My pet theory is that social media isn't the problem, the always-on surveillance created by smartphones is.
When I was in university, we had nude parties. I'm pretty sure nobody would risk that nowadays. That cherry-picking you mentioned goes both for highs and lows. In this day and age, you always need to plan for your worst moment to end up in someone's picture. The ubiquity of cameras has made everyday living more risky in the sense that you're constantly at risk of losing social standing over insignificant mistakes.
It's a double-edged sword. Without that ubiquity, 4 years ago today, George Floyd would have just been known as a junkie who slipped a fake bill and had a heart attack, if he was known at all. Instead, we were able to see with our own eyes what actually happened.
There is certainly a hammer/nail aspect to the issue (which is itself one of degrees), but I do think that part of the blame that gets put on the technology and its use lies more correctly with the society that makes judgments off of that use's outputs. Ideally, in a functional society, no one would bat an eyelash at coeds sharing platonic nakey time.
> It's a double-edged sword. Without that ubiquity, 4 years ago today, George Floyd would have just been known as a junkie who slipped a fake bill and had a heart attack, if he was known at all. Instead, we were able to see with our own eyes what actually happened.
An important consideration there is that the areas immediately adjacent to police should be far more tracked than general spaces or around average people.
My grandfather said there were such parties when he was young. That would have been 1930s-1940s. And what's even more crazy is that this was in the countryside in Portugal.
When I was in university, we had nude parties. I'm pretty sure nobody would risk that nowadays. That cherry-picking you mentioned goes both for highs and lows. In this day and age, you always need to plan for your worst moment to end up in someone's picture. The ubiquity of cameras has made everyday living more risky in the sense that you're constantly at risk of losing social standing over insignificant mistakes.