I believe that all social media websites can have both positives and negatives. It depends on how a person uses the social media. I think there is a very dangerous trend that is currently happening where a user can get stuck in an "echo chamber." What I mean by this is that people can view content that they want to see which is created by people who think like them and avoid content of opposing views. This means that people are becoming more radicalized in their ideals. They are only seeing social media that is enforcing their beliefs. You can read how the terrorist group ISIS is doing this by clicking here. I do think there are positives though. A lot of my friends and family members are spread out across the USA as well as other countries. It’s nice being able to stay in contact with them as well as seeing what’s going on in their lives.
I do think social media sites should hold some responsibility for the mental health of their users. If customers at a store were constantly coming out of it depressed or angry, there would be an investigation and policies would need to be put in place to prevent this. I do think it would be tricky to figure out how a social media platform could go about doing this though. There are so many factors involved. How to censor things without censoring them to the point of some kind of agenda. For example, to say “they should block all hate speech” is easier said than done. If there were to politicians running against each other and the site blocked anyone saying something bad about either politician it goes against freedom of speech. If the site only blocked it for one of the candidates this would also be a huge problem. I believe this is why social media platforms are not held accountable yet because it is extremely hard to judge exactly what they should be doing.
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