Social Media in the Age of Social Distancing
By Ellie Scott
When my dad texted our family group chat with the news that Kobe Bryant had died, the first thing I did was check Twitter. I didn’t believe it was true, actually, until I saw journalists sharing news reports about the helicopter crash Bryant was in, a couple hours earlier, and saw that everyone on my feed was talking about it. For the rest of the day, I was glued to the app, refreshing every few minutes to check for new updates — it wasn’t immediately clear who else had been in the crash — and to read what people were saying about the event. This was a familiar chain of events — I usually hear about breaking news for the first time on Twitter, or if I learn about it somewhere else, I go there immediately to verify it and read the details, and then spend the next few hours checking for updates and seeing what the people I follow are saying about it.
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This is the case for breaking news events of any kind, even crisis situations that directly affect me. Last year, there was a false alarm about an active shooter on the University of Michigan campus where I go to school. After hearing about the threat on a Slack channel for the campus newspaper where I work from a colleague who was near the scene, I texted my friends to ask where they were and my parents to let them know what was going on and that I was safe. Then, I checked Twitter to see if there were any other updates, if local journalists, school officials, or authorities were saying anything or had confirmed what was going on. Throughout the incident, I stayed connected through various channels, getting updates from colleagues and friends who were closer to the action and told me what was going on — the police aren’t letting people enter this building, they’re blocking off these streets — and then passing that information on.
For me and for most of society, social media has become a key part of how we respond to crises. This holds true for our current global crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the fact that the pandemic is a crisis unlike any we’ve experienced before, it has some elements in common with previous disasters, including some patterns of internet usage and the effects thereof. However, it is undeniably novel in its scale and in its nature, with two differences that will prove relevant to online activity during it: It’s far more universal than other crisis events — the entire planet is impacted, and everyone is in danger. And because nothing like it has happened before, people don’t know how to handle it, have no prior knowledge to tell them what to expect — even the experts don’t know much about the situation or how it will unfold. These unique characteristics lead to unique outcomes, as does the fact that the nature of this crisis specifically entails more time spent online due to the necessity of social distancing and public spaces being shut down.
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Indeed, social media usage has increased as widespread shutdowns have gone into effect. This increased internet usage is in part the result of the benefits of social media in crisis situations — it’s one of the most efficient ways to access and share important risk-related information. One reason social media are important for information dissemination during crises is that they are increasingly where people turn to find and share news about the event in question. This was the case as far back as 2012, when during Hurricane Sandy, according to FEMA, users sent more than 20 million Sandy-related tweets. Following the Boston marathon bombings in April 2013, one quarter of Americans reportedly went to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms for information, according to the Pew Research Center. With social media only becoming more and more popular — the number of global social network users in 2012 was 1.4 billion; in 2019, it was 2.95 billion — and becoming an increasingly significant part of daily life for many people, beginning to replace traditional media, these platforms are, more than ever, key spaces of information discovery and dissemination during disaster events. Personally, especially in the early days when the pandemic was first developing, I turned, as usual, to Twitter, and was constantly reading and sharing threads and articles about COVID-19.
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These sites are important for information dissemination in crises because not only do they have such massive user bases, they allow information to be spread widely very quickly and easily — with the click of a button, you can share something with everyone who follows you, and they can just as easily share it with their followers, and so on. A 2014 study found that the average number of people a post was forwarded to by one user on microblogging platforms like Twitter and Facebook was 132. A 2019 study examining social media usage patterns during natural hazards found that users share information more frequently during these disaster situations than at other times. Social media is valuable in these scenarios because it enables important, potentially life-saving information to be disseminated very widely very quickly. Though the pandemic is a crisis unlike any we’ve seen before, this is still true.
