Rewind twenty years to 1996 America. The Dallas Cowboys win the 26th NFL Super Bowl, the first “Got Milk” ad comes out, the series finale of “Saved by the Bell” airs, Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You tops the Number One Hits List, and the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, wins the election for a second term. In this year, phones were just becoming small enough to carry around and becoming more commonplace, the “flat-screen” TV was beginning to appear in households, and the number of computer users was just approaching 75 million (Internet Users).

 With that in mind, think about what society is like today, twenty years later. The rise of Netflix has replaced the tradition of waiting to watch shows weekly on air, Snapchat and Facebook allow for people to share their everyday lives with friends by a click of a button, and one of the world’s largest commerce company, Amazon, operates solely through the Internet, letting people order anything from A to Z online and making trips to the store virtually unnecessary. Today, the number of computer users exceeds 3.5 billion (Internet Users) and the number of people around the globe that use a mobile phone is around 5 billion (Number of Mobile Phone Users). By weighing the difference of two decades, you can see that technology is rapidly changing the world.

Smartphones are a significant part of this technological era. According to a study done by a multinational professional service firm called Deloitte, the average number of times per day that a person checks their phone is 47 (par. 3). Our smartphones today are such a large part of our lives because not only are phones used for voice calls or text messaging, but they service as mobile computers. They give us instant and unlimited access to the Internet. To fully grasp the unfettered access we have via our mobile devices, professor and scholar, Homero Gil de Zuniga, wrote an article about the idea of “Big Data.” de Zuniga explains that as technology improves, the flow of information within technology continues to move faster and faster (4). Basically, our mobile smartphones give us access to a wide variety of information almost instantly; the flow of information today is faster than it has ever been before and continues to improve. We have instant access to things like weather news reports and online newspapers. We also have immediate access to posts made on timelines and newsfeeds all over the world on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. 

These social media sites are characterized by communication. Through these sites, people are constantly updating their profiles, sending out their opinions, beliefs, or day-to-day stories of their lives to the social networking world and receiving the same from others. Social media tools are outlets where people are constantly commenting freely on the world around them. 

One of the most prevalent topics on America’s social stage today is politics. In the past months, the 2016 presidential election ran its course and 45th President of United States, Donald Trump, was elected. Traditionally, during periods of presidential elections, candidates would reach out to the public through advertising and public appearances, the news outlets would have a plethora of stories and articles to run, and American voters would share their opinions and beliefs about the political candidates and their platforms. Yet, now, how they go about these things has considerably changed due to technology. For example, in the election of 1996, Bill Clinton advertised himself through running TV commercials and making speeches across the nation while newspapers and news channels on television ran stories. People responded by changing their vote, maybe throwing money into one campaign or another, and talking amongst friends and family. However, today, because of technology and media sites, political leaders can now create their own Twitter or Facebook accounts and reach the public in a more direct, personal way. People can broadcast their opinions openly, without restriction, and to a significantly wider audience. News outlets can now send out published articles faster through their online sites. Comparing the campaign process of political elections today versus those of twenty years ago shows just how differently we respond to political matters as a result of technology and social media.

However, this faster-moving online information system has its downfalls. As a result of the 2016 political election and the social media commentary it created, the idea of “fake news” has taken hold in our online society. This term refers to the circulation of untrue or false information posing as true news (Fake News and the Spread of Misinformation). “Fake news” has caused confusion and misinformation about current political issues and events among the public. Also, because information moves so quickly due to today’s technology, it is easy for “fake news” to circulate. Thus, social media’s flow of readily available, fast-moving information has negatively impacted society because it allows for social media users, most of America’s population, to receive and distribute false information posed as accurate journalism, and as a result, misguides the public’s view of America’s political issues.  

It is true that social media has many positive implications. There are rightfully made arguments that social media augments free expression and free speech. For example, scholar Ana Cristina Santos makes a claim in one of her articles that social media has led to a greater acceptance of sexual diversity. She says that social media allowed for people of the LGBTQ community to be culturally represented, and in return more widely accepted (157). Also, many people assert that social media is a tool for social change. Professor Noureddine Miladi at the University of Qatar, specialized in media and mass communications, argues that social media gives the underrepresented, such as women and minorities, a voice. Miladi writes that “online spheres of communication mark the emergence of the virtual yet vibrant space of political campaigning and social empowerment, especially for the youth and marginalized communities” (36). Granted, this is true. Social media is an outlet meant for people to communicate their ideas and feelings with one another; it’s a networking tool and can be used for political activism. Looking at these points it can be established that social media can be a positive tool for free expression and for collective activism. 

Additionally, it is important to recognize that social media can have a positive impact on American voters. Researchers have found that there’s a positive correlation between social media posts and voter turnout rates (Bond et al. par. 9). This data shows that posts on social media can promote political mobilization among American voters. Using social media to incentivize people to vote is a very positive way that social media impacts American politics. 

However, it’s important to note that social media posts are not subject to factual accuracy or legitimacy. Where social media does promote free expression, it does not require fact-checking. Social media links millions of people to one another around the globe; roughly, 80 percent of Americans have social media (Percentage of U.S. Population). Thus, social media has the power to influence most of America’s population. Like scholar Santos said, it can influence people to change for the better, like becoming more accepting of sexual diversity, but it can also negatively influence people. This is because sites like Twitter and Facebook have no regulations; untruthful information usually is not identified as unreliable and this influences users who are unknowing and who don’t fact-check. The Pew Research Center conducted a study of 1,002 Americans and found that only 39 percent of them are completely confident that they can distinguish between real and fake news (Barthel et al.). These stats can be used to infer that more than half of Americans can’t completely identify fake news. This study allows for the conclusion that a significant portion of Americans are more than likely misinterpreting false information on the web as true when it is false. 

