 My concern is that when you give every idiot an opinion and you give them a platform yeah and people read that and see it as gospel are going to agree with it because they don't see an alternative elsewhere. I grew up with Instagram. It's been like crazy to see the change that that's had. It has had like a negative impact to start with but then now I use Instagram for work and to like use it as like a portfolio. I haven't posted on social media in three years. I feel affected me quite negatively. I became very egotistical. It has quite aggravating consequences on young people's minds so it needs to be regulated. In the wake of a large study on the effects of social media and mental health, social media companies are forced to cap daily usage. This is done in order to encourage a more healthy relationship with social media. Do you agree with the measure? We need to find a way to tame social media before it gets out of hand particularly when we're talking about kids. It's so easy to spend an hour on Instagram and that's an hour you could have I don't know you could have just been reading so I just definitely feel like having a cap is healthy. Social media is not just used by people just scrolling on Instagram it's used for like so many other things like people use it for work people use it for part of their business but I think you just have that freedom to use it as you want. In terms of like kids and stuff parents should have a hold on that because there's so many resources out there to have a certain time that you can have on social media. Parents should but they can't. I was supposed to put my phone like by the stairs at eight o'clock every night I'll just wait for my mom to go bed and get my phone back. Do you get it? That's only so so much. If you stop that stop me from being able to use Instagram in that way like I'm more likely to stagger it throughout my day like it's probably useful to me and my productivity in that way. But don't you think as a grown-up you should be able to restrain yourself from going to social media? I mean of course so so are so many things like I'm addicted to smoking cigarettes it doesn't mean that like when I go to Tesco they're like no you're already bought a pack today. Social media companies are massive I think having regulations isn't necessarily a bad thing for social media companies like when those regulations are beneficial for kids in particular when we sign the contract the terms and the conditions to use their platform they extract our data like how much individual responsibility is there for the content that is viewed by people and how much responsibility lies in the hands of advertisers and social media platforms. We literally have laws that are put in place in order to protect people from harming themselves so I think that that's what the cap is doing is it's trying to prevent that harm from happening i.e. subjecting yourself to social media so much and like causing mental problems. But that's the point it's a very french thing I have to say to me the restriction of freedom because one person makes a bad decision and the rest has to just like then abide by this by this thing which to me makes no sense. Just putting restrictions on time is on how much time we spend is not it's not productive. It's more than just time it's the content that you view. All the social media sites have already started doing that like with Tumblr like some of my friends used to go on there and used to join pro-art and rexie groups and post the pictures themselves like sell harming and that's when they were 15. Tumblr started doing restrictions on that when you type in self-harm in social media sites of learning and all these companies have learned it because this is all new. The cap is us learning how to cope with those training rules. You guys got really overwhelmed a lot of things are going wrong people are killing themselves people are like building faith personalities we want to try and reduce that and see if this is going to help us kind of manage and create a safer space but there's a bad side there's a dark side and we need to find a way to kind of tackle that under the most part I feel like I've cultivated my understanding of self. It's very easy for me to kind of navigate through social media and not let it impact me too much. I don't see where the younger generation have the same mental capacity to be able to navigate through social media in a healthy and productive way. Ultimately your 3d life is becoming something to do while one story uploads and I find this like genuinely really tragic because really what you're trying to do is to show everyone you're living your best life. I think that you do it because you it's a formidable expression not because yeah exactly not because you want to to show people a certain like that you're living your best life but because you want to almost believe that you're living a good life as well like like it's just it's not always about how you look to other people I think it's how you look to yourself. Yeah I think the generation before is actually way more aware of all this stuff because they've had all this access information I think they're way smarter than about this stuff than we actually are. A boy's parent concerned with his use of social media accuses him of being addicted and claims that younger people are becoming increasingly anti-social. The boy argues that his way of socialising and communicating has just changed. Do you agree with the pair? When I was younger I used to go out and play with my friends and like chill with them on the streets but like I feel like now people stay at home kind of rather than going out and chilling with their friends in that way. But I don't think it's amazing that you can be a kid and feel like you're completely like alone and then you can reach out and go on like a forum or a social media group and find people across the world who are interested in the same things that you are. It gives kids and it gave me I think some attention deficit of some sort where I'm not able to focus anymore. I think what's causing this anti-social epidemic is a society that has lost its values on what being social is the least empathetic era ever. I can't think of a time where there's been less empathy between people. You think so? I completely disagree with that. I think that's very easy to like something and to feel in that moment oh I feel sympathetic for this person. I'm going to like the comment but this is these are mirages of real emotions. Would you say the same thing about like if for instance we had that conversation but that was over a phone call? With a phone call you can use inflections you can use tone to portray how it is that you feel but we've actually gone back 3,000 years and we've gone back to hieroglyphics with emojis. I really do see social media as a form of socializing. If we're talking about kids in particular it's almost like the new TV like oh my gosh should you see what happened on Instagram