In this Article we will know that when social media started, why social media is bad for mental health, how social media affects relationships, how social media affects society, will social media die, can social media cause depression, will social media continue to grow, why social media is bad for teens,
We use social media like Facebook etc. We don't have to pay a single rupee for this. But the owners of these social networking sites They invest billions of dollars to maintain data centers so that we can upload photos and videos. If we talk about Facebook, they have 18 data centers which cost more than $20 billion. Similarly, every social media site has to invest billions of dollars. Then a networking site can run. So in today's day and age, where people are selling by selling, why are these people giving all the things for free? Now you can say that our data is used to make money. And some people also believe that if they take our data, then we have no secret. If you take one or two email ID names, then we have nothing to hide.
So see, it's not that simple. Today you will get to know in detail that how you are thinking. you will see the same ad. Why does the BMW ad only go to those who can afford it? Why doesn't it go to the poor? And what does this data mean to the political parties? Why are they behind this data? Let's discuss all these things. In today's date, if I tell you what is the most expensive thing, then one of its answers will be attention. If you bring people's attention in any way, then you will have money. There are so many sports in India, but cricket gets attention. Because cricket is seen the most, so cricket has more money. Cricket also gets the most attention from India-Pakistan matches, so the most money comes from India-Pakistan matches in all matches.
Whether it is a movie or a product, Which actor will get more money? It all depends on who has more attention. If you have a way to attract people's attention, then you can also be successful. Because the products that are made all over the world, whether they are good or bad, the owners of the company do not go home and show that product. Rather, they show that product where people's attention is. And the same people get to know about that product. If there is more crowd in one metro station and less crowd in the other metro station, then the metro station with more people will have to pay more money to show ads there. There are many ways to make this attention game more and more on its own.
But since technology has been upgraded and social media has come, they have upgraded this game a lot. Today, you will see that the list of the richest people in the world is full of tech billionaires. YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, all social media platforms earn in billions. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Larry Page, TikTok's Zhang Yiming, all these tech billionaires are the most powerful people in today's world. So basically, what did they do? Through their app, they gave free social networking, free entertainment, and took people's data. And then with the help of that data, they controlled people's attention and ran targeted advertisements. In 2023, the overall market size of social media is going to be $231 billion. Many countries don't have that much GDP.
See, whenever you make an account on a social networking site, There is a deal between you and that social networking site and that deal is that you will give your data to the social media site and in return, the social media site will give you its networking and entertainment. When you make an account, the small click you make on terms and conditions is like signing a legal agreement, which deals with this. This way, the social networking sites collect the data of people from all over the world They make patterns from that data and observe your habits. They go to advertisers and give them a platform to sell their product. You can understand it like this. You made your own social networking site and gave it for free to the whole of Delhi.
People are using it and connecting with each other in Delhi. They are liking it and commenting on it. And you are collecting data from everything. And before making an account, you had clicked that I can use your data. By doing this, the data of the people of Delhi came to you. Now you have picked up that data and with the help of data science and attention engineers, you come to know that the people of the CP area in Delhi are drinking a lot of coffee. And they are drinking at a specific time. So what did you do? You went to a very big coffee company. You asked that company, what are you giving ads in TV, in newspapers, you are putting banners here and there.
You give me these ads and I will only show your ads to those people who are addicted to coffee. I know all their habits, I have data. And this will cause a lot of conversion, which is the traditional way of your advertisement. And anyway, the ad given in a newspaper opens once or twice a day and the rest of the time the newspaper is lying in some corner. But a mobile is the closest to a person. If you enter someone's mobile, then what can be more personal than this? So this is how a basic model was made, which is an upgraded version of advertisement. Now, you may also have a question that when we made a Facebook account, we just gave the name, age, and email.
It was too much, we gave a mobile number for two-factor authentication. So, how do these sites know so much about us? Look, when you make an account, you give your basic details, but what are you liking? On which post are you commenting? How long are you active? On which day are you not using it? On which location are you using it? The image you post on social media, from its exit data, your GPS coordinates are known. which camera you took the photo from, file size, date, everything is known. You should also try it. Check your image's online exit data. Then you will know how many details are there in one picture. And all these details are saved on social networking sites. Like, Like, comment and share buttons are like a tracker that continuously give your information to social media sites.