The extensive connectivity social media offers also makes it very beneficial during and after disasters for people trying to find and give aid. If you’ve lost your home in a natural disaster and need support — a room to rent, money for a motel — you want to be able to reach as many people as possible with your pleas, for a higher probability that someone will see who is able to help you, or so that enough people can chip in with small donations to amount to something substantial. Social media allows you to reach a much larger number of people than you would be able to by just asking around your circle of friends — it puts the crowd in crowdsourcing. During the pandemic, individuals and businesses alike have been trying to utilize this benefit as the shutdowns have massively impacted the economy, leaving many businesses unable to operate and workers without incomes. In a few minutes of scrolling through Twitter or Facebook, I see half a dozen GoFundMe links asking for donations to help small businesses stay afloat or a stranger make their rent. People are also using social media to crowdfund mutual aid projects, organize rent strikes, and raise money and awareness for countless charities like food banks and groups doing things like sewing masks and scrubs to donate to hospitals.
The internet has also become a crucial source of connection for many people who now find themselves isolated within their homes and unable to meet in person. Social media provides connection when we have no other forms of connection. New York Times columnist Kevin Roose reflected that “I expected my first week of social distancing to feel, well, distant. But I’ve been more connected than ever.” Thanks to texting, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facetime, Zoom, and a host of other digital platforms, Roose and many others have been able to stay in touch with family, friends, and strangers. In addition to allowing us to stay in contact with loved ones, technology is allowing us to maintain our broader communities, and even expanding them: virtual versions of gatherings ranging from yoga classes to church services to happy hours are popping up. One woman, Dana Schwartz, has started a virtual book club with her Twitter followers. The producer on a podcast I listen to mentioned that now he always has at least 10 unread messages in his usually-dead neighborhood Whatsapp group because it’s become so active during quarantine. People are finding creative ways to connect — in China, would-be partiers have started “cloud clubbing,” where DJs perform live sets on TikTok and audience members participate in real time via their phones.
We’re hearing not only from people we know but from people halfway across the world who are experiencing the same things as us — in March, when Italy’s lockdown was several days underway but the US’s was in its infancy, Italians posted advice for Americans to help them prepare. People are bonding over the shared experience of the pandemic, sharing memes about quarantine and washing your hands that are universally relatable. Social media has enabled something of a camaraderie surrounding the pandemic, and it’s also been a source of entertainment, positivity, or at least distraction: even though a lot of what you see online nowadays is just more bad news and hot takes, there’s also a lot of uplifting and funny content — people making the best out of a bad situation and keeping themselves and others occupied with things like Instagram challenges involving juggling a roll of toilet paper.
But there are downsides to our heavy reliance on the internet. Many of the same features that give us those aforementioned benefits also cause real, significant problems. The same mechanisms that allow for the fast-paced dissemination of important information also create the potential for the rapid spread of misinformation, particularly in crises, when the urgency and high stress of the situation means people are more likely to pass things on without verifying them. The spread of hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and rumors about the virus online has been so bad that the director-general of the World Health Organization termed it an “infodemic” — fake “cures” and false information are spreading like wildfire across the globe. One study found that almost a third of the public believes at least one COVID-19 myth. A conspiracy theory positing that the virus was being spread by the 5G cellular network gained significant traction on social media. Poison Control centers had to issue warnings not to drink bleach after claims circulated that doing so could prevent contraction of the coronavirus.
Misinformation about COVID-19 is especially dangerous, because the pandemic is a situation — unlike a localized disaster like a shooting or severe weather — where everyone is in danger and everyone’s actions matter to keep not only themselves but their communities safe. It’s crucial that everyone has correct information about what’s going on and what they should and shouldn’t be doing. Helen Lee Boygues put it succinctly: Containment of the disease ultimately relies on individuals taking action, and people need reliable, factual information to make good decisions.
