Trusting Social Media

Social media is powerful and has changed how people everywhere get their news. It allows every person with a profile to directly engage in discussion giving them a voice and an opportunity to be heard. 

In Canada, this privilege is engrained in the very first segments of the Fundamental Freedoms of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms where its states: "Canadians have the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication."

Facebook, perhaps the most famous social media platform, was launched in February 2004 and after almost 20 years, has close to 3 billion users worldwide. Twitter was launched in 2006 and is one of the most powerful social media platforms around the globe with over 200 million users worldwide. It isn’t uncommon for people to open Twitter or Facebook for their news. They are immediate, searchable, there when you want it, delivered in bite-sized chunks and satisfy society’s unending hunger for information. 

In recent years, though, social media has also become a battleground. As society turns to social networks for its news, it has become challenging to know what is real and what isn’t. Never before in human history has information been so plentiful and so readily available, yet so increasingly difficult to trust.

So what can we do about it?

The first thing everyone can do is to trust your common sense. As the saying goes, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” So trust your senses. If the storyline seems a bit dodgy, you’re probably right.

Secondly, don’t be shy to steer the conversation in the right direction. There’s a lot of misinformation out there and some of it is intentionally misleading. There’s some great online resources for information, too. Wikipedia is a good choice and so is Snopes.com. When you correct someone on social media, and back it up with a link, you’ll get more “thank yous” and likes than scorn. 

Third, and perhaps the best thing we can do about social media is know when to turn it off. Humankind is curious by nature and sponges for information — it’s what got us to where we are today — so there’s no denying social media’s draw. But these days, there’s just so much of it. We could literally spend our entire days and nights browsing one post after another. There’s a world out there, and fresh air, sunshine and real live people who will be happy to greet you with a smile.

Mike Sullivan, President – Utility Safety Partners