Social media has wormed its way into every single aspect of the average American’s life. People scroll while they wait in line, while they’re waiting on their food to heat up or while lying in bed, unable to sleep.
Recently, with the election, there has been more political content on the rise. Day by day, the algorithm has been shifting to more political content in order to secure more votes, for one side or another. But will this really affect the voting results? Or do people see through the veil that social media pulls over them?
“I think I have definitely been seeing more political content with the presidential election coming up. I think that’s kind of prone to happen,” senior Francesca Blue said.
However, is that appearing naturally on people’s feeds, or is it intentionally placed there?
The likeliest result is the latter since this year alone, a total of $10.2 billion has been spent in political advertisements. Comparing this to previous election years, this is a drastic increase in spending, since it was only $4 billion in 2018. That’s a 255% increase in ads alone. But how much trust do people have in the ads?
“I would say I’m careful with the sources I believe, but respected news sources I would trust,” senior Leo Amir said.
Most news sources have bias due to their owners’ political alignments, such as the Washington Post being owned by Jeff Bezos or Fox News being owned by Rupert Murdoch. Attempting to look at everything through a critical lens is important, but is difficult when individuals are constantly being bombarded with differing opinions and facts, no matter what their preferred news source is.
In a poll, 80% of all students said that they got most of their news from social media. A landslide result, since the runner up, TV and Broadcast Journalism has only 12% of the votes. Most PVHS students get a majority of their news from social media, where the political figures of today are spending ludicrous amounts of cash in an attempt to sway the election.
However, are the billions of dollars being spent doing much to influence people?
When the person on the other end of the screen knows that something is an ad, they instinctively trust it far less. People are likely to buy what seems like an honest review, rather than what is obviously an advertisement this mindset tends to be applied to political content as well.
Senior Isabella Juelle said that she tries to “make [her] own decisions without the input of social media.”
That may be easier said than done, since social media has infiltrated every section of people’s lives.
When presented with conflicting information, it’s hard to move logically through everything, changing the way one thinks.
Social media influences peoples’ mindsets and it’s undoubtedly going to influence the election.