People are also especially vulnerable to misinformation because this situation is so unfamiliar and there is relatively little known about the virus — experts are learning more, but only gradually, and the time needed by officials to verify information before releasing it makes it difficult for genuine information to compete with the instantaneous spreading of misinformation online. All these factors create a very dangerous concoction, because in addition to increasing public confusion and generating panic, misinformation has material impacts on not only people’s beliefs but also their actions. After the 5G hoax spread online, there were several instances of people setting 5G service towers on fire. A viral rumor that a Chinese restaurant in Canada employed someone with COVID-19 and that health officials had closed the restaurant led to the establishment losing 80% of its revenue. This kind of misinformation based in racism is by no means new — there were xenophobic reactions to the SARS outbreak in 2003, too — but social media makes its consequences much more significant because more people see it and are influenced by it. The same goes for other kinds of false information, and needless to say, people believing and trying hoax cures like drinking bleach or taking other harmful substances is incredibly dangerous.
Social media platforms have introduced policies to try and curb the spread of misinformation and direct users towards the correct information, but hoaxes and scams are still proliferating - on March 18th, Twitter introduced a policy that includes removing tweets with “content that increases the chance that someone contracts or transmits the virus.” But a study published April 7th by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University found that almost 60% of false claims about COVID-19 remain on the platform without a warning label. An April report from the Reboot Foundation demonstrates that people are still being reached by misinformation about the virus on social media — the study found that the more time people spend on platforms like Twitter, the less informed they are on the virus’ spread and its prevention and the more they believe myths about the disease. The researchers also found in the month of March, there were over 1,000 virus-related tweets per minute — something reflected in personal experience; I hardly see anything on social media that’s not in some way related to the pandemic — and those tweets often contained blatantly inaccurate information. The “infodemic” is clear.
And our hyper-connection during the pandemic has negative effects on a personal level, too. As Kevin Roose and others have attested, many people are more connected in this period of isolation than ever before, thanks to all the various online platforms available to us. Being able to connect via the internet is certainly vastly preferable than being completely socially isolated in addition to physical distancing, but there are downsides. As quarantine has worn on, I’ve started seeing people saying that being constantly connected and reachable like we are now is grating on them. Always being available via technology, without having any excuse to beg off a Zoom get-together or end a FaceTime call — what else could you believably have going on right now? — is exhausting. People have begun expressing this on Twitter, with one user asking her followers, “how are we ending phone conversations now that we don’t have anywhere to go?”
It became such a frequently expressed frustration that People Magazine offered some solutions in a listicle entitled “Here Are 12 Easy Excuses for You to Use Next Time You Get Tired of Video Chatting While Social Distancing.” (The subhead: Social distancing has some of us in touch more now than ever before with the help of technology. But what happens when you really just don't feel like talking?) Humans are just not meant to have this much connection and constantly be receiving as much information as we are from social media — it’s overwhelming, especially at a time when you’re already stressed thanks to the pandemic and all its various horrible effects, and most of the information you’re getting is just more bad news (have you heard that industrial farmers are destroying crops they can’t sell while people are going hungry? Also, 18 people were killed in a mass shooting yesterday!).
Another issue with these high levels of online interaction and social media use is that on social media, we’re all together, all the time, in a way that puts everyone under intense scrutiny. Everything you do on social media is visible to the whole world, especially now that people have nothing else to do other than sit on Twitter all day. That constant, broad visibility in this moment becomes especially problematic, because despite the universality of the pandemic, people are still in different positions within it. Journalist Marie Le Conte elaborated on this in a Twitter thread, explaining that what she — out of work and quarantined alone — wants to talk about right now is how to busy herself; she wants and needs to be productive, to do something with her unused energy. But people will see her talking about that who are in completely different situations — working full-time and trying to homeschool kids, perhaps — who want to see tips on how to relax and reassurances that it’s fine not to be productive or to be struggling right now. For those people, seeing Le Conte’s posts will feel “alien at best, taunting at worst”; to her, their posts are grating and seem to imply that she’s being smug or should be grateful for her position.
