People use social media to practice their free speech. Unfortunately, some decide to do so by posting harmful content. I firmly believe that social media companies should be held responsible for such content on their platforms. I think so because young people have access to the internet and can be severely harmed because of it. Also, such behavior becomes normalized among people.
Most people, including children, have phones and access to the internet. Social media companies put a significant amount of money to be popular among young audiences. In just a few clicks, a child can have a content so harmful in front, to get permanently scared. For instance, last week a friend of mine showed me a video on Facebook, a popular social media platform, which had several million views. In this video you could see two men violently fighting each other. Any child would be mentally strained after watching it. As a result, I believe that since social media companies are the ones making such content accessible to children, they should be held responsible for hurting them.
Social media helps users popularize their content. If a post is harmful and then popularized by social media, of course the only one held accountable for it should not be the person who made a post. A violent post has no impact unless it becomes popular. Therefore, social media plays a huge role in making it actually harmful. As a result, I believe that since social media companies have an enormous influence over content’s actual harmfulness, they should be held responsible for what they advertise.
To conclude, I completely agree that social media companies need to be held responsible for the violent content on their platforms. This is because they help advertise the harmful content and make it accessible to children.