If you don't like and share your data to social networking sites, then you are of no use to them. In that case, these social networking sites will not allow you to use their platform. In 2018, the CEO of Facebook said in an interview that if a user says that don't use our data, don't give it to advertisers, then in that case, they will have to pay to use this platform. What used to happen is that when you used to log in to a website, you had to enter the details again and again. Meaning that once you enter the details and log in to the website, then you will open the site again, then you will have to log in all the details. Every time you went to a website, the website treated you like a unique user.
The website didn't have its own memory, so it couldn't find out whether the person who was using the website had used it before or not. Then a man named Montuli brought cookies. Today, when you go to a website, he asks you to accept cookies. He takes permission from you. As soon as you accept it, the website saves your details in the browser. These cookies act as a memory of the website. Suppose you went to the Times of India website, You have accepted the cookies here. All your details will be saved here. When you go to the website again, the website will remember your details. Your data has been saved on this website, whatever details you have added. Suppose you go to a shopping website, you have to fill the details of your debit card and credit card.
That website will remember those details. There is also a third-party cookies in which these websites communicate with each other. Sometimes you go to a website and see that there is a Facebook like button. And when you like, it will come on their Facebook. So they are third party cookies. So in this way, they stay connected to each other and share the information with each other. So with the help of these cookies, the information that you give on different websites, they track everything. The website on which more people will go, there is more attention, more data and more money. That's why websites try you in different ways and call you on their website. They ask you to become a user so that they have more and more details.
The more users there will be, the more data and the more money there will be. And when the users come to the website, they don't go directly to the advertisers and show ads. In fact, between the advertisers and the website, Google AdSense, Facebook Audience Network, Microsoft Advertising, Amazon Advertising are different. They have the same job. They are middlemen. between website and advertiser. Their job is to put relevant ads on the website and show it to the users of the website. And they do all these things through third-party cookies. See, I have opened the Times of India website. The ad that is coming on the side, if I go to the shoe website after this and continue to search, then the next time I come to the Times of India website, there can be an ad related to shoes.
So, this way, all these websites are interconnected through third-party cookies. Now, you can also say that we are only showing ads, we will not buy from them, we will buy them outside. You understand this whole thing by deciding with your mom and dad at home that we are buying shoes for school. And before your house leaves, the whole market should know that these three will come to the market and buy shoes. And the shopkeeper who will pay more money and show ads through middleman, his shoes will be shown. This is the reason that in today's date, this data, people's data is more valuable than the oil of the Middle East. In 2017, in The Economist, a report was published in which data was considered more valuable than oil.
Now, because this data is valuable, hackers also attack different sites and steal data to do identity fraud. For example, you made a profile on Ola, Uber, etc. and hackers attack their server and steal your data. And after stealing it, these hackers either sell that data or do identity fraud. For example, in 2021, the data of 4.5 million customers of Air India hackers stole it. They were maintaining data there for years, made user accounts, hackers came and stole all the data. In the same way, in 2020, 20 million customers of Big Basket's data was stolen and it was sold on the dark web. And there is a high possibility that your email id or card details have been attacked at some point. So you check it once, there is a website, haveibeenpwn.com.
So you put your email id on it and check whether your email id has been compromised or not. And this is not a small thing because by collecting this data, Fishing attacks are also done in different ways. With the help of the collected data, your behavior and your next actions can be controlled. And this is improving day by day. With the help of this data, who are you dating? Who has what job offer? Who has what insurance? Who can pay? Who cannot pay? Who can click on which advertisement? Who supports which political party? What is religious opinion? Who can vote? All these things can be found out. Let me explain to you what I want to say. There was a girl in Paris, Judah.
So, Judah used Tinder after his breakup. And when she was using it, there was some dissatisfaction about the rating of her profile. So, she sent a lot of emails to Tinder. Continuously sent emails for 6 months. That you send my data, I have to check whether you are doing it right or not. The data production law in Europe is a bit strict. So, you can do this if you want. So, after continuous follow-up, after sending emails, Tinder sent 800 pages of data. Just after using Tinder for a few days, Tinder collected 800 pages of data. Judah was very surprised to see that data. Because what Judah didn't know about himself, more than that, Tinder knew about him. From that data, it was found that Tinder knew how many times she was feeling lonely in the week, what kind of boys she liked, at what time she could be more attracted to boys, how many messages she sent to which boys, what music paste she made for New Year alone, location, likes and dislikes, each of their details were with Tinder.