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The way that social media makes what you say visible to everyone, not just those who want to see it or will relate to or understand it, leads to stress and conflict. Things are bad right now for everyone, just in different ways, and social media exacerbates and enables our tendencies to claim that we have it worst, to compare and rank trauma, and to lash out at people who are processing stressful situations differently than we are. Social media isn’t great for encouraging nuance and empathy at the best of times, and in times of high stress conflict is even more likely. I’ve seen this play out over and over again in the past few weeks. In one case, one woman I follow tweeted about how afraid she was that she would develop a health problem that she wouldn’t be able to get treated because hospitals are overrun with COVID-19 patients. Another woman screenshotted this and posted it with the caption “as someone with a chronic illness that can require medical treatment I find tweets like this exhausting. like, we get it, you can make anything about you.” Both women were experiencing real stress, just of different kinds, and the difference caused conflict. Everyone is facing their own unique challenges due to the pandemic, and the way that social media functions means that even if you post something your friends or followers will understand and relate to, they aren’t the only ones who see it. That leads to people seeing posts that weren’t intended for them and that may, as Le Conte said, come off as taunting or grating, ultimately increasing stress and conflict.
These effects of social media are important to consider because they are currently having significant impacts as a result of the particular factors of the ongoing crisis. Many of these issues with social media, however, are not unique to the pandemic. They may have been exacerbated by it, or brought into sharper focus by it, but they stem from underlying structural features of social media platforms and pre-existing problems. Misinformation has spread online and had detrimental societal effects for a long time, though it’s more immediately dangerous right now. Social networking sites are set up in a way that encourages it: not only are false claims are easy to quickly share with many people, they are actually more likely to be spread than accurate information, because misinformation is often shocking and provokes strong emotion. A study looking at how misinformation is circulated online found that when information has a high, usually negative, emotional impact on a user, they are more likely to share it. Algorithms on microblogging platforms also incentivize and promote content that is likely to get the most engagement — emotionally impactful content that people are more likely to share. These posts are promoted whether or not they contain factual information: social media presents news without authorization or filtering, so anyone can publish anything and have tons of people see it, leading to floods of false information that can be difficult to differentiate from real news.
The companies that own these sites have done little to address this problem until recently, prioritizing their own monetary gain because the harms, though very real, seemed more distant - downstream things like the gradual erosion of democracy, rather than current things like someone drinking bleach. These platforms are also set up in a way that reinforces people’s beliefs and biases, only showing users things they agree with because it’s better for the site, siloing people in partisan media bubbles. These can be bubbles of misinformation, and they also compound the problem by creating distrust of certain sources: even if you see correct information, if it’s from a source you deem untrustworthy because it falls outside your bubble — i.e., doesn’t align with your political party — you’ll dismiss it.
And though the detrimental effects of being constantly connected are heightened now, that constant connection isn’t new. There’s been a feeling that technology is making us overly reachable for some time - a brief search turned a tweet from February of 2019 lamenting that “social media and text messaging have created this culture of being constantly accessible.” The way these technologies are set up and have become integrated so deeply into every aspect of our lives makes it difficult to tune out and take a break when you need to, and it’s overwhelming and exhausting even when you’re not also in the middle of a pandemic. This is also true of the way social media means we’re all together, all the time, always watching each other. It places intense scrutiny on users — everyone can see everything you post, regardless of who it was intended for. Humans aren’t built for this. We’re not made to be constant; we naturally adapt all the time, changing what we say and how we say it depending on who we’re talking to. We haven’t lost that fundamental trait in the digital age, but the way the internet works doesn’t align with it — we still post things with certain in-groups in mind, but those people aren’t the only ones who see it. This becomes more of a problem in a high-stress situation like the current pandemic, but it was true and problematic before, too. Take for example Justine Sacco, who in 2014 tweeted a dark/insensitive joke to her 170 followers that ended up going viral and generating such backlash that Sacco was fired as a result. When she posted that joke, she wasn’t thinking that anyone outside her small following would see it, but of course they did, and the fallout was immense.
It seems evident that the problematic effects of social media during the pandemic are not new but are in fact due to underlying issues that the current situation has merely highlighted. In the short term, these things are having significant harmful effects that undermine the potential benefits of social media during a crisis. But perhaps — hopefully — this will push us in the long term to fix these long-lurking defects and ultimately create a better world both online and off.
