Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been interested in what happens to us when we spend too much time on social media. X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook are spaces where people can connect with each other. But they’re also hubs for misinformation and groupthink.
Most of us understand that we can either use social media to improve our lives or to make them worse. But that understanding is too simplistic to be useful as we head into the 2024 election. There needs to be wider recognition of how social media makes us more vulnerable to leaders like Trump.
I recognized this especially after watching “The Waldo Moment,” an episode of the dystopian sci-fi series “Black Mirror” in which a cartoon bear, Waldo, goes viral after mocking a politician on live TV.
Waldo is put up for election in a local race. Despite winning support and becoming extremely popular, Waldo loses — but not before he incites a riot. (Does that sound like Jan. 6, 2021?)
That was 2013. When 2016 rolled around, some writers were quick to draw parallels between Waldo and Donald Trump. But I think the reason “The Waldo Moment” could predict Trump is because it predicted what made his victory possible: a situation where someone can shout, lie, mock and slander their way into office because social media has left many of us ill-equipped to resist.
Social media is a free-for-all competition for your attention, and viral photos and videos are the top dogs. No single thing causes something to go viral, but content that causes high-arousal emotions has a big leg up.
Other factors include the popularity of the sharer, shock value and timing. Unfortunately, factualness isn’t as important. If it was, we may have avoided the slough of COVID-19 misinformation, or maybe less people would have tried to “stop the steal.”
We know social media contributes to the spread of these ludicrous ideas. And yet adults worldwide spend, on average, over two hours a day using it. Some estimates put usage among U.S. teenagers twice as high.
John Brandon, a journalist who covers social media, writes in Forbes: “You would think there would be compelling scientific studies on the topic that convinces us to throttle our usage, but the research doesn’t seem to be impacting us much. We seem to scroll right through the data as well.”
Here’s how I read that: We’re scrolling through the data because — let’s face it — it’s not very fun.
But elections aren’t meant to be fun. We need to take them seriously, and that’s why we need to reevaluate how we engage on social media. We need to interrogate the information we consume. And we cannot passively accept what figures like Trump can do — and has done before — with our sapped attention stores.
And if I’ve got it wrong — if the “The Waldo Moment” isn’t the right kind of thing for this moment — at least it’s entertaining.
Riley Martinez is a member of the editorial board. He can be reached at martinri24@up.edu.
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