Now think about it, if you get so many details of someone, then how easy it would be for you to manipulate them, It would be so easy to have a political opinion or to click on an advertisement. Even the social media companies have been asked multiple times that these people who are on your mobile, who you talk to your friends, can hear your voice through the device. Although this was not proved, but there is an inquiry on this as well. Mark Zuckerberg's YouTube channel on CNBC, we don't use mobile devices by using a microphone, there is an entire inquiry. You must watch that video. Actually, what was happening with people was that whoever was talking to his friend on the phone, the next day or two days later,
they were getting products related to that. Although this was not proved, but the social media company has made their data game very strong. If the wife is searching for the washing machine in a house, then the earning person in the house, if he is the husband, then he will be recommended the washing machine ad if he is in the same Wi-Fi. Browser history, search history, social media activity, location, demographic data, with all these details, very easily your behavior, which content you are watching, What kind of product are you searching for? Everything can be found out. And according to that, you are shown targeted advertisement. And your psychological profile is also updated. That first you liked this and today you like this. And I am taking the name of Facebook again and again because Facebook is famous.
Rest whenever I am talking, I am talking about all the platforms. All the social media platforms. Before making an account on social media, once when you They say yes to the terms and conditions. After that, they become eligible to take your data. That's why you see that terms and conditions are made in a very boring way. Legal terms are used a lot in it, which requires a lawyer to actually understand it. That means a common man cannot read it. Their platforms are very simple to use so that you stick to it. But terms and conditions are such that it takes hours to understand a person. That's why people say yes without studying. These terms and conditions are made intentionally in more than 20,000 words and in a long format.
The format of this is also made intentionally boring. It is shown like a property agreement or a court document so that one does not feel like studying. In 2017, Professor Jonathan and Annie of New York University made a fake website named NameDrop for the experiment. In this, they joined 543 students and made terms and conditions in the same format as a social media company. made it and integrated it in this app. And the terms and conditions they made, one thing they did in paragraph 2.3.2, they put one thing that whoever will say yes to this term and condition, the first child will be the owner of the legally namedrop. They did this because they had to check how many people would say yes.
Leaving out 1 fourth students, all the other people, They all said yes to terms and conditions. There have been multiple discussions regarding terms and conditions. Facebook has said multiple times that we will make strict rules so that the user's data is safe. It means that Facebook will not misuse our data. Facebook will make strict rules regarding this. This means that the fight for data is going on. Every user is alone in this. There is no support from the government in this. You must have seen that nowadays many people post on Facebook that I do not allow Facebook to use my data. They post all this. Nothing will happen because in terms and conditions, Data has already been allowed. In 2013, there was a documentary called Terms and Conditions May Apply.
You can watch it. It shows how social media companies misuse your data by leaking it. How they sell it. There is a lot of competition in social media companies regarding attention and data. The platform with the most users will have more activity. and more attention. And more data will be collected, which means more profit. And after collecting more data, they make a pattern with that data so that they can guess more accurately what will be the next step of the user. That's why all these social media companies have only one aim, for which they work day and night, that no matter how you stick to their app. The owner of Netflix once said that Facebook, Google, our competition is there, but the market is very big.
Our real competition is a person's sleep. Because this is the time when no LCO works on the user. And if you look carefully, every social media company is hiring the best minds and strategists of the world and making them stick to their apps. And they have been successful to a large extent. The time you used to go to meet your friends and have fun, you give that time to mobile phones today. You used to go out to play on the ground. That time goes to them. Even for a minute, if there is a line and you have to wait there, then everyone's mobile goes out immediately. In fact, even if there is an ad in the movie hall, the mobile goes out in the middle of it.
That time also goes to them. Sitting in the washroom, what you used to think earlier, in today's date, that time has also gone to them. People don't go to the washroom without a mobile. Husband and wife who used to sit together, in today's date, they stick to their mobile. So that time also goes to them. You have also heard that there is a fight in the partners that they just stick to the mobile. Some people even get angry with their boss because their employees are stuck in their mobile phones. Meaning, by betting on daily bread, people are after what is going to happen in the next reel. And there can be no bigger addiction than this. They don't have the break of the whole day that you sleep.
For the rest of the things, they have put your time and attention on these apps by making the world's best attention engineer. You will not let anyone realize that you will open your mobile for just one notification and you will not know when you will reach the reel. You will go to search educational videos on YouTube, you will go to watch a video of your work, when will you reach the shots, you will not know. If you understand this carefully, then some selected attention engineers or big minds or owners of big companies are sitting in Silicon Valley of California and deciding where the attention and interest of billions of people in the world will be. A person's attention, i.e. where there is attention, his memories are made from there.
