A Year in Social Media: Misinformation, mental health and the metaverse
After a year of tweets, likes, shares, and emojis, we look back on what 2021 meant for the largest social media platforms.
Social media platforms have come under intense scrutiny throughout 2021, with focus paid to how misinformation spreads online and the impact of social media on young people’s mental health.
Here, the PA news agency rounds up some of the key developments from social media platforms throughout the past year and looks ahead at what to expect in 2022.
The world’s largest social media platform, with an estimated 2.91 billion monthly active users, stepped up its battle with online disinformation in 2021, but faced criticism in the wake of the Facebook Files.
“Whether it’s false or misleading content about Covid-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, we’re making sure fewer people see misinformation on our apps,” the company said.
They followed up in July, saying that had removed over 18 million examples of coronavirus misinformation since the start of the pandemic.
Much of this year’s scrutiny of Facebook stemmed from whistleblower Frances Haugen, who was behind a leak of internal research documents after she secretly copied them before leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit.
Facebook’s rebrand of its parent company to Meta was announced in October, with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg saying: “I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards.”
The company announced several weeks earlier that it would hire 10,000 people across the European Union to “help build the Metaverse”.
Instagram too has faced scrutiny over its protection of young people and their mental health in the past year.
One internal study, shared by Ms Haugen, cited 13.5% of teenage girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% saying it makes eating disorders worse.
The platform responded in December, saying it would now suggest users take a break from the platform if they spend too long scrolling.
The move is part of a range of new tools being rolled out to boost safety on the app, which also includes parental controls, such as setting app time limits for teenagers, due for launch in 2022.
Twitter’s response to racial abuse was in the spotlight in the wake of July’s Euro 2020 competition.
Twitter removed more than 1,900 racist tweets after the match, with the majority coming from accounts in the UK.
The platform’s co-founder Jack Dorsey announced his resignation as chief executive in late November, and has been replaced by chief technology officer Parag Agrawal.
– TikTok
TikTok saw explosive growth in 2021, revealing in September that over one billion people use the app each month.
But MPs remain anxious about the relationship between TikTok, its parent company ByteDance, and the Chinese government.
A March report from the UK's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, said: “We remain deeply concerned about the flow of information between TikTok UK, its parent company ByteDance Ltd and other subsidiary companies…which are subject to China’s National Intelligence Law.”