Introduction

One of the things that makes us human is collective learning—our ability to share knowledge and pass it down across generations. The networks of knowledge we have built have expanded across human history. They have moved at varying speeds and not without a few backward steps. In 1969, the size and speed of these networks took a giant leap. Researchers connected a few universities in a digital network called ARPANET. It was the precursor of the Internet. At first available only to a few scientists, the World Wide Web now connects more than half the world’s population. Once requiring complex code, today the Internet’s search engines and social networking applications allow anyone with a smartphone or other computing device to log on. But is this widespread connectivity good or bad? And since it’s half the world population and not all, what happens to the people who are left offline?

“You” on social media

Your phone alarm wakes you. You check your Instagram. How many likes did you get while you were sleeping? How many people looked at your post? Did anyone message you? Next, you check your Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, iMessage, Whatsapp, Twitter, and whatever new social network everyone just started using.

You’re not alone, even if no one else is in the room with you. All across the globe millions of people are doing the exact same thing. They are checking out the latest cute cat video, funny meme, makeup tutorial, or political rant.

Social networks as we know them today have been around for less than twenty years. For many people, though, it’s hard to remember a world when they didn’t exist.

Social media: connecting people around the world

No question, social media and the Internet have an incredible power to connect people around the world. Take music, for example. In 2012, the song “Gangnam Style” by the Korean Rapper, Psy, went viral. Its catchy chorus and amusing horse-riding dancing got people across the globe to sing and dance along. “Gangnam Style” became the first video to reach one billion views on YouTube. Internet-based applications like YouTube have caused our musical tastes to become increasingly synchronized worldwide. In 2018, the magazine The Pudding produced an interactive map called “Empire Records.” It analyzed the top YouTube songs in 3000 locations. The map revealed that much of the world was listening to the same exact song.

Technology has also allowed musicians on opposite sides of the globe to collaborate. Some share and remix styles from their traditional cultures. In 2014 the French-Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux released her song “Somos Sur,” (“We are the South”). It also featured British-Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour. The collaboration connected beats, dance moves, and resistance movements in the countries of the global south.

Social media also allows us to connect in geographically scattered “virtual” communities. Facebook has been the most dominant example. Launched in 2004, Facebook is even more popular than YouTube. People commonly post “selfies” showing themselves in their best moments. (The word selfie didn’t even exist before Facebook.) Concerts and parties can be organized using Facebook Events. Companies promote their products, and some teachers assign homework via Facebook groups. Families whose members have scattered across the globe video chat via Facebook Messenger.

Social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram keep us connected to each other visually. They allow millions of users to post images, videos, and stories. Friends and strangers around the globe can glimpse the daily lives of all users who have public profiles. They respond to each other with direct messages. They post emoticons expressing approval or disapproval. Online dating apps even have changed how we flirt. In many parts of the world, they have largely replaced traditional ways of meeting possible partners.

Organizing through social media

These new networks based on social media are examples of collective learning in the modern age. Hashtags allow users to view posts of people with similar interests: skateboarding, cats, movies, you name it. Apps also have been used for political organizing. In what became known as the Arab Spring in 2010, opposition movements grew in the Middle East. Their protestors coordinated their actions over Twitter and Facebook. During uprisings like those in Hong Kong in 2019, protestors publicized their actions using Instagram and Snapchat.

Within the United State, Twitter has been an essential tool for building social movements. Activists use hashtags (#) to mobilize people around a cause. In 2013, an African-American teenager named Trayvon Martin was killed. The man who killed him was found not guilty in a trial. In response, a group of community organizers in Florida launched the hashtag BlackLivesMatter. It quickly became a movement, well beyond the Internet. It united people who wanted to fight the systemic racism that continues to harm black people. Another example is the MeToo movement that focused on helping survivors of sexual violence. Twitter has allowed people previously ignored by mass media to share their stories with the world and have a voice in politics.

Social media clearly has a dark side

However, these benefits of social media are not available to all, a result of the “digital divide.” In short, this split is between those who have a technology and those who can’t afford it. Almost half the world’s population doesn’t have internet access. Among those who do, some people—mostly those living in wealthy countries—get better service and have a greater ability to post and consume material.

Social media also can be used to divide us with messages of hatred and discrimination. Here’s just one example: In Sri Lanka in 2018, tensions between two ethnic groups—Muslims and Sinhalese Buddhists—grew much worse. Messages calling for the murder of Muslim people started circulating on Facebook. In the following weeks people were burned and beaten to death. Investigations revealed that violent messages shared online most certainly played a role.

In politics, social media can be used to repress as well as liberate. Yes, people use social media apps to organize against authoritarian governments. However, those governments can utilize those same apps to confuse or crush protests. In 2018, investigations revealed that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had secretly harvested data from 87 million Facebook users. It had used that information to influence elections. These “social” campaigns were cleverly crafted. They aimed disruptive messages, many of them misleading, at people who were likely to believe them. Today, a great deal of false information is available via social media. Much of it has been created with the purpose to turn us against each other.

A world together, or worlds apart?

Social media divides us in other ways as well. Social networks increasingly bring people’s private lives into public view. Selfies have become an important form of expression for young people. However, they can affect teenagers’ self-esteem based on how many likes their photos get. Kyla Fox, a clinical therapist who analyzes selfie culture, put it like this: “If you put out an artificial sense of yourself, that makes it really challenging when you go out into the world and you have to be you—just you.”

Beyond self-esteem, social networks can make us lonelier. Some users retreat into their phones and rely on apps for social interactions. Less and less, they meet friends “irl.”¹ One consequence may be less contact and increasingly polarized views of each other. What is the future of collective learning? Maybe you will play a role in answering that question.

1 In social media, irl means “in real life.” If you needed a footnote to tell you that, then you have not given up real life connections for social media, so that’s gr8.