If someone else has the control over attention, then where will our life be? Just like capitalism left the weekend to live, when you get old, at least your memory will not be with you. These are the trends of Twitter, Reels, these are the memories. It would have been fine if it was just about selling the product by showing ads. But with this data, your social and political behavior is also controlled. By using technology like big data and data mining, large amounts of data, that is, the behavior of the entire population, and the pattern is understood. Then they are shown targeted content, such content that will fulfill the interests of these social media companies. What used to happen a few years ago is that the friend you used to add to your profile, the creator you used to follow or subscribe to, you were shown only his content.
But in today's date, you will see that even if you have followed anyone, but this social media platform recommends content to you. You watch good content, your growth is better than that, This is not important for a social media company. For them, it is important that you just stay on their app. That's why by analyzing your data, you are provided with the content in which you stay the most. The content is designed like a casino slot machine. There is a surprise for you on each scroll. In the hope that you will get something new next time, a person spends 4-5 hours on these apps. The notification is deliberately kept in red color. If you keep it in blue color, it will not look that tempting.
That's why if you keep your mobile close to you and one notification comes, Once you open the mobile, the engineers will take you to the reels. If you spend 2-3 hours on reels, it releases so much high dopamine that it becomes very difficult to focus on the rest of the work. Those who read books or those who are students, you will notice that it is very difficult to focus immediately on reels. In content, you are mostly recommended the things in which you believe. If you are of the right wing, then in most cases, you will be suggested the content of the right wing. And if you are of the left wing, then in most cases, you will be suggested the content of the left wing.
And because in such cases, information is received from the same side, so this makes people's opinion stronger. They start believing that what they are thinking is right. For someone, BJP is a threat to the country. For someone, Congress is a threat to the country. There is no way in between. Because information users are getting that only. that they want to hear. And when there is a neutral platform with their own information, when all these users meet there, there is a very strong reaction, there is a fight. And this kind of polarization suits social media companies. If you see, no one comes to watch Facebook's outrageous political content. People come to connect with their friends, for entertainment, or to learn something. But if this is given to the users,
they will leave the platform soon. That's why social media companies don't keep your feed calm and composed. Instead, they keep a fast-paced and outrageous feed. Because fake news is interesting. Conspiracy theory is interesting. But the truth, the learning is boring. The whole data you have with social media companies, political parties are also very much interested in this data. And by buying this data, they are manipulating your decision. And why am I saying this? Let me explain an example. In March 2018, The Guardian and The New York Times published a report in which it was found that Facebook has given the data of its 50 million users to a company called Cambridge Analytic. Now Cambridge Analytic was hired by Donald Trump. And with the help of this data, Cambridge made the psychological profile of all the users.
And because of this, it was found that how many people support Donald Trump and how many users are there who will support Donald Trump if he is pushed a little bit. And when all this data was made, after that, the content of Donald Trump on a daily basis. These users were shown in the morning and evening. And because of this, 87 million people became pro-Trump. There was 50 million data, but with the help of this data, your friends who are connected, their data was also fetched. That's why more people converted. But when this news came out, then after this, Mark Zuckerberg's U.S. House of Representatives Financial Service Committee starts the hearing. This whole hearing is on YouTube. You can watch it once. So for this thing, in 2022, $725 million on Facebook
And after that, Facebook took out a full-page advertisement in the UK and US newspapers and apologized to their users on the front page. In the same way, the Ireland Data Protection Commission had filed a fine of 1.2 billion euros for this data. Russia had manipulated 126 million people in the US by showing content in the 2016 election. There have been such allegations in India too, but you can search and see, because if they are not proven, then it will not be right to say. And on social media companies, there are not only allegations of selling data to politicians, but also allegations of riots. Amnesty International, an international NGO, published a report which said that due to Facebook riots in Myanmar increased. Actually, Facebook's algo promotes engagement posts and videos.
