BY S.I. RAFFLE
DO I deserve the larger-than-life content in social media? It is not purely entertainment now. People enjoy making content out of real-life incidents. For instance, capturing the gore and bloody scenes of an accident. Doing Facebook live, these people have zoomed in and casually commented on the harshest possible results of a deformed limb of a struggling victim. In traditional news media, the standard would be to blur it because it can create disturbing feelings for a sensitive viewer. In social media, there are literally none. And it’s like everybody is a reporter. I share the terror, humiliation, and rage of loved ones when you see your closest kin in their dying pose shared and viewed as if it were in scenes in a movie.
Why would you still watch it? I don’t care about what people post and share. It is their choice, and it is their device. I have stopped sharing my own personal life and activities on social media since 2021 to protect my mental health. It was too much then because of the pandemic where almost everyone tuned in and unleashed a barrage of content too much to handle. It’s even worse today because you can easily be a digital creator, like a film director or scriptwriter without training of sorts.
I attempt to be active on social media once in a while. It’s just that I need to monitor my business account and my son’s activities using gadgets and look at friends and family and how they are doing. And then you see the posts and reels with captions that captivate your interest. Then you realized it was gore, senseless, and violent acts of mercilessly shooting a person in the head; a man caught on CCTV repeatedly stabbing a person in front of him; and narratives and scenes from a just-concluded beheading of a person.
In addition, cars rammed passersby and rolled over children. And clips of guns-for-hire assassinating targets with you hearing the dying words of victims. It’s like the barbaric acts caught on cam are shared with many subscribers or followers. Then you realized this place is your town and city and you looked at the comment section where discussions were abundant offering condolences and emojis with total disdain for what transpired. People see this as a regular series of telenovelas. And yet, Meta, if you report it takes time to respond. Maybe because the engagement of that post was excellent. Or that I am the only one sensitive.
Yes, I am sensitive. One night, I was traumatized even with my own dream. That scene from a brief glimpse in social media slipped into my subconscious, changing the actors and victims into my own kin. I dreamt about the stabbing, now, it mixed up with my own relatives and friends. It seemed real that I woke up remorseful. I shouldn’t have watched it. How many people after watching those violent acts have slept well?
These are real-life scenarios. I understand it. I also have a choice not to watch it. But in this digital age, there are lures where you can be attracted to certain posts and then they turn out to be bad, really horrible scenarios of real-life events that some people say are unavoidable and need to be shared for awareness. It’s like a movie plot. Criminals are still villains. Police and law enforcement will be seen at the end of the video. Victims are the protagonists either dead, mutilated, ridiculed, harassed, or horrified by what they have encountered.
These are for adults. Rated R or even X if it is properly reviewed. I would shout out to these platforms that censorship should be kept in place in real time. There are minors holding their gadgets. If you have a child watching this on their gadgets, how would you feel? Is it to make him aware of the evils in the world and let his mental health suffer in the long run? You don’t have to let minors see it and unsuspecting adults watch the barbaric state of society. It is what it is. But criminals should pay for their crimes. Not the viewers who pay for the night, sleepless, and reflect on the life they need to protect and the anxiety that comes with it.
There are a lot of bright people on the internet. These digital tools make quiet people speak. There are also opportunistic creators who capitalize on real-time events and seek engagement. I am not a journalist. But I appreciated the wisdom of reviewing, editing, and revising. In social media, especially in live broadcasts, you cannot review the ongoing events or edit the scenes and revise the outcome of the situation. The feeder is responsible for what is going to be the effects to the viewer. And it also goes to Meta, YouTube, and other tech giants. They are the ones who created the platform. Strict guidelines should be maintained and enforced.
There is anarchy in social media. It is impossible to shield our children from the ill-effects of the contents in their platform. They are protected by their own laws and their own rules. Once you enter into their world, you abide by their regulations. But people have their clever ways to bend the rules. They can even monetize content showing their skin. It’s not just the celebrities who enjoy thousands of followers. These are ordinary people with great ideas and strong motivation to monetize content and feeds.
Diminishing censorship in social media increases trauma among simple onlookers young and old alike on their gadgets. Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa expressed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has prioritized profit over the safety of the people on the platform by ending the fact-checking program. It then would allow lies, anger, fear, and hate to infect every single person who uses it. I’m just astounded by gritty individuals who edit interviews and speeches place on erroneous words and add memes, making parodies or photoshopping images of personalities without fear. For me, it stirs the emotion of the masses to engage it. But what I am more concerned about is the lack of action to flag, remove, and ban videos that violate a human person, of decency, of privacy. Creators thought they were doing this to share the truth in their area. Truth can be terrifying and horrific it can affect everyone who sees it. Instead, put it in your group chat but there is no money in there. The digital era has already made a full throttle. It has found means to find excuses and reasons for everything.
Anarchy is defined by the dictionary as a state of disorder due to the absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems. I believe that social media now is an avenue for fiction and novels but acted in real life. Fantasy becomes reality. Lies become truth. People who use the platform become blind followers. Come election time, feeds would be non-stop without knowing if this is true or not. It will be complete chaos.
My realization about the Digital Age is the ability of computers to record our lives in real-time. It is like a digital god looking after us humans 24/7. It does not draw a line between good and bad people as long as you know how to explore the digital world. It accepts the truth as well as the lies. It is not affected by extremes but rather promotes it to increase interest and division among its netizens. It coined languages to soften bashing and criticisms. It institutionalized apps and became the new digital world order. It catapulted faceless Marites as an icon of breaking news and entertainment. It enriched individuals who are not afraid to speak their minds, share their wits and resources, and attempt the dangers of storms, battles, and conflicts to be a strong presence and bankable endorsers.
Pollution can be found in our world, that is a basic fact because of how progressive we are today. And pollutions can be in various forms. It penetrates even the parallel universe of the Earth and the internet. As AI comes closer, the digital age will be replaced. AI will be a booster to what we have now. Unless leaders step up and grasp the future consequences of inaction, people will be accustomed to lies and violence. There should be serious considerations for people’s lives not just profits. How many people should experience night terrors and be frightened and deeply disturbed by unregulated posts? And how many people whose emotions are stirred by baseless and unverified reports should be fooled?
