Social media (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, X, etc) are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. It is a great way to keep in contact with friends and loved ones all around the world and keep up to date with the news. Also, you can promote your business and raise awareness on important issues. That is what they were created for; however, they are now being used as a tool for creating problems in society and they are becoming very dangerous.
For example, hundreds of teenagers gathered outside JD Sports on the capital’s busiest shopping street in an apparent response to widely shared posts on Snapchat (probably the AI’s fault) and TikTok urging users to take part in an “Oxford Circus JD robbery”—the book stores will be left unscathed. Police had to rush to the street and lock people inside the stores for several minutes, before it broke out into a brawl. Take a look at the following videos:
A group of youths clash with the police.
The crowds gathered in numbers.
Absurd and childish behaviour is in evidence. But, if young people can meet up in broad daylight to commit criminal acts, this shows how little they fear the law in our capital city. Thankfully, though, police have arrested nine people and issued dozens of dispersal orders and Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has instructed the police to ‘hunt them down and lock up’ these ‘violent thugs' (good luck with that). We all know that won’t happen and the only outcome for those who have been arrested will be a slap on the wrist and they will be let out to do the same thing and inflict more mayhem.
This is not the only time teenagers have used social media to arrange these ‘meetups’. In March, pupils across the UK hit schools by surprise when they decided to protest against the rules about uniform policy and toilet restrictions. They gathered in hallways, marched around the building, kicked the fences down, threw chairs, flipped tables and some just rioted. These protests were being organised on TikTok and Snapchat, whereby pupils at one school would show what they have been doing and then other pupils in different schools would do the same thing and use Snapchat to create group chats. I was added to one of these, but it never happened at my school.
Social media is also not good for teenagers' mental health, and it seems that it is dominating their lives and disrupting their learning. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey of nearly 750 13- to 17-year-olds found that 45% are online almost constantly and 97% use a social media platform, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. Further studies have found a strong link between heavy social media use and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Social media may promote negative experiences such as inadequacy about your life or appearance. Also, for every 100 minutes per day that a student spends using their phone can lead to the student dropping 6.3 places in terms of their academic school ranking. This effect was doubled when the students used their phone whilst in class.
Greater efforts should be made to make these platforms a safe place for younger people to be. Thirteen is perhaps too young, and ID could be demanded when logging in. No system is failsafe but currently, people can just give a fake age, which is exactly what I did when I first set up my Twitter account.
When it comes to organising riots and mass lootings of sportswear shops, it cannot be too hard to identify the owners of the accounts which set these incidents up. Once identified, they should be caught, punished and banned from using social media. It would improve their mental health, performance at school and also keep them out of trouble. I have no idea how that would work technically. Perhaps we could ask the Chinese.
It seems I can post! So I would like to take issue with makeup of the crowd and suggest we look at this from a DEI point of view. We need a lot more D in these riots to satisfy the I. In the meantime perhaps free baseball bats to achieve E with the police or perhaps a better mechanism to achieve the E? Get the police to beat up and arrest everyone attending.
PS I was disappointed to note that there was NO 'Taking the knee' before the action began.
Hmm, can I post here?