Thinking social media from ethical viewpoint

Abstract

In recent years, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and LINE has become common in the lives of the people in Asian countries. In this paper, we will examine ethical challenges related to social media from a perspective of normative theories. Many of the general ideas surrounding current social media belong to naturalistic optimism. They use it without any hesitation every time a new social medium is introduced, and believe that the society is getting better by doing so. It seems too irresponsible if a social media company just provides a service and leaves it up to the judgment of users. Efforts to widely inform risks of social media should not target adults only. It should target minors as the most imminent issue. The laissez-faire system in social media can be considered as a laissez-faire system for companies managing social media. Among philosophical theories of technology, there is an idea of social constructivism. It is a theory that society can determine the future of technology. I will give a concrete example of social constructivism. The society must find a way to live with social media ahead of technology, not allowing the technology of social media to build a society.