. Their discussion was free flowing with the exchange of varied views on many of these topics, especially those that get frequent airtime on broadcast news media. One of the quieter members of the group made an assertion that seemed to get unanimous agreement, namely that ‘Social media has caused the death of decency’. The Badger’s since been cogitating on this assertion because he saw the birth of social media during his IT career and its subsequent rise to the behemoth it is today.
There’s no doubt that since its birth, social media has driven a significant shift in how people interact with each other. Much of the shift – for example, being able to connect with, converse with, and share information with, individuals and communities across geographies was a big positive in its nascent years and remains so today. However, over the last two decades as the companies behind social media have grown into giant commercial enterprises, there’s been a progressive ‘darkening’ impact which has eroded decency in people’s everyday behaviour. It’s become common on social media for people to express opinions anonymously, to show disrespect and hostility towards strangers, and to post insensitive content about some thing or event without having to face immediate consequences. In real life, empathy, civility, and basic decency are important for societal stability, but social media has desensitised people to this reality.
When someone’s first instinct is to video a violent event and immediately share it on social media, then asserting that decency is dead seems fully justified. When the US President shares a tragic video of someone’s fatal interaction with a tiger at an animal park on his social media platform and follows this up with an inappropriate AI video of himself with a tiger, the fact that social media has changed societal norms is irrefutable. Given that empathy, ethics, and integrity are important traits for a good leader, surely the President should have known better.
Objectivity is important, but if you’ve lived with social media since its birth then the assertion that ‘social media has caused the death of decency’ is evidentially persuasive. Sadly, with the amount of spurious AI-generated content proliferating on social media today, the resurrection of decency looks very unlikely. Generation Alpha, the first generation to be raised from infancy with digital technology, deserve better than the social media facilitated decline in decency we see today…
