It’s no lie that as youth, we spend a large portion of our time on social media. According to Forbes, the average teenager spends nearly five hours a day scrolling. With this information, it’s no wonder these platforms have such an influence on the opinions of youth. When we spend a fifth of our day scrolling through the internet, it’s obvious that in addition to recieving instant gratification and entertainment, we are also passively absorbing a lot of information.
Social media drives many issues in youth, including body dysmorphia, cyber-bullying, and dangerous challenge trends like “the skull breaker TikTok challenge.” The introduction of cyber-security courses and content filters have addressed most of these issues. However, one of the less obvious influences on youth is the spread of political misinformation, idealogy, and bias.
With increased competition in the media, some creators are filming dramatically politically biased content to gain more views. While it works, it also has a concerning impact on the youth population’s political opinion. Similar to how drawing news from a singular source creates bias, scrolling only to see more of the same political ideals creates an underlying bias in youth. In this way, it directly influences us soon-to-be-voting citizens.
Which begs the questions: who controls the media? And how can we prevent underlying bias?
Instagram’s Solution
With the upcoming American Federal Election in November, Instagram has enrolled all of its users in a filter that limits its algorithm from recommending political content. They have defined “political content” as topics that relate to “governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or a society at large.”
Another key point in this policy is that its users who are eighteen years old or older are permitted to turn off this filter. Those with an account set younger than eighteen cannot change the filter.
This filter doesn’t only impact Instagram – in fact, it affects all of its sibling companies under Meta, including Facebook and Threads.
The Controversy
The newly implemented “Political Content” limitations spawned huge debate recently. Although they sent out a small article in February, many users claim that the policy should have had a much larger forewarning after its introduction a week ago. It angered users who depended on social media for political updates. Some even claim the policy is impeding on freedom of speech.
This is particularly relevant today, as social media has often been used as a place for advocacy and spreading awareness. Human Rights Watch claims that the policy will further impede on the voices of pro-Palestinians in the ongoing war in Gaza right now. They say that it only exacerabates the existing repression against Palestinian expression because of its limits against political awareness.
In stark contrast, many believe the limitation is necessary not only to prevent political bias, but also to sustain Meta as a company. After an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing toward Meta suggesting its spread of misinformation and polarized political content in the last two American Federal Elections, both the company and many of its users argue that the implementation of the policy is long overdue.
TL; DR
Social media plays an increasingly important role in our reception of information, especially as youth. However, sometimes this results in the creation of an underlying political bias, which is a big concern for companies such as Meta during election and major political social issue times. To address this, Meta has created a new policy that will limit the amount of political content that its algorithm suggests to its users.
