Aurélie Dubru

This blog post was produced as part of the course “Social Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States” at the University of Turku.

Albert Camus once said: “A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world,” and I could not agree more. Ethics was one of my favorite topics of the course, mainly because I think that it is in constant change and each society or people have different opinions on what the limits of ethics are.

Regarding social media, it is particularly hard to find these limits. Social media are supposed to be a platform where people can express themselves freely. However, we can ask ourselves whether social media should be more regulated and whether there should be more limits to what people are allowed to share with others. Unlike newspapers, social media are not very strict. They may have some rules but they are not always respected. Moreover, it is very easy to post something that is out of bounds. It might be deleted shortly after, but there is still time for others to see it. Ask anyone on social media, and you will realize that more people than we think have already seen content that they wish they had never seen but they just could not avoid. Whether the post is an extremist or racist opinion or a shocking picture of a dead animal, most people do not want to see it. What are these people even looking for – attention? Or money? I just wonder how people can forget all morality for one moment, just so they can briefly enjoy what they were looking for. The answer might be that they actually never had morality; social media is just a place where everyone can realize that. On the other hand, maybe they have a different view of morality and ethics. It might feel normal them and not pose any ethical questions.

We may ask: who or what decides what is ethical and what is not?

Compared to reality, social media are quite complex when it comes to defining limits and knowing what is ethical. I love this quote from Albert Einstein: “I fear a day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” Technology, as well as social media, are now part of most people’s lives and people sometimes forget that it is not the reality. When I see how much people edit their pictures or even spread fake news, I wonder why people do not consider ethical principles as they do in real life. Hiding behind the computer is so much easier than confronting people. I often feel like people allow themselves too much freedom on social media. Maybe they should think more than twice about what the world is about to see because it might have a bigger impact than they think. Related to the many shootings happening in the U.S., it surprises me how often it is possible to find the perpetrators’ racist opinions on their Facebook page and come across pictures of the shootings. When people already have to deal with a traumatizing event, they do not necessarily want to be reminded of it on social media by a picture of a dead body, for instance.

It is definitely time for us all to start being careful with what we post and reconsider what we have been sharing until now.