Article by Phoenix writer Cristina Palmieri ’25:
Voltaire said “Crush the evil thing.” It sounds cooler in French, but I don’t know French. Voltaire wickedly ridiculed all of the corruptions and evils of his time. No doubt, social media would be on his radar if he lived today.
Since its beginnings, social media has ingrained itself into society. There has been a lasting obsession with constantly posting updates about our lives on some sort of platform, whether it be a relationship status on Facebook or a picture of your last vacation on Instagram. However, there has been a decline in this obsession. With Twitter on a fast decline and TikTok’s existence being in jeopardy, there has been a rising conversation about social media’s impact on society within the last ten years. While some might mourn the loss of their favorite apps, I will honestly be relieved with social media’s downfall.
There is no denying the benefits that came with social media. People of every interest and
identity were able to find a community that they would probably not find, had they not had
access to the rest of the world. The music, fashion, beauty, and countless other industries have been completely transformed. Artists of every kind have more opportunities to market themselves in a more accessible and relatable manner. New jobs have even risen, such as influencers and social media managers.
Though this digital age has had its benefits, its negatives are miles beyond its positives. In
regards to the art industry, creators have to push out more content than ever before in order to keep audiences engaged. Musicians find themselves releasing new music every two or three years to keep their followings alive. Fast fashion, the mass production of runway fashion into retail stores, is more alive than ever before. With trend cycles moving at the speed of – well, social media– stores are producing low cost clothing with a negative environmental impact, and compromising the integrity of fashion design as an art form. Poking fun at the lack of sustainability in which clothing is created today, AVAVAV’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, entitled “Fake It Till You Break It,” featured clothing falling off the models as they walked the runway.
On an individual level, social media has become extremely detrimental to the new generation’s development. Attention spans have noticeably decreased in these last decades, due to the constant flow of information made possible by the internet. Even communication skills have been compromised, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a lot of this problem stems from a lack of face to face conversation. It has become far too common to have a conversation with somebody while they constantly check a smartphone for new notifications. There is even a new phenomenon called the “phantom vibration syndrome” in which a person may feel his or her phone ringing, though it is not, just from the dependence on his or her cell phone.
As somebody who did not have a majority of the popular platforms until two or three years ago, I felt almost ostracized from the rest of my friends. As ridiculous as it sounds, from the ages of eleven to fourteen years old, my social life was negatively affected by the lack of apps I had on my phone. Even today, as I reduce my screen time to about three hours per day, I find my friends asking why I “leave them on delivered” on Snapchat for hours at a time. The truth is, I think the accessibility that people believe a person should have to another person at any given moment is disturbing. It has become easy to associate this feeling with the eyes of “Big Brother” from George Orwell’s 1984: always watching and always judging.
While I believe that it is unrealistic to expect social media to be completely obsolete in the near future, I think it is reasonable to expect a considerable decrease in the use of it in the coming years. To some, this may be an absolute tragedy. Personally, I will be breathing a sigh of relief. Instead of filling myself with anxiety regarding the viewership of my life, I could actually pay attention to my own life. I could read more, study more, get outside more, create more meaningful relationships with all the time and mental space I would gain from losing social media.
But, as a member of this social media addicted generation, what do I know?
