Social Media Explainer

The pitfalls of social media and what to watch out for

Social media consists of digital platforms or apps that allow people to create, share, and interact with content that can be produced as text, images, and videos.
These facilitate communication and connections between individuals, groups, or organisations.
These apps are mostly used for socialising, sharing news, marketing, and entertainment. Popular examples include Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.
There are many advantages of using social media but using these platforms can also put users at risk of danger.  This includes cyberbullying, scams, catfishing, privacy risks, extortion, and fraud.

The use of social media has sky-rocketed over the last few years.  According to Statista.com the number of users was close to one billion in 2010 and has grown to more than five billion as of July 2024.  
Reasons for this rapid growth include easier access to the internet due to ever-expanding network coverage, lower costs for internet connectivity (fibre and satellite coverage has changed the game significantly), access to smartphones due to competitive pricing and burgeoning second-hand mobile phone markets globally.
Social media is instant.  A user can post a message now, and its visible to all their followers immediately.  Followers can react to the post and interact with the users and other followers.  For apps like X, tweets are generally visible to anyone using the platform, unless limitations have been set.  
Instagram allows users to set their privacy settings so that only their followers can see their posts.  Their account displays a message “This account is private”, so anyone trying to see posts knows immediately that they won’t be able to unless they are a follower.

Other social media apps offer similar settings, and users can utilise these features to secure their accounts.  
But all this doesn’t stop cyberbullies from posting what they want about their victim.  And there’s very little the victim can do to get the posts taken down.  However, social media apps do offer some protection, you can report the post and hope it will be taken down.  However, if the threat posed is not immediately established, the app doesn’t always remove the harmful post.  Sadly, this is often the case.

In addition to cyberbullying, there’s catfishing.  This can be done through social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, X and many others, as well as through dating aps.  This is where the perpetrator presents themselves as someone else.  Often,they steal someone else’s pictures to create their profile.  Sometimes they clone someone else’s account.  These catfish lure their victims by researching their victims through their social medial profiles and then customising their accounts to become more appealing to them.  
Communication is mostly done by messaging / texts.  It is a red flag when they cannot carry out video chats or phone calls.  But as technology develops, even this stumbling block is being removed as AI is getting more and more advanced.  Real-time deepfake generation will soon become easier to use and more readily available.  Deepfake software and AI models are already able to generate synthetic faces and voices in real-time that can be used during video / phone calls.  A deep fake is created when the face of the user is swapped with an image of another person and the software enables the user to speak and move naturally, but with a different face, creating the illusion that the person is real.  This can also be done with voices.

Many social media scams are designed to prey on the vulnerable.  The creators are experts at deceiving their victims.  They use emotions to their advantage and tap into the vulnerabilities of their prey.  Their tactics are multi-layered and utilise different techniques to achieve their goals.  These mostly revolve around enriching themselves by extorting money or tricking their victims into sending them money.  

Romance scams are a good example of this trickery.  It’s the perfect storm:  vulnerable victim falls in love with the perpetrator through his / her manipulation tactics, the trust grows and ultimately the victim is conned into parting with money.  Their demands become more urgent with each request, and the reasons for needing the funds become more ludicrous, but still believable enough for the victim to fall for the lies.  The promises to reimburse the victim are broken, the money is never returned.  This can  continue until the victim has used every cent of their savings.
However, social media experiences don’t have to be a quagmire of lies and deception.  Users can avoid danger by familiarising themselves with the security features of apps, and keeping informed of social media scams and what to look out for.  It’s an evolving landscape with scammers seemingly one step ahead.  The general rule of thumb is if you feel uncomfortable or if a red flag is raised, rather stop communicating with them.  Your gut feel is a good indicator!  
Remember, before sharing any images, ask yourself:  Would I be comfortable if this picture was on a billboard?  If the answer is no, then don’t share it.