How social media platforms shape our collective thinking and how we can turn these platforms from just consumerism to active platforms of the public sphere, intellectual debates and political sense.
Social media plays an important role in shaping the thought process and life habits of an individual in society. Pakistan now has almost 80 million social media consumers. What they consume and experience on social media platforms, it ultimately reflects in their thinking patterns, lifestyle, intellectual maturity and political sense.
The father of sociology as a discipline, Emile Durkheim introduced the concept of “social facts”. Social facts are those forces that exist outside an individual’s feelings, thinking and actions and palpably shape his/ her life chances and decisions of life. 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 through the means we use the social media platforms, these shape our social, political and intellectual base. In the university’s classrooms to any educational seminar, intellectuals and social researchers often find tragic outputs: the lack of political sense, intellectual immaturity and the dilemma of being disconnected from the books, the elements that are essential for societal evolution and change.
However, one peculiar question remains unaddressed in these discussions: how can the young generation of the country acquaint themselves with the political sense while the large proportion of it has been wasting their time on social media platforms in scrolling the reels just for entertainment? Instead of using these platforms for fruitful discussions and debates over the politics and the precarious situation of the country, the young generation only concentrate their thinking patterns on how to make a reel, and how to use Instagram.
At the same time, we can’t neglect the tragedy of social media platforms that have been turned into a “trade market”. The main demand of this market is just consumerism for profit motive and it uses us just as a product of the market. Everything on the social media platforms is for the purpose of profit making: the poetry; the music; the news and the art. It portrays the most exacerbated expression of capitalism which turns our needs, our feelings and expression and even our freedom into just a calculated manner. It’s a situation which is very close to the concept of “Rationalization” by the famous sociologist “Max Weber”. Max Weber argues that modern capitalist systems just run through efficient and calculated ways to earn more 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 to be ideological control propagated by the upper class through social 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 get the public’s consent rather than using coercive force. Over time, Gramsci argues that consent becomes the “common sense” of society. They consider everything right and fair.
Therefore, to achieve political sense and intellectual maturity in our society, we have to transform how we use social media platforms. German philosopher ” Jurgen Habermas”, who recently passed away, introduced the concept of the “public sphere,” in which he emphasises the role of discussion, debates 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 can’t neglect the culture of reading in our society. When we give space to 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.
Sources
DataReportal. (2024). Digital 2024: Pakistan. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-pakistan
Durkheim, Émile. (1895). The Rules of Sociological Method. Free Press.
Gramsci, Antonio. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers.
Habermas, Jürgen. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. MIT Press.
Weber, Max. (1905). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Allen & Unwin.