Towards an Objective Critique of Social Media: An Islamic Perspective

by Imam Azeez

It was the summer of 1991, when the biggest catastrophe imaginable, for myself and my siblings, transpired. Our only window to the world and sole means of leisure, the coveted National Panacolor 150-pound state-of-the-art 18-inch TV with a full-on wooden enclosure, stopped working. It was a dark day. Although we only had two channels that operated between 8 am and 11 pm, we were allowed to watch enough programming a week, totaling 2 hours at least, that the prospect of losing that was worse for us kids than death itself. My dad was out of the country on an assignment for 6 months, so getting a replacement was out of the question. My mom was not an avid TV watcher, so she didn’t care that we lost our only source of entertainment. In fact, for her, it was a good thing. At least we would get to spend those two extra hours a week doing more homework or spending more time training at our sporting club for our Karate tournaments. But my siblings and I were not prepared to accept that bleak reality without a fight. I worked up the confidence to tell my mom, firmly: “Mom, I collected money from us kids, and we will hire a technician to fix the TV, so you don’t have to worry about a thing. We’ll pay for it ourselves!” With the most dismissive look, my mom glanced at me for a second, before getting back to preparing her upcoming lesson plan, being the avid geography teacher that she was, and told me nonchalantly: “No. We won’t do that. But I’ll tell you what, if you can fix it yourself, I’ll let you guys watch it again.” Fix it myself? What kind of crazy talk is this? What do I know about televisions to fix it myself? I’m a high school student, for heaven’s sake! Why do you have to be so difficult? If Dad were here, he would have taken care of this right away! This is simply unfair! Of course, none of these colliding thoughts made it past my lips. All my mom saw was me looking at her with wide eyes and quivering lips, so she took another glance at me and asked, disinterestedly: “Are we good here?” I replied promptly, without hesitation: “Yes, Mom! This sounds like a great plan! I’ll work on it!”

And so it began. The quest to revive our beloved TV was underway. Looking back, I realize that the best part turned out to be that I had to do it myself. I worked with my brother and my sister, and we came up with an airtight plan. My sister’s job was to ask family members if they had any experience or knowledge about this stuff. My brother’s job was to ask our friends for tips. My job was to visit our local library and sweet-talk the librarian into suggesting all books and manuals that could possibly help me get enough information to fix the TV. The task was arduous, and the path was considerably grueling, but the incentive was compelling: our favorite soccer final was creeping up, and fixing the TV before then was an absolute must! The three of us spent many long days and sleepless nights gathering every bit of information that we could find to diagnose the ailment of our old friend. After lengthy hours of research, phone calls, and visits to the library, it was suggested that we needed to change the TV’s cathode-ray tube. It took me 3 visits to different electronic parts stores, and the equivalent of about $100 until I found the coveted component. With great anticipation, the three of us sat around Mr. Panacolor, praying to All-Mighty God to grant us success in the impending delicate procedure. I carefully replaced the cathode-ray tube with the new one, put the screws of the TV’s back panel back on, asked my sister to connect the power, and while turning the TV on, anxiously murmuring “Bismillah” with a shaky voice. Lo and behold, the TV came back to life and the procedure was a success! Allah helped us restore our TV’s health! Mom looked at us with a straight face and said: “This was not entirely disastrous!”

