Social Media: Friend or Enemy?

Written By: Kevin Gabeci - February 23, 2021

Since the beginning of Social Media, most people have had a platform where they can express themselves. Now that Social Media is at its peak and a question is raised, are people's opinions free anymore, or has social media corrupted them? Lately, we have seen a lot of different situations regarding social media, people expressing themselves, and considering these expressions as free thought.

At its core, free thought is regarded as the beliefs that are formed on methods such as empirical observation, logic, and reason. Instead of authority, dogma, revelation, and tradition. So depending on which ones you fall on, you might not be expressing free thought after all.

Social Media: Friend or Enemy?

Regarding this matter, some people looking at propaganda still believe it to be true and are responsible for spreading the word. This pattern in particular does more damage to our entire society. Social media is only one of the things that have helped with the spread of propaganda. Even though Social Media allows most people to share their opinions as free thoughts, because they are already corrupted, it creates another wave of corrupted opinions and captured thoughts. It sounds like common sense because it's common to be corrupted. It's common to hold biased opinions.

In a sense, Social Media helps people expressing their free thoughts but can also work as dogma, which corrupts other people’s thoughts and opinions. Some might call Social Media a necessary evil, but that is up for discussion. Currently, Social Media is both friend and enemy to free thought.

One thing people can do to prevent believing dogma, is going back to the root of free thought. As mentioned in the beginning, free thought is the beliefs that are formed on methods such as empirical observation, logic, and reason. If you put everything you read on Social Media through these “filters” you will root out the dogma. Trying to be careful, thoughtful, and watch out for the captured, and corrupted opinions and biased thoughts people share isn't easy.

Respect The Power of Conversation

Another thing regarding free thought and social media is that most people will claim that they are "freethinkers," but whenever someone else expresses their thoughts, not in line with theirs, they are full-heartedly against them, unwilling to challenge their own beliefs. That is exactly what makes them, captured thinkers. Listening to the opinion of others is a great thing to do, especially when you don’t agree with them. Hearing their words without filtering them through a personal bias is another challenge.

We can always make the case that we are free thinkers and others are talking about traditional and religious beliefs, stewed in personal bias, but disregarding their opinion entirely doesn’t do anything except make their bias stronger. Instead, we should try to talk and learn from each other while having a decent argument about ideas. What can possibly make these outdated traditional and religious beliefs disappear? In the marketplace of ideas, Social Media is challenging the status quo more and more these days, and that’s why it’s such a difficult thing to face. It's a beast of dogma we're up against, and we need to be careful how we approach it.

Captured Thoughts

The relation between Social Media and free thought is complicated. On one hand, it helps people express themselves, but on the other hand, people are influenced by others without empirical evidence or by using manipulated data, which in the end makes them captured thinkers. As long as people don’t use Social Media as the only source of information, they should be good. It doesn't take much to verify the accuracy of claims, but for less internet-savvy people, the appeal to authority is trusting the person online did their research. Often, an influencer might be the only source available to someone, which makes this whole situation a bit more complicated.

Despite everything, free thought is still out there, and Social Media has brought a new way of expressing it. As time goes by things tend to change, some have improved and some are still lacking. As for free thought, this is yet to be seen. In some cases, improvements are obvious while in others things still are not up with the times.

Social Media and free thought still have a long way to go in their relationship, and hopefully, things will turn out for the best.