Transcriber: Nhung Nguyen Reviewer: Hani Eldalees
Covid-19 is a man-made disease leaked from the research facility in Wuhan.
5G networks started the covid-19 virus through radiological waste spreading.
Drink bleach in order to cure you of the covid-19 virus.
These are just some of the lies that have been spread through social media
during the pandemic.
During the course of the pandemic, I’ve come to realize two things.
The first is why on earth did I have my grandma as a friend
of my social media apps as she is the one that sent me these messages?
But secondly, and more importantly,
I realized how powerful the role of social media is
and the fact that it is an influential entity in its own right,
which is easily able to spread information as rapidly as the virus itself
This is what led me to researching
the role of social media during the pandemic from helpful to harmful,
from facts to fiction and from advocating to alarming.
Throughout this talk I’ll look at the rise of social media
Why we have become addicted?
and what this has meant for us during the pandemic?
Especially as the most recent impact of false news filtering through social media
has been the low uptake of vaccinations in some communities.
Let's start with the questions of what is social media?
Why is it so big?
And what impact does it have on society?
Before people are to use letters, emails,
even texts to send information from one place to another.
Pictures would be difficult to send and videos even harder.
But certainly people were able to send any message, pictures or video
to the whole world
in the blink of an eye.
Although we’re moving on to the more interesting topics,
we have to jump back to in 1997,
when Andrew Wainwright made the first recognizable social media site
Six Degrees.
it enabled users to upload a profile, make friends with other users.
Jump forward a few years to the year 2003, when MySpace,
one of the most popular social media sites to date, was launched.
One year later, the world's biggest social media site to date was launched
and it was known by the name of Facebook.
After this, the list never stopped
as YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram came about.
Some people call the evolution of social media a great blessing.
Others call it a curse.
But in the current climate, the world isn’t just black and white.
There are many advantages and disadvantages of social media.
Firstly, let's get something straight.
Social media has connected people across the world at the touch of a button.
I could be sat in my room.
I know exactly what's happening across the world right now.
Almost half of the world now using social media.
According to an information site known as Oberlo,
there are 3.78 billion social media users in the year 2021
of 5% increase from a year ago.
This shows the year-on-year rise of social media
and how news and information can now spread
to across half of the world instantaneously
without any interruption.
As of March 2020, 21% of the country spent long on social media
than they ever did before.
Hopefully, it was used to spread the guidance around Covid-19
as well as what the impact was around the world.
Although this may seem like one of the world's most advanced
and flawless pieces of technology, there are two words that come to this,
and these words are fake news.
Fake news is one of the world’s strongest viruses today.
People think that fake news is just some harmless fun
and doesn't lead to any real impact.
However, in the first 3 months of 2020
at least 800 people around the world may have died
due to coronavirus-related misinformation.
Also, according to the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene,
around 5,800 people around the world were admitted to hospital
as a result of drinking methanol and alcohol-based cleaning products.
These products were wrongly thought to be a cure for the viruses.
Death spread through social media.
Pain spread through social media,
and darkness spread through social media.
People being lied through the means of social media.
And instead of it helping people,
it’s been used to misinform and wreak havoc.
I’m calling for change.
I’m calling for justice.
Should the tech giants do more to help put an end to misinformation
and filter fake news?
The world is changing.
So why aren’t we?
We need to act now.
If we don’t, we may become prisoners within our own walls.
Thank you for listening.