Now imagine that your TV broke today. Aside from the fact that most people would prefer to buy a new one, those of us who still have an ounce of curiosity left, or some DIY spirit, would opt for fixing it. And the first thing most people are going to do, without much thinking or planning, is to log into a social media platform to get information. Instead of going to the library to check out books and periodicals, they’ll most certainly go on YouTube, Facebook, Quora, or Reddit. They’ll ask friends on Discord or Instagram, and search for relevant videos on TikTok. It's difficult to imagine what we could possibly do about anything, without social media. If you want to learn how to bake, do woodworking or crochet, you go on social media. If you want to do research about an item to purchase, you go on social media. If you want to get the news or engage in activism, you go on social media. If you want to get married, you go on social media. If you need to take an unfortunate shortcut towards Islamic knowledge, you, purportedly, go on social media. Our ideas, feelings, emotions, appearances, and consumer behavior are all shaped by social media. Our social interactions, daily experiences, and worldviews are formed on social media. Our perceptions of history, political views, and economic perceptions are determined by social media. Even our entertainment can now be fully provided by the platforms of social media. If our TV broke in the year 2024, we might not have noticed; and if we did, it would have taken us 2 hours, not 2 weeks, to either fix it or replace it. No human invention in the history of the world took more hold, exercised more sway, and dictated as much of our existence as social media has. It exposed us to what used to be inaccessible knowledge and connected us with people we would have never met. It made everything easier, faster, and more efficient. Essentially, it brought the world to our fingertips, so to speak. The question we raise here is simple: Was this transformation healthy for us?

The purpose of this essay is to assert an emphatic NO to this question. What follows is why.

There are a few things I need to clarify at the onset. First, what do I mean by social media? It's simply a technology that “employs mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms via which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content." This includes platforms similar to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, X, etc. Second, the thoughts articulated in this essay are those of a concerned father and mentor and not the abstract contentions of someone who possesses an academic proclivity. The impact of social media affects everyone’s kids, including my own. This matter is personal to me, and I write about it with my children in mind. Third, it may occur to those who have heard me express critical views about social media in the past that I’m opposed to it only on religious or behavioral grounds, or even for health reasons. This essay, hopefully, will demonstrate that my opposition to social media is absolute, and rests inherently on philosophical grounds. Fourth, the ideas in this essay take for granted the instructiveness and authoritativeness of Islamic law. Once a certain quality or ramification of social media is established to be antithetical to Sharia, it will be assumed to be harmful in and of itself and no further discussion will be offered to use other means to prove why it is harmful. Fifth, I do not strive here to prove that social media is unqualifiedly bad. Honest assessment entails an acknowledgment that there are ostensibly useful functions of social media platforms that many might find beneficial. Be that as it may, this essay attempts to confirm beyond doubt that any pro of social media is far outweighed by severe cons. It will also attempt to show that most possible pros are essentially cons when understood profoundly. For some, this will prove to be most difficult to accept, not for the lack of evidence to support my thesis, for it's quite ubiquitous, but rather as a result of people’s emotional attachment to and dependence on social media. No child wants to give up their toy, after all.

The way this essay is organized is as follows. After this introduction, I will highlight the statistics of social media usage across genders and age groups. Second, I will examine the state of ongoing research and will cite academic articles, surveys, and peer-reviewed studies to assess the impact of social media consumption on our interpersonal behavior, mental health, social experience, and overall wellness. Third, I will then switch gears to substantiate the claim that social media is diametrically antagonistic to basic Islamic teachings, and therefore must either be abandoned or extremely restricted in its consumption to minimum, intentional usage. This will be achieved by analyzing the most common features of social media and cross-examining them against basic tenets of Islamic law, to evidence their incompatibility. Fourth, the essay will culminate with a theoretical discourse to highlight its main thesis: that social media platforms are philosophically irreconcilable with Islamic teachings at the most fundamental level. The ethos in which social media thrives as a means of communication is one that is not only different but entirely clashing with the core objectives of Shariah. Last, we will dedicate the last section of this essay to sharing possible recommendations on how to address the ailments of social media within the Islamic context, as individuals, parents, mentors and concerned citizens.

