How social media platforms shape our collective thinking, and how we can turn them from mere consumerism into active spaces for the public sphere, intellectual debate, and political sense-making.
Social media plays an important role in shaping an individual’s thought processes and lifestyle habits within society. Pakistan now has almost 80 million social media consumers. What they consume and experience on social media platforms ultimately reflects in their thinking patterns, lifestyle, intellectual maturity, and political sense.
Social Media as a Social Fact
The father of sociology as a discipline, Émile Durkheim, introduced the concept of “social facts”. Social facts are forces that exist outside an individual’s feelings, thoughts, and actions and palpably shape their life chances and decisions. Social media is also a non-material social fact, and content on its platforms conspicuously affects an individual’s feelings, expectations, and actions in the real world.
In today’s global world, what we consume largely shapes our ideological base, intellectual maturity, and collective consciousness. To the extent and in the ways we use social media platforms, these platforms shape our social, political, and intellectual base. From university classrooms to educational seminars, intellectuals and social researchers often face tragic outcomes: a lack of political sense, intellectual immaturity, and a disconnect from books — all of which are essential to societal evolution and change.
However, one peculiar question remains unaddressed in these discussions: how can the country’s younger generation develop political awareness when a large proportion of them spend their time scrolling through social media reels for entertainment? Instead of using these platforms for fruitful discussions and debates about politics and the country’s precarious situation, the younger generation focuses on making reels and using Instagram.
Capitalism, Rationalisation, and Cultural Hegemony
At the same time, we cannot neglect the tragedy of social media platforms that have been turned into a “trade market”. The main demand of this market is consumerism for profit, and it treats us merely as products. Everything on social media platforms is for the purpose of profit-making: the poetry, the music, the news, and the art. It portrays the most extreme expression of capitalism, which turns our needs, feelings, expressions, and even our freedom into something calculated. It is a situation very close to the concept of “Rationalisation” by the famous sociologist Max Weber. Weber argues that modern capitalist systems operate through efficient and calculated means to maximise profit. In these circumstances, an individual’s inner subjectivity becomes a scapegoat.
Furthermore, in the modern system, social media platforms also serve to maintain the status quo in society. Karl Marx considers this ideological control propagated by the upper class through the media. He argues the ruling class often uses media and religion to maintain the status quo in society. The famous Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of “cultural hegemony”, in which he elaborated how the ruling class uses the media as a weapon to obtain the public’s consent rather than using coercive force. Over time, Gramsci argues that consent becomes the “common sense” of society, where people consider everything right and fair.
Reclaiming the Public Sphere
Therefore, to achieve political sense and intellectual maturity in our society, we have to transform how we use social media platforms. German philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced the concept of the “public sphere”, in which he emphasises the role of discussion, debate, and democratic norms for the evolution of society. We also have to transform our social media platforms into spaces for discussion and debate on books and politics.
At the same time, we cannot neglect the culture of reading in our society. When we give space to a reading culture and a book-friendly environment, it ultimately changes how we think about using social media platforms and how to make them viable spaces for debate and discussion.