Owing to the imperative role of social media in this contemporary era, the issue of whether the prevalence of this means of communication rendered conducive or troublesome impacts on one’s living standards has attracted a great deal of public attention and interdisciplinary experts including sociologists, psychoanalysts and policymakers. The attempt of this essay is to elaborate why the latter view aligns with my personal belief.
On the one hand, the new generation of media does generate gainful benefits. First of all, within the advancement of technological devices, media creation tools have been increasingly affordable. Innovative technology accelerating the perfection of things posted on social media is ubiquitously available, in that network users no longer rely on proficient photo editors to contrive pictorial effects or to embellish their appearances via multiple picture editing applications.
However, the risks of processed photographs being distorted to be far and away from the truth is relatively odds-on. Despite the efforts to suppress the encroachment of unauthorized sources by adding forgery watermarks, the recent tech’s abilities to replicate and manipulate the original inputs have blurred the line between fantasy and reality. In short, this version of media tools pose unprecedented threats to the authentication of the information on social networks, be it misinformation spreading like wildfire, false rumors going viral within seconds, or embellished stories vying for attention. These factors propel the use of networking sites to serve heinous purposes and light a fire under cybercriminals to commit high-tech delinquencies. A case in point is that an array of celebrities may be under fire by courtesy of unfounded prosecution through visual distortion of an action that they never conduct. The so-called ‘character assassination’ has varnished the stardom of public figures and even threatened their livelihood.
Furthermore, software-based tools can take over the hierarchy of big budget filmmakers. The cinematography nowadays seems to incorporate content generated by such tools that is as qualified as the one produced by specified effects technicians. The dark future of digital imaging technicians comes hard on the heels of current AI-generated content replacement of physical director of photography and content writers. As more new tools roll out, the number of unemployed visual effect workers correspondingly escalates.
To reiterate, the emergence of social media dominance is irrefutably shifting the age of the digital community; the potential dark sides of this phenomenon cannot be overlooked. Thus, I am of the opinion that it is not until the negative implications of the technological advent being addressed that it is allowed to reach the audiences.