Social Media: Tool for Manufacturing Ourselves and 'Truth'

What is the real issue with social media? Set aside the fact that entities like Facebook are selling our personal data to the highest bidder. Ignore the practice of the perpetual eavesdropping of these companies in our personal lives. What the real issue is with social media is simple: You can't believe anything you see. You can't trust that others are who they say they are. It is a place of fiction and fantasy, distortion and misinformation. It is a place where truth is whatever users determine or think it to be.

The problem at the rotten heart of social media is best described by Margaret Wheatley in Who Do We Choose to Be? She writes:

"In humans, how we define ourselves determines our perceptions, beliefs, behaviors, values. Social media enables a culture of manufactured identities, where people create any self that ensures their popularity. In the Digital Age, identity has changed from a culturally transmitted sense of self within a group to an individual one, where you can be anything you want." (p. 19)

Any technology that allows one to "manufacture" his or her identity is problematic. While it might be acceptable to "market" oneself, in social media, truth is often the fatality. The worst quality of social media is that it allows individuals to manufacture a version of themselves that is far from who they really are. They can be someone they want to be rather than be authentic.

If there's one lesson educators need to get about social media, and share with students is this: Social media is not simply a communication media. It is a media of distortion and propaganda. It creates manufactured persons. Educators of all people should be wise enough to see this rather than buying into the hype of what this industry would have us believe.

Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In aren't simply tools of networking and connection: they are tools for manufacturing identities.