LO2: Legal and Ethical - Disadvantages of social media use

 Moral panic

Can be used to describe the way in which the mass media create folk devils out of products or groups of people

    - Vaccine rollouts end up in chaos as people panic that the government were putting chips in their vaccine

    - Donald Trump claims China created Covid-19 in a lab

Fake news

 The way in which unauthorised or untrue news sources are spread virally using social media.

Trolling/Cyberbullying

The way in which celebrities/individuals are targeted online in a negative way.

Negative Body Image/Unrealistic expectations

The way in which social media and online technologies can be used to promote false lifestyles, which can be damaging to mental health of teenagers.

Here is an article that describes how social media can create false representation and negative body images, which causes declining mental health in teenagers:

How Can Social Media Affect Body Image? | SWGfL

Negative publicity for brands or companies

Viral memes, parodies, sarcasm are all problems for large brands

Youtube Rewind 2018 Is More About Image And Less About Community (forbes.com)

Cultural Impacts-Proliferation of social media

Cultural imperialisation and promotion/obsession with celebrity culture and commodities.

The growth and uses of social media. More channels means people are using these channels more, which can cause teenagers to become addicted to their phones. 

Here is an article that describes how obsession with celebrities can cause lower cognitive funtion:

People who are obsessed with celebrities tend to score lower on measures of cognitive ability (psypost.org)

What media regulators might link to the monitoring and production of online content?

PEGI- Games

Ofcom- TV/Radio

IPSO- Articles, magazines, newspapers

ASA- Advertising