Usage Statistics

The numbers are actually quite staggering. If you thought you had any accurate ideas about how pervasive the social media phenomenon actually is, think again. According to the Global Web Index or GWI, one of the largest internet research and marketing companies in the world, the average internet user spends an average of 2.5 hours a day on social media. This constitutes one-third of the time we spend on the internet daily. At this average time per user, the world spends 720 billion minutes per day using social media platforms. Over a full year, that adds up to more than 260 trillion minutes, or 500 million years of collective human time! Of course, these numbers look worse when adjusted for age and gender. Among GWI’s survey respondents, women between the ages of 16 and 24 spend the greatest amount of time using social media, at an average of almost 3 hours per day. It's also telling to examine social media consumption per country. Internet users in Kenya spend the most time in the world using social media each day, at an average of 3 hours and 45 minutes per user. Japan ranked lowest, at about 50 minutes a day per user. Bear in mind that these numbers published by GWI do not include time spent on other social media apps not included in the survey, such as TikTok and Instagram! Should these other apps be accounted for in terms of time spent daily on social media, the numbers will become drastically bleak, considering the explosion of their usage in recent years. Furthermore, for the purposes of this essay, multiplayer games are considered social media. According to Statista, online gaming has grown to surpass one billion users by the year 2021, and the average time spent on online gaming per day per user is about 2 hours! Additionally, it is also noteworthy to mention that there are a little over 5 billion active social media user identities in the world. While the number of individual users is likely less than that, it's still an absolutely staggering figure.

This data is extremely relevant for the purposes of our essay. If social media was a marginal phenomenon that is only being used by a marginal group of individuals, it would not have warranted any concern. And if the average individual spent a negligible amount of time using social media platforms, it would not have necessitated any analysis of the possible impact. But it is precisely because most people in the world spend more than one-fifth of their waking hours using social media apps, that one must first question the motives and the consequences of such platforms. Furthermore, there are about 8 billion people on the planet. If the above numbers are accurate, one might safely assume that the number of unique social media users exceeded 4 billion, which is still about half of the world population. We might still be okay, one might ask, right? Wrong. We ’are not okay. The number of people in the world who could possibly afford an internet connection or a smartphone are the ones who have both time and resources to sign up for a social media account. The rest likely struggle with a debilitating type of poverty that leaves them facing a more menacing threat. So if my assessments are correct, half of the world is crippled by poverty, and the other half is crippled by social media! In other words, the minute a human receives fair manumission from the shackles of indigence, he or she is indentured again by the captivity of modern-day social media slavery.

I know this sounds hyperbolic to some. But it isn’t. Let the facts be the judge.

The Mental Health Cost

The link between high rates of social media consumption and poor mental health has become simply undeniable. In 2023, the United States Surgeon General released an advisory called Social Media and Youth Mental Health, in which he documents the growing evidence that social media is causing harm to young people’s mental health. Soon after, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued its own similar health advisory. A year later, in June 2024, the Surgeon General called for a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, which would require an act of Congress to implement. The connection between a deteriorated state of mental health and the usage of social media has nearly become an accepted fact. What remains is political action that leads to useful policy. Considering the fact that social media companies have evolved into major corporations with a colossal impact on the economy and a strong influence on government, it is not clear when any regulating legislation will become imminent. At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, I would not be exaggerating if I went as far as equating social media conglomerates with Big Tobacco in the phase leading up to the modest wins of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.

But as they say, the devil is in the details. It is easy to get caught up in the sentiment of legal battles and the nuances of activism, and gradually lose sight of the real human cost of social media consumption. The impact on mental health is quite staggering, ranging from increased likelihood of anxiety, depression, and suicidality, to adverse effects on sleep, body image and exacerbated feelings of loneliness and dispensability. MIT researchers have now linked the usage of Facebook among college students with increased rates of depression and argued verbatim that their “.. results are consistent with the hypothesis that social media might be responsible for the recent deterioration in mental health among teenagers and young adults.” More ominously, according to data from the Center for Disease Control, the suicide rate among 10 to 24-year-olds was stable from 2000 to 2007; it then increased by 57% between 2007 and 2017 and continues to rise, coinciding with the pervasive rise in social media usage. Academic research has shown with increasing degrees of certainty that a high level of social media use in early adolescence followed by a marked increase over time was most predictive of suicide risk in emerging adulthood.

