The drawbacks of social media

Abstract

In the 21st century, Social Media addiction has become a significant concern due to the evolution of communication and the younger generations' consequent use of these platforms. Many publications show an alarming rate of the daily amount of time spent using Social Media platforms and the resulting negative consequences. Users are forced to trade social utility for their privacy both in personal and business use of social media. Based on the attention economy, these Social Media use various technologies to drive users to consume their platforms; technologies such as facial recognition, artificial intelligence, data collection, platform design, and many other features permit them to benefit from the advertisement's products. This study focuses on both addiction and data privacy to Social Media of the Francophone Z Generation and their impact on Loyalty in the context of advertising purposes. According to the Andreessen Facebook Addiction scale used on this questionnaire survey, 110 out of 174 respondents can be qualified as "Social Media addicts". Out of the 110 "Social Media addicts," 81 responded that they do know about Social Media companies’ practices (data analysis, AI, growth hacking team), yet still, 51% of them (Addicted + Aware of practices) continue to share their location; 69,01% their contact info and about 86% are "rarely" or "very rarely" restricting access to their Social Media account. Thus, this research work confirmed previous studies and revealed that, in particular, Francophone young adults aged 18-25 are the most likely to develop a Social Media addiction. The work also confirms users' passivity regarding their data and privacy protection behaviour. Future studies could focus on addressing possible technical solutions and use coping strategies to reduce the negative impact of social media. The author will attempt to focus on the relevance of the algorithms, examining the structural aspects of collective artificial learning and how these platforms exploit the weaknesses of their users and convert them into an engagement.