PSA: Be Mindful of Whatever You Are Seeing Right Now on Social Media!

The Problem of Social Media

Criticizing social media has been a hot topic as it affects people’s well-being and spreads misinformation. But we rarely go deep into thinking about what social media consists of and what exactly affects people’s well-being and information. We post photos or videos on social media for our friends to see, sharing our moments because we, as human beings, are social animals; therefore, we care about how others perceive us. With photos and other media, social media creates a toxic environment for us to crave others’ attention and validation. This eventually makes us self-conscious and anxious, which can be detrimental to our mental health.

Furthermore, social media can also mislead us into believing something untrue. Different people perceive information differently; therefore, misinterpretation can happen all the time on social media. We want social media to tell us the truth; we value them because they give us information. At the same time, we want social media to lie because we want it to benefit us for our interests. Social media create many issues; however, the fundamental problem starts with the invention of the camera and its product – photography.

The Problem of Photography

Susan Sontag is an American philosopher, activist, and critic; her book, On Photography, theorized photography's philosophy while criticizing it. In Plato’s Cave is the first chapter of this book. The title is a reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave. According to Plato, life is like being chained up in a cave; we are forced to watch shadows flitting across a stone wall; therefore, we think those shadows on the wall are the actual object in the world. It seems natural for Sontag to compare these shadows to photographs, claiming that photography limits people’s view of this world and shapes how we see it. As Sontag argued, “photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it” (23). But life and time will continue; photography produces a reality that lives in the past. It appropriates reality to create an image of it, causing individuals to derive meaning solely from images rather than interacting with the real world. As technology evolves, social media repeats and re-enforces the same thing as photography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA

In Plato’s New Cave – social media

Sontag’s criticism and theory on photography are still relevant today. As cameras, mobile devices, and the Internet become an entirety, they produce what we cannot live without in today’s modern society — social media. I believe that social media is the new Plato’s “cave” we live in, as we are convinced that whatever is on social media is the ultimate “truth.” Compared to photography, social media consist of more element. It combines photographs, videos, audio and texts; its purpose is to facilitate efficiency in human communication. My concern is that with social media, we will stop thinking critically about the information we consume and unconsciously embrace the “shadows” on the wall (our phones) as reality. Which resulting many people being “stuck” in the cave longer and longer. Ultimately, we lose ourselves in the sea of information, which detriments various aspects of our lives. This negative result of social media resonates with Sontag’s points on photography, “the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses” (23). This reflects on today’s social media as a monolith that deludes reality even more as we spend more time on it.

Getting Out of The Cave

This new cave built from social media is scary, but it does not have to be. We can easily get out of the cave if we take a second (stop scrolling or turn off the devices) to think critically about the photos, videos and texts. Raising questions about the post: Who posted it? Why did they post it? What is the intention behind the post? Is the post beneficial to my knowledge and well-being? The start of this questioning process is the start of getting out of the cave; this process takes practice and time as we are all stuck in this cave for various levels, but first: Be mindful of whatever you are seeing right now on social media!

Works Cited: Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Penguin Classics, 2008.