But statistics are mere numbers, after all. They only have meaning to the extent that we can make sense of them. With or without comprehensive statistics, we would still be able to logically ascertain the dire consequences of social media. The human mind is not designed to process this massive number of pictures, videos, colors, events, stimulants, and occurrences, hours and hours on end, every day: A hundred new waffle recipes, earthquakes in China, random pictures posted by 45 friends, floods in Brazil, the news of political oppression in Egypt, 67 videos of friends pranking one another, snippets of Biden-Trump debates, 139 funny memes, 83 videos on how to do deadlifts the right way, warning posts on global warming, arguments and counterarguments followed by refutations of the counterarguments, more videos on making espresso, images of war and carnage in Gaza, followed by Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel commentary, and all of this is interlaced by videos of young girls dancing to famous songs or lip-syncing to them, just to lighten up the mood a bit. We get exposed to all of this, literally, during a 30-minute period, and the worst part is that we’ll do that 10 times or more every day. How can we not feel mental health struggles over time, when our minds get overwhelmed by this flood of information about events we are not connected to and can’t do anything about? When social media stimulation cannot be possibly matched by the relatively mundane nature of our day-to-day existence? When we are tethered to people we do not know, places we haven’t been to, and events we cannot influence?

Seclusion and Isolation

What the aforementioned examples of our social media activities ultimately lead to is more and more time spent on those outlets, and less and less time spent in the real world. This eventually disconnects us from real-world events and tangible relationships. We know more about the struggles of random activists fighting against deforestation in the Amazon than we know about the health issues our aunt or cousin is going through. Social media causes us to care more about the remote and less about the nearby. And the more we get immersed in virtual events and connections, we end up, paradoxically, in more isolation and loneliness. We have many “online” friends, but very few “real” friends. We know how to interact with virtual connections and use all the proper emojis and acronyms for hours, but we cannot sustain a conversation with a family member for minutes without feeling awkward. Furthermore, we might even effectively uphold social media etiquette and mores, but utterly fail to abide by the simplest real-life interactive customs and norms. One of the greatest puzzles is that most young people who use social media on an obsessive basis contend that they do so for the purpose of “connecting” with others. Ironically, it is becoming increasingly clear that the usage of social media actually causes loneliness and reduces our ability to find meaningful connections, leading to isolation and seclusion.

Science supports these common-sense observations. In a cross-sectional online study conducted in Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia during April/May 2020, 3,810 participants aged 18 years or above were surveyed. The findings were staggering. While the results varied by age, with the younger users being impacted the most, the study concluded that emotional loneliness was higher among young adults and among those who used social media several times daily. Natural connections are achieved through in-person relationships, and not direct messaging on Instagram. Ironically, motive does matter as well, in the determination of whether social media usage causes loneliness. Researchers from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor concluded that “people who use social media for the motive of maintaining their relationships feel lonelier than those who spend the same amount of time on social media for other reasons,” even after adjusting for family and spouse! The irony is indeed uncanny.

Addiction, Dopamine Dependence, and Instant Gratification

Managing the impact of social media as a behavioral quandary would have been a simpler undertaking. But realizing that attachment to social media might actually turn out to be a neurological problem that stems from chemical addition, completely changes the way we assess the problem, and subsequently must determine the approach of any possible amelioration. While social media usage has not been characterized as an addictive disorder yet by government officials or health institutions, science is certainly pointing in that direction and research is bringing us closer and closer to that watershed moment. Whether this will necessitate policy is dubious, considering that nicotine has been declared addictive for decades,yet followed by no attempt to outlaw cigarettes. To understand the addictive potential of social media, a discussion is warranted. At the center of this is the brain’s reward system, which is stimulated when one ingests substances such as drugs and alcohol or performs activities such as browsing social media, shopping, and gambling. When this reward system is stimulated, the brain releases dopamine, which is the chemical responsible for feelings of pleasure. Over time, and with repeated use, the brain can become overstimulated and can seek out these experiences and substances in order to feel the same pleasure and happiness again and again. But of course, with the process of “tolerance” at work, receptors need increasing doses of the stimulant to be excited, and the brain gradually demands more substance to stimulate the release of dopamine, requiring the user to spend even more time on social media. This is the quintessential mechanism of addiction.

Stanford University physiatrist and addiction expert Anne Lembke has done extensive research on the additive impact of social media usage. Lembke argues that rather than giving us pleasure itself, as is commonly thought, dopamine motivates us to do things we think will bring us pleasure. Since it is the brain’s major reward and pleasure neurotransmitter, dopamine is what drives us to seek pizza when we’re hungry and sex when we’re aroused. The more we use social media, the more we become dependent on that usage, and the worse our mood gets once we are faced with restrictions. This certainly explains the tantrums teenagers throw when their parents limit their social media usage. In Lembke’s terms, “With cocaine, you run out of money, but TikTok is indefatigable!”

But this discussion on the addictiveness of social media lends itself to a wider conversation on the overwhelming modern scourge of instant gratification. It is natural and healthy to pursue enjoyment. Human beings have always pursued pleasure and put in effort to achieve a moment of happiness, be it a good meal, or a moment of leisure or sexual fulfillment. Pleasure has always positioned itself throughout the human experience as a means to achieving a modicum of coping with ongoing struggles and pains that man has consistently faced. It was a way of recharging in order to get right back to it, so to speak. In other words, it was a means, and never the goal in and of itself. Man always had the horizons to turn his face to, and always believed in and accepted the validity of an afterlife where virtue would be rewarded, and true happiness would be achieved. Almost all religions taught that only the one who demonstrated true perseverance through the calamities of life would attain to a sublime state in the hereafter. It was always accepted that any moment of joy in this world is but an approximation of ultimate bliss that can only be achieved in the afterlife.

This is a far cry from our perceptions of happiness in the modern age. Happiness is something to be pursued here and now. It is not only attainable in this world but also indispensable. Without it, one can never function or operate. It is to be pursued, and consequently, expected. It is the goal of every goal and the end of all endeavors. The “pursuit of happiness” after it has historically been the means to a higher end, became the end in and of itself. But life is not designed to offer us joy. It is designed to test us, stretch us, and push us to the limit. There is no fairness about it, and subsequently, there is no real joy about it. Only occasional comforts to help us cope and keep marching forward. Life, essentially, is a slog and if one could admit that and take comfort in knowing that we are not isolated cases suffering in silence, and know that we're not alone in the daily tragedies, paradoxically, we would be happier. But modern culture gives heed to no such archaic nonsense. Happiness is to be expected and demanded, instantaneously. I’m entitled to it. It's my birthright! And at the very core of this saga is social media. It precipitated a constant dopamine high that we got so used to and have come to expect every minute of every day. All I need to do is endlessly scroll through my social media feed, firing up my brain receptors waiting excitedly for the next image, or colorful picture, or funny video, or scandalous post, to produce the dopamine that I need so much. And gradually, that expectation is expanded beyond social media into the happenings of life itself. Every occurrence needs to be maximally pleasurable, every meal maximally delicious, every relationship maximally fulfilling, and every experience maximally rewarding.

But there is a dark side to all of this. This dopamine rush and unyielding lust for pleasure has severe consequences. We used to be resilient and tenacious, and we learned over the centuries how to handle pain and accept inconvenience with fortitude. We didn’t always see the wisdom in our suffering, but we knew that it still existed, and we turned our faces to the Creator seeking patience and graceful resignation. We coped and overcame with dignity. In fact, we assumed that no growth happens without some suffering. Muscles need to be literally torn to grow. Labor is bloody, but engenders blossoming life. Forests will burn to fertilize the soil, giving way to a more lush landscape and healthier trees. Under the rather depressing landscape of pain, we always assumed that hope was brewing subterraneously.

Lamentably, this spirit came to an unfortunate end during the age of social media instant gratification. Because the world is incapable of granting us optimum happiness every minute of every day, and because being happy is not really a birthright, we are more miserable than ever, more fragile than ever, and more brittle than ever. Our lack of resilience leads us to constantly avoid any form of discomfort, or effort. We want everything ready-made, and optimized for our consumption. Food that is healthy but doesn’t taste great is dismissed. Long nights of studying to pursue a prosperous career are replaced with the desire to get one’s videos viral on YouTube Shorts. Botox injections, nose jobs, gastric bypasses and liposuctions are now more relevant than monitoring one’s diet and traditional exercise techniques. We can’t enjoy poetry or meaningful art. Even the movies had to adjust. Motion pictures with a complex plot do not garner success at the box office anymore, because they take effort and time to watch and process. I need my dopamine high now! And the result is apparent in the type of film that most people enjoy nowadays, the brainless Marvels and the DC Comics and their likes, with all the explosions and the vivid colors and the predictably superficial storylines. No more Shawshank Redemptions for us, I suppose. But aside from the movies, instant gratification hurts family relations. Nothing is the same anymore. Every family member is sitting in their room consumed by their social media feed. It's easier and certainly generates more dopamine than traditional family bonding. To the social-media-addicted brain, even family gatherings seem so tedious that they feel like a detracted chore.

More ominously, there are even darker consequences of the lust for instant gratification. Social media culture has not only been detrimental to our fulfillment, but it drastically obliterated our attention spans. Studies conducted by the TikTok corporation itself on its own users have shown that people on average spend about 3.3 seconds on each video! Meaning that these videos are only 22.2% completed when the viewer decides to scroll. The fast-paced scrolling is evidence of the rapidly deteriorating attention spans of the youth. This is to say, that the already compromising brevity of social media videos that made no sense in the first place, is now not enough to feed the dopamine dependence and fit within the disintegrating attention span of young people. The average attention span of humans has decreased from 12 seconds to 8.25 seconds in the last two decades. This is literally more than a second less than a goldfish, at 9 seconds! And why is this so foreboding? Imagine the consequences of a severely shortened attention span on learning, or relationships, or hard work or religious devotion? With an unfettered lust for dopamine, compounded by a very short attention span, how could one possibly put up with the formidable demands of years of college education, or long working hours? How would one be able to manage relationship expectations or the requirements of religious commitments? How could one possibly muscle their way through the intricacies of theology and finesse the arduous path of spiritual growth? No wonder that when asked which industries most attract them or are most promising for their future careers, Gen-Z respondents, in a Samsung-conducted study, overall said entertainment and media! In their book "The Diseasing of America's Children," John Rosemond and Bose Ravenel argue that many ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) diagnoses and treatments involve unnecessary medical interventions. They say that the real issue is the inability to focus and pay attention. You could argue that one of the main factors contributing to decreased attention spans is the corporate push to maximize dopamine dependence in youth and adults. On top of this, parents are to blame by allowing these predators to prey on their children’s brains.

Neurological Changes

Thus far, we have taken a closer look at the consequences of social media overconsumption through the lens of behavioral and psychological outcomes. It is necessary to ascertain whether these findings are compatible with actual neurological research on the impact of social media on the brain. After all, if social media has the purported addictive effect, it would be apparent in neurological studies and research, particularly Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or f-MRI. To understand this further, a discussion on neuroimaging concerning addiction research is warranted. In the last few years, f-MRI has emerged as a powerful instrument in substance abuse research, providing us with invaluable perspectives into the effects of illicit drugs on the brain. It has drastically improved our understanding of how the brain is impacted by such drugs. Among the areas of the brain impacted, according to f-MRI, are the regions related to executive function, reward, memory, and stress. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), basal ganglia, and extended amygdala are particularly implicated in substance abuse and other types of addictive behaviors.

