Brian Castrucci is an epidemiologist, public health practitioner and president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation. Frank Luntz is a Republican pollster and communication advisor.
It’s not what you say that matters. It’s what people hear. And what people are hearing on social media regarding Covid-19 in general, and the vaccines in particular, should scare you.
On the day that Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta, John Carmack, the consulting chief technology officer for Oculus (Facebook’s virtual reality unit), acknowledged the potential harm in the digital world, saying, “If there is a demonstrated harm, then yes, we should try to mitigate the harm … I think generally the right thing to do is to wait until harm actually manifests.”
That’s akin to the fire department arriving to a house only after it’s been burned the ground. As has been made clear during the Covid pandemic, we’re already too late.
The impact of social media on health goes beyond Covid. Long before the pandemic, social media had been linked to worsening mental health, increased risk for eating disorders, and misinformation about cures for diseases like cancer and diabetes. The question isn’t whether we should act. It is why we haven’t acted yet.
In the real world, there are rules and regulations in place to protect the public. From food and product safety to air and water quality measures, Americans expect some level of common-sense protection from known harm for the things we use and consume daily. Why should a virtual world be any different?
Social media has been weaponized to spread misinformation about Covid and the vaccines, which has contributed to lower vaccination rates and, ultimately, cost American lives. We don’t yet know what the “metaverse” will look like, but it’s not hyperbolic to assume misinformation will fester and spread just the same, if not worse.
Morning Consult conducted a recent poll for us that provides additional proof of the negative impact of social media use on our ability to save lives during the pandemic. Those who said they share information daily on social media are the most likely to believe unfounded and inaccurate statements about Covid including incorrect information about infertility, the impact of the mRNA vaccine on DNA and the severity and prevalence of the virus.
Social media is also influencing people’s willingness to get vaccinated — or not. Just over half of the unvaccinated respondents said social media was pushing them to wait or forgo the vaccine, and the vaccination rate among people who said social media was one of their primary sources of information was 16% lower than the rate among the general public.
Even in this era of hyper-sensitivity to free speech and expression, much of it deserved, 53% of Americans agree that social media companies should restrict or remove what they determine to be misinformation or disinformation about Covid and vaccines. The battle against misinformation goes beyond this pandemic as false and…
Read More: What you hear about Covid in the Metaverse should scare you