Paladin Team Policy 2020-2021 Resolution Tour: Social Media
Voting is open right now for the brand new Paladin League. Here, we offer some insights to help guide your vote.
No Wrong Answers
We wrote these resolutions, so this time we don't have a preference about which ones win. They both offer tremendous depth, a solid aff/neg balance, and support value-centric and application-centric case patterns. Your decision should be made based on which topic most interests you.
Resolved: The United States should substantially change its policy toward social media.
High Impact
The importance of social media goes up as age goes down. If you are a debater and you own a phone, chances are you check some form of social media before you get out of bed, and spend several hours on it every day.
With each passing year, more people depend on social media for more things - connecting with friends and family, getting news, even operating their business. Social media is becoming the invisible glue of the information era society. To some people, the word "Facebook" is interchangeable with the word "Internet." But with all the convenience and new possibilities it offers, it's also creating some unintended side effects.
This year, social media is under more scrutiny than ever. Here are some interesting areas:
User Health
The evidence linking social media use to anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation, and other concerns continues to mount. If social media provides a big part of your perception of the world, and the world that you're seeing is carefully curated to project everyone's personal brands, you're caught in a competition that everyone loses.
Counterintuitively, if you start "winning" the battle for likes, the consequences to your mental health can be dire. Many influencers report devastating stress and self-image issues that only grew as they gained followers and attached more of their sense of self to their profile.
Privacy
Social media companies create sophisticated profiles of their users based on the information they provide (like when you fill out your profile) and how they use the platform (like when you like a post, indicating that you are interested in more posts like it). They use this information to sell highly targeted ads.
This information can be used in dastardly ways. More dramatically, mistakes happen. Data leaks with people's personal information - or their very sensitive hidden posts - have scandalized the internet since the dawn of social media, when many of our readers were being born.
Echo Chambers
Algorithms determine what you see in your feed. It will give you more of what you like, which means you'll soon stop seeing things that upset or challenge you. Social media seems to be exacerbating the deep divides in this nation by creating echo chambers that make you feel like everybody in the world agrees with you. As social media becomes more and more important, it has the potential to completely warp user's view of reality and calcify political, religious, and cultural divisions.
Social media can also create enclaves for hate groups - the worst kind of echo chamber.
Crime
The dark corners of social media host every kind of criminal, from drug dealers connecting with buyers to scammers and predators luring victims. Illegal activity is banned by most platforms, but many people think they should be held to higher standards. Some platforms host vast libraries of illegal content, and there's currently little recourse to get them to stop.
Clicktivism
Social and political movements live on social media. This has the advantage of democratizing and coordinating movements, but it has some disadvantages as well. Social media can absorb enthusiasm without producing much change. People will share articles into their echo chamber or post something trendy on Instagram. But if they don't follow that up with more meaningful action, they're not accomplishing anything - and the fact that social media made them feel like they did is concerning.
Cancel Culture
Shaming those who offend you is not new, but social media is making it more efficient than ever. Shame is arguably a critical part of a functional society, and some would say that cancel culture has achieved some positive changes. But others would say it's gone too far. This issue is so widespread that you can probably think of a few examples off the top of your head.
Fact-Checking
More and more people get their news from social media. But incorrect information is easy to spread and can be hard to differentiate from what's real. Many are demanding that social media platforms be held accountable for the false claims they host. Regulations may be effective, but they raise concerns about free speech. Some platforms are now tagging inaccurate information, or even making users click through a warning before they can see it. Is it enough? Is it too much?
Just the Start
Social media is here to stay, and most users would agree that its effects are mostly positive. But we need to ask hard questions about how it should fit into the world of the future. This resolution will allow us to do that.
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