Social media: Be a little afraid

If we ever needed a definition of a two-edged sword, it would surely be social media, an online platform we can use to communicate, and share information with others, to stay ‘connected’ with family and friends. So many, especially ‘at school teens,’ want to be ‘normal,’ yet their focus is online... so, how normal is that?

Certainly, it has its benefits to families, friends, and work place associates, or ‘followers’ as they are popularly identified, as they can share images, videos, just chat, or even tag themselves with status or relationship updates. It’s all the same stuff we used to ‘talk’ about, in the ‘olden days,’ but it seems it’s not enough to just share with your ‘mates’ and ‘buddies,’ you are encouraged to share with the world.

From a positive perspective, social media platforms are available and accessible to, and can accommodate, almost everyone, and provide instant, global, real time connections with an unrivalled diversity of choice, as to how one will connect, engage, and share. However, there is a school of thought that, especially in our teens, we feel we are ‘connecting,’ when actually, we are connecting with unknowns, often unseen’s, while actually disconnecting with those around us.

Gaming is a social media option that offers challenges to all participants, with a variety of consoles, tablets, phones, computers, and other devices used therefore increasing hi-tech diversity, while there are also critical skills that may be enhanced through gaming such as hand-eye coordination, imagination, and creativity, and to be fair, there are some memorable, enriching, graphics, features, storylines, and characters that can seriously enhance media tech skills. In today’s educational environments, this can only be a positive thing. At the end of the day though, social media while a technological revolution, is a sociological phenomenon.

Negative considerations with social media may be its current propensity for containing harmful, misleading, offensive, and even unhealthy perspectives to which young people, in particular, are susceptible. Such are the pitfalls of a new world, and its new technology, to which we find ourselves distinctly vulnerable. We can be, or feel, pressured by the often unhealthy expectations of any of the social media platforms. You only have to look at how ‘filters’ have altered the personas of many of those we know. ‘Warts and all’ has no place on social media it seems.

The first major concern to emerge from even the most facile review of social media, is the challenge of ensuring that young people are not being introduced to toxic media content that is inappropriate to their age, culture, or societal expectations. The other key concern is that social media could be a ‘Trojan Horse,’ means of evading household security, placing private information such as passwords, account numbers, and the like, at risk of falling into malevolent hands.

Parents have a key role to play in ensuring that young people and children have limited time on social media and gaming, and that the age limitations and restrictions recommendations are applied. Parental awareness and concern would appear, globally, to be around 60 per cent checking their children’s activity, however most of those reported checking once and never again. I get the need to trust their children, but between 10 and 16 years of age, they are incredibly vulnerable to online exploitation, so parental responsibility can hardly be optional, can it?

Successful cyber-attacks on educational establishments are, I feel, just a single malevolent step away, and can have, potentially devastating effects on so many students who deserve greater security of their learning. I guess the key is for educational institutions to always be alert, always be ready, as attacks can come from anywhere. In fact, maybe the Sultanate is in a high state of awareness and preparedness, though UK statistics from 2021/22 show that 60 per cent of schools have no cyber-security training, 70 per cent have staff training in place, 80 per cent do not have air-gapped backup systems so all-in-all, that environment appears extremely vulnerable.

Maybe, social media is something we should be more afraid of than we are now?