The spread of information can be helpful by making people more aware of current event or educating people, but what are the implications of accepting false news as true? Being unaware of which information is reliable takes away from using social media as a positive tool. For instance, when social media is used to influence individuals to take a stance on political protests or activism, people may be misguided by the presence of fake news and change their view based on false information. The popular website BuzzFeed analyzed how people reacted to fake stories, such as those that claimed Pope Francis endorsed Trump or that Hilary Clinton was in communication with ISIS, and found that they received more likes, shares, and comments then true stories published by reliable sites. This article also asserts that the public’s attention turned toward fake election news worried many people that it would sway the election (Silverman). Fake news on social media is real and it not only misinforms a considerable percentage of people that are unaware that it’s inaccuracy, it can thus realize into a negative social or political effect.

Another point is that social media is changing how political leaders interact with their constituents. As a result of social media, politicians are no longer constrained to formal advertising such as commercials and ads. Now, they can advertise themselves through posts on social media accounts. However, this has implications. A study conducted by researchers with the Journal of Youth Studies claims that the more direct relationship between political figures and the public creates a case of “informalisation.” They specify that political leaders are becoming more lenient, more lackadaisical with posting accurate information when they’re posting on social media and, in turn this creates misinformation and confusion among the public (Manning et al. 128). Additionally, other journalists have reviewed how presidential candidates have advertised themselves on social media and found that the people no longer respond to a formal and professional personality, but they follow the candidates with the largest character (Carr). The relationship between politicians and the public has relaxed to the point where political leaders are more concerned with creating popularity through big personality that they lose focus on presenting accurate information. Another example of this is when NPR’s Sam Sanders said to host Robert Siegel on a podcast that President Donald Trump succeeded in the election due in part by his ability to “create news” on social media. He says that this helped him make enough “noise” online to gain the necessary amount of popularity with the public in order to win the election (Siegel). Trump’s Twitter strategy, which won him enough American votes to take the position of the nation’s leader, was largely characterized by personality, not professionalism or facts. This not only exemplifies how unregulated social media is allowing politicians and the public to deviate their focus from facts to instead concentrate on being the most popular. This is important to acknowledge because voters during political elections should be swayed by facts not informal commentary. This also demonstrates how social media is becoming a prominent part of society and how it has had a negative impact on the nation’s political environment.

Another detrimental effect of social media is that users are subject to everyone’s thoughts or ideas. Exposure to diverse ideologies can create acceptance of traditionally rejected ideas like that of sexual diversity, as mentioned above. However, in an extreme and important case, unregulated social media has enabled the circulation of malicious ideas. Specifically, terrorists are currently using social media to send out propaganda to recruit members. The FBI released a statement that “ISIL’s extensive reach through the internet and social media is most concerning as the group continues to aggressively employ the latest technology as part of its nefarious strategy” (Grubbs par. 2). Also, there are groups of people in our country that use social media to not only support terrorist groups, but also to rally behind ideologies such as anti-Semitism (Blinder et al.). As a fast-moving and far-reaching outlet for free expression without proper regulation, social media can be used to voice the underrepresented, but can also be a rallying tool for anyone or any group, including those with malevolent intentions.

We must attend to the problems social media has created for the cultural and political realms of this nation, and the world. Fixing this problem is necessary because, since a significant percentage, 80 percent, of America’s citizens use social media, what goes on in the virtual world has a direct relationship with the outside one. For instance, a journalist from Reuters Magazine wrote an article about how Trump’s first news conference as president “set worldwide social media afire” (Fares). This article explains how the world reacted to Trump’s statements by including popular tweets from American citizens, citizens of other countries, and even a former Mexican President. This article is just one example of how what goes on within the newsfeeds and timelines impacts the world around us, and vice versa. That being said, if fake news is disturbing the true information on media sites, it is tinting the views of the American people and it is impacting our political institution.  

I supposed that the first course of action that we take to fix the problem of fake news is to ensure that false news stories are cut out of social media sites. I propose that the government requires social media companies to oversee their timelines and newsfeeds, seek out all fake news stories and posts, and either delete them or visibly label them as false. This will greatly reduce confusion and misinformation among social media users, and thus make finding accurate information easier. Also, Google and other search engines should take the responsibility of actively farming out fake news sites from their result lists. The most effective way to remove false information from public websites is if all online media agents have the responsibility, whether through government legislation or independent action, to delete the inaccurate information that poses as true from their sites.

 The ultimate goal is to fix the problem of fake news stories today with lasting solutions so that in the future, as our technology advances and our virtual world continues to grow and reach more people, we will be able to proceed to interact in an online environment that we can trust. If we take away the negative implications of social media, it then can be used to focus on things like embracing free expression and giving the underrepresented communities of the world a voice. If we fix the problem of “fake news,” social media will be able to be used to continually mold our society for the greater good as we progress deeper and deeper into an increasingly innovative world of technology. 