It doesn't mean that it will have an impact on society. It means engagement and profit. So what happened in Myanmar? At that time, anti-Rohingya posts were going on Facebook. And they were going viral. And Facebook's algorithm was promoting it a lot. Because of these posts, there were a lot of riots and people were killed. There is an allegation on Facebook that when Facebook knew that riots were happening because of their posts, then instead of stopping those contents, why were they promoted more? A whistleblower, Francis, who was an employee of Facebook, leaked 10,000 internal documents. Then it was found that Facebook already knew about all this. But even after that, they were promoting him. A member of the Rohingya community gave an official statement that just like the rest of the people in the world, we also had a dream of living but Facebook broke our dream.
The design of the social media companies is such that where there will be more engagement, meaning more likes, comments, shares, they will promote him more. And this engagement is the most on extreme and explosive content. Now, if I tweet that Rohit Sharma is a very good player, I like him a lot. And if I tweet that Rohit Sharma He is the greatest player so far. No one has come like him and no one will come. And whoever doesn't believe in this thing is a fool. Now you tell me, on which post will there be more reactions, more engagement, where will there be more attention? That's why you will see that those who make far right content or far left content, they grow fast.
And it's not that one or two safes are bad, due to which this whole basket is getting spoiled. Rather, this whole system and this algo is designed in such a way that a bad safe is given a reward. That's why people who talk hatred and one-sidedness will soon appear in the limelight. Melissa Rayan was an election strategist who studied election strategies. She said that the ugly content works more. And this whole algorithm that works according to user activity, if a politician or a powerful person wants this algorithm, then it can be manipulated very easily to run computational propaganda. That means it can make the news of its favor viral, so that the party benefits. And bots are mainly useful in this. You must have seen that computer chats on many websites start replying on their own.
If you say hi, how are you, the reply will come automatically. So they are bots, not humans. So by doing this, lakhs and crores of bots accounts are created. And then it becomes very easy to run your propaganda with those bots accounts. Suppose you like cake a lot. It came to your mind that I will like all the posts of all the cake accounts. Now for this, you will have to search first. Where is the cake account? Then you have to see their posts from there, then you have to go and like it. But instead of this, you make an account, add some automated script to it, then it will search all the accounts itself and do the like, share, message. And this is called a bot.
So with the help of these bots, if you want to spread something about a political party, you have to tell about a party that it is from China, then multiple messages can be made using these bots accounts. trend can be run, comments can be made, which creates an atmosphere. Suppose a country has to get out of an environment deal due to some compulsion, then you can create an atmosphere on social media by putting great sigma music on paid meme pages and bot accounts. See, these countries themselves have installed so many ACs for so many years and now they are teaching us. So by using all these things, the opinion of people of any country can be changed. When they are going to go to war, if they want to show the right policy, then all these things are used.
And this trend is getting more and more dangerous day by day. If you notice, earlier it was about manifesto and policies. But in today's day and age, which leader is more popular, which leader are people paying attention to, that is very important. And some countries are using these social media sites as a tool to follow other countries. You must have heard the name of ByteDance, which is a Chinese company, which is the owner of TikTok. The version of TikTok in China is very different from that of the US. In India, it has been banned, so let me give you an example of the US. In China, if someone uses TikTok less than 14 years, they get science experiments, about the country, culture, and educational videos.
Even the limit is set to 40 minutes per day. But the same TikTok is shown in different content in the US. And such videos are shown there that people don't get to learn, they become dumb. And how big is the impact of this? Let me explain with an example of a survey. There was a survey in the US, which was also published in CNBC. The maximum number of children in the US wanted to become Influencers. In China, when the same survey took place, the children there wanted to become Astronauts. I have not made this artical to scare you or to leave social media. I have made this artical so that awareness can increase. So that you can know what is happening and next time when the data protection bill comes in the parliament, you will know how important this bill is.
That is why I have made this artical. Showing ads is a very bad thing. Social media is wrong. Because of social media, there are so many benefits. If I start counting, it will be night. There are so many benefits. People are connected. You can contact 500 people in an emergency. There are many benefits. In fact, the content that you are watching, ads are running on it. That's why you can watch it for free. Otherwise, you would have to pay. And because of this, so many poor people benefited. So many people have learned coding for free. They have done their life well. But how can it actually work? And how can the negative side of it can be harmful, I just tried to discuss that.
And I also tried to keep the solution of the artical in front of you. I tried to find a lot, I tried to talk to experts, but the truth is that there is no perfect solution to avoid this. You delete the app, you leave the mobile, there are bank apps, transactions, offline shopping, you are so interconnected that your data will reach here and there. So for now, the only solution is that our government brings such good data production laws that all these things come under control. Thank you.