you'll maybe go to school on the bus like oh my gosh should you see this or you tweet it or snap this and when now it creates conversation. The way we socialize is going to change and the way we use to socialize is not going to happen anymore and we're just going to have to adapt this new way of socializing and that's okay it doesn't have to be a bad thing. To be fair yeah I think I agree with that as well in the sense that you're never going to completely be isolated from a society if you use social media unless you only use social media to communicate and that does not exist like no one is ever going to be 100% like detached from society in that way. You always have to interact with people. I guess my views of social media are that ultimately it's a massively beneficial tool for young people in particular as long as you give young people the education on how to use it properly it's a lot easier for them to use it for those benefits rather than those harms. For example we can look at the political sphere of Twitter. Is that not just a bunch of people like exhibiting mob mentality? Is it people that are rushing to conclusions without considering that? How is that any different from politics or from how we engage with this issue now? Because how social media has affected our political discourse is massive. We no longer think in well-developed prepared like open ballot means of debate. It's very simply 140 characters. This is wrong this is bad follow follow follow if you don't follow it then you're ostracized. A prominent journalist criticizes opinion piece journalism claiming that social media has undermined the integrity of reporting and bosters fake news. In response a freelance blogger argues that this is dismantled elitist print media opening debates to new voices. Do you agree that social media is bad for journalistic integrity? Social media is so accessible and it allows for so many people to become like I think it's called system journalism where you can go and you can cover things yourself. Anyone can pick up a phone if they have access to a phone and be able to record things and you can also use it to show evidence for things that maybe like the police are doing and it's just a great tool to be able to show the truth. The creation of like different outlets like Galdam and Afropark like that allows voices to be heard of minorities that previously weren't represented in journalism. If we think about social media it actually gives people so much access to political knowledge right? Not everyone has a TV license to be able to watch the news and understand political debates in that sense but they can watch what's been on the news on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter. I disagree because people don't know what's good for them and people don't know and people don't know enough. No, no, no, please, please, please, please. Just giving access to political knowledge from social media is a way of communicating and socializing people. Back in the day that didn't exist like people didn't talk about politics in that way, like people didn't have those discussions. Like how you basically represented on the political stage in that way, like that's important even if it is just 140 characters. For a lot of reasons it's creating opportunities for people to not only voice but find new ways to monetize their expression as well. Not everybody wants to be in a suit on BBC reading out a script. Some people express that in a form of a podcast or on radio or as a blog or on their Instagram. Even though I strongly disagree with the statement, I think we have to be careful about who we say is a journalist and who we just say is just expressing a monetized opinion. Even when you have like, so you have the whole fake news phenomenon and do it like they spread really quickly right but like even like in the way we consume news nowadays and like if you follow the Guardian or whatever on social like on Facebook, people are just reading titles and then like posting a comment right after they don't even take time to read the article. So like even yeah like the way people are informed is just not yeah it's not good. You said something interesting about who we brand as journalists. I wanted and the definition to the person who writes for newspapers, magazines or news websites or prepares news to be broadcasted and I feel like we're all journalists in that sense. Yeah just like how we're all photographers or how we're all like. But I think it's very idealistic because it doesn't reflect reality again. I genuinely find it hard to believe that most people who use social media are like journalists and photographers who do all these expressive things. No they don't. Most of the people who use social media are sheep that follow particular interests and niches and personalities and gain their opinions and insights from them. My concern is that when you give every idiot an opinion and you give them a platform, yeah they're not necessarily like some sort of gospel ordained authority in any particular field and people who won't know any better who read that and see it as gospel are going to agree with it because they don't see an alternative elsewhere. I don't necessarily think there is one way that we should be thinking. I do believe that more information is better than no information or less information and again it comes back to that access to information that social media allows But then fake news fits into there somewhere as well. So if we can't even spot fake news from the very get-go how do we know that this fake news isn't being conflated with that or opinion? Why isn't necessarily true of opinion pieces and not necessarily true of like let's say the Guardian? I'm not saying that they don't come with a slant because of course they do but when you're your own individual agent on social media you can come at it with whatever bias or slant that you want. It would be great if there was one place we could all go to and read news which would not be biased but there isn't and so you just have to learn how to navigate which which platforms you want to use or which websites you want to use and like if it's even if it's like a Facebook group and whatever you want to do and that's fine because that's your again it's your responsibility to read what you want and take what you can from it. This conversation is kind of heightened my perspective that it's new and we really don't know how to how to use it properly yet. I think it was really great because I think I kind of saw everyone's personality through through those different opinions. It wasn't black and white, it wasn't like social media is bad, social media is good. There's still like some overlap of the other side like some kind of like half agreements and half disagreements. For me it really highlighted how like we're five different people and we consume social media in five different ways. And maybe this will become more clear when we reach the singularity but yeah.