Earlier this month Germany’s Federal Court of Justice granted the parents of a deceased teenager full control of her Facebook account. The basic argument was that social media accounts should be inherited just as books and letters are. The fact that this teenager died in 2012 and the case took several years to resolve underscores the massive and uncertain role social media plays in modern life.
Last week Abu Dhabi Public Prosecution ordered the arrest of three social media influencers after they used social media to post videos of themselves taking part in the “In my feelings challenge”. This is a recent and no doubt short-lived social media craze, which can endanger lives. In the same week, a Kuwaiti social media influencer sparked outrage and embarrassment when she made insensitive Marie Antoinette-eqsue comments about workers’ rights.
These episodes raise a serious question: how should we best prevent social media abuses?
The societal and psychological consequences of social media in the information age are emerging slowly. The consequences of the headline-grabbing examples above are fairly obvious, but other implications might not be as immediately apparent.
For instance, a recent government survey cited social media use as a factor in the UAE’s increasing divorce rate.
Other implications of our information age are also coming to light in the consulting rooms of mental health professionals. For instance, the subject matter of delusions, the false beliefs sometimes held by people experiencing mental health issues, is now increasingly focused on information age themes.
In the past decade, psychiatrists have begun reporting patients with delusions involving things like the belief that their whole life is a staged reality show, secretly being broadcast online to an enthralled public. This condition has been observed frequently enough to have earned a name: the Truman show delusion (after the 1998 hit movie dealing with a similar theme).
The emergence of the Truman show delusion highlights just how much our societies are being shaped by the information age. In medicine, the term “pathoplasticity” refers to symptoms that change their form and content in response to external influences. Delusions are pathoplastic and their content is undoubtedly being remoulded by the information age.
The ubiquity of digital cameras, the popularity of reality shows and the dominance of social media are at least three strands that have converged to radically impact the way we act and interact as a society. The Truman show delusion is not caused by these new technologies, but it reflects just how ingrained these developments have become.
source:-.thenational