While research is still in its early stages and requires larger and more long-term longitudinal examinations, preliminary studies that conducted neuroimaging on the brains of young people exposed to social media on a regular basis suggest that the brains of adolescent individuals who regularly check their social media may undergo structural changes. Researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill conducted f-MRI scans on 169 sixth and seventh graders who use multiple social media outlets on a regular basis. The study was conducted over three years, and by the end of it, researchers had discovered evidence that suggested an association between frequent social media use and tangible changes in the function of the adolescent brain. The authors of the study specifically stated that their f-MRI studies demonstrated a certain type of hyperactivity in the amygdala and insula in young people who regularly use social media, compelling them to pursue gratifying stimuli in their environment. Additionally, the authors of the study clearly indicated that, “the motivational salience of social contexts may undermine adolescents’ ability to engage in cognitive control and, subsequently, to regulate their behaviors. Consequently, repeated exposure to digital social rewards (e.g., notifications or likes) may increase neural reactivity to reward-related cues, reducing adolescents’ ability to resist urges to check social media.”

These findings and many others point in the direction of a possible link between social media consumption and, not only addictive behavior but literally structural changes in the human brain. Of course, the results are still premature to unequivocally indicate a casual relationship, or to establish that the possible neurological changes are in fact irreversible. It's clear to many, however, that science is headed in the direction of establishing such a link, even if we’re not fully there yet. How soon such findings will become accepted science will likely be determined by anything but science itself. The legal and cultural climate in the US, and the Western World in general, are such that academic researchers are always heavily concerned with reputation blemish or possible legal repercussions about statements they made that are not fully corroborated and peer-reviewed to the fullest. And in the wake of this anxiety, some truths are delayed, or worse, abandoned. Even if such truths are ultimately adopted, the realities they articulate may have already taken an irrevocable hold over society that makes possible change very evasive. After all, justice delayed is justice denied. This, compounded with the omnipresence of social media companies and their formidable influence, might make the truth about these outlets as elusive as ever. It took us decades of scientific research and legal battles to link tobacco to cancer or alcohol to 200 diseases, and yet, both are still commercially available and widely (ab)used, with no abatement in sight. If science is not followed by public and political will to change, it is moot.

A Culture of Comparison

During my elementary and middle school years, my parents were very keen on my academic excellence and that of my siblings. In high school, they loosened their grip a bit, without giving up on their regular admonitions and exhortations. I remember, that every time I didn’t get the best grades, my natural tendency was to justify that to my parents by saying that most kids in the class got worse grades than me! My dad would always say: if you’re going to compare yourself with others, then at least look up to those who are better than you! Tough advice that is not easy to follow, for sure. Comparing ourselves to those who are worse than us is easier because it won’t require effort or necessitate action. It just makes us feel better. Years passed, and I was blessed with kids of my own. As a parent, I would have expectations and pose restrictions, to which their response was always the same: why can’t we do this when everyone else does it?! Why do we have to follow the rules when no one else does? And I would always say: well, every family has its own culture and values, and these are ours. One of the remedies that my wife and I used over the years to rectify this potential problem of comparison was to always travel internationally. What this did to our children, aside from making them global citizens, was to expand the “scope” of comparison, and to demonstrate to them how other people live away from their American bubble. When they compared themselves collectively with all the kids and people they met over the years, they realized that the rules imposed on them were not particularly unreasonable, since many all over the world abide by them.

Interestingly, in all of this, the notion of comparing ourselves with others is taken for granted. We have to make those comparisons one way or another. It's impossible for us to not desire to speak like our friends, or dress like our neighbors, or behave in accordance with the dictates of our environment. But when we compare ourselves with the collective spirit of our generation, we’re able to sift through different behavioral patterns and see the good moments and the bad, the highs and the lows, and discern for ourselves what needs to be followed and what needs to be abandoned, in a manner that is inspired by our faith, our moral compass and value set. This real-world, face-to-face process of interactionism always leads to healthy results, provided that one is not exclusively surrounded by wicked people. It's tempered by constant scrutiny and permeated my regular corrective mechanisms that ultimately make comparisons with others work in our favor.

Ominously, none of this applies to social media comparisons. Our posts on social media do not represent a comprehensive timeline of our lives, no matter how habitual they are. And accordingly, they do not constitute an accurate representation of how we live. They do not speak to who we are, but only what we decided to do or say at that frozen moment in time, when we deemed a particular word or action worthy of sharing with the world under fully controlled circumstances. Our pictures, videos and posts on social media are not the product of a paparazzi moment that shows both the unflattering and the laudatory sides of ourselves. They are highly stylized self-portraits, produced and directed by our proverbial publicists. And as such, they tell people what we want them to see. When one sees a barrage of vacation pictures for a couple in Hawaii, it doesn't portray an accurate narrative of how that couple actually is, or even how the vacation itself was. I remember once we were out with the kids, and I ended up reprimanding one of them scathingly for something they did. 5 minutes later, another one asked us to pose for a group photo. I put myself back together to avoid ruining their evening, and decided to reluctantly put a smile on my face, although I had not even gotten over my anger yet. And thus it was, the perfect family photoshoot was generated and shared with the world, courtesy of Instagram, and it didn’t matter that I went back to frowning after picture time was over! Little do people know the real stories behind the posts, pictures and videos they see on social media, but they compare nonetheless.

But this is precisely the point. Humans are intrinsically social creatures, and the tendency to compare ourselves to others is natural. But in this particular case, when we possess the tendency to witness people on social media who we judge (sometimes subconsciously or even unconsciously) as being better than us in many different ways, it often has a negative mental and emotional impact on our health. When we see people post about a delicious meal, we think they’re always enjoying their time-out. It doesn't tell us about the last meal that precipitated food poisoning. When we see vacation videos, or lovey-dovey couples, we think they’re just perfect, and we start comparing that moment that we saw on social media with our collective assessment of our own lives, erroneously concluding that we are miserable, while they are happy. Science supports these common-sense observations as well. Researchers in the UK conducted studies on adolescent consumption of social media and found strong associations, particularly in females, between early usage (as early as 10 years of age) and overall reduction in well-being with age progression, as a result of extensive comparisons.

Living Vicariously

Paradoxically, comparing ourselves to others has, occasionally, a completely different side to it. Not everyone who makes comparisons on social media ends up depressed and unhappy. Many actually end up deriving pleasure from the mere comparison and start seeing themselves living the experiences of the person they follow, without even engaging in those experiences, granting themselves a false, but temporarily fulfilling sense of accomplishment. This is the meaning of living vicariously. We follow certain people on social media in order to live through them and find a thrill through their experiences. I don’t need to travel anymore because this Instagram influencer posts about their travels. I don’t need to exercise anymore because this Facebook celebrity always posts about her gym routines. The excitement of cooking a variety of foods can be at least partially achieved by following chefs on TikTok. And in this ethos, one’s life becomes as bland as ever, but that’s not an issue, as long as they follow “spicy” people on social media. In the unfortunate cyber realities of our modern existence, this behavior is benignly called living vicariously, but if it happened in the real world, we would call it malignant stalking, and it would be a crime!

While it's not unhealthy to occasionally seek enjoyment and inspiration through the lives of others, living vicariously can be exceptionally harmful. This lifestyle choice that is exacerbated by social media leads to a sense of disconnection from one’s own life and experiences. It might prevent you from fully engaging with your own dreams and goals. Why travel, try new recipes, engage in hobbies, memorize the Quran, or meet new people, if you can do all of that through the careful stalking of someone else’s life on social media? Additionally, living vicariously can ultimately lead to feelings of low self-esteem, compounded by severe inadequacy. Furthermore, it leads to the avoidance of personal growth and causes one to grow accustomed to risk aversion. Living vicariously through others might also impact personal relationships. If you are always experiencing life through others on social media, it might be challenging to form authentic connections with people in the real world. Last, but certainly not least, living vicariously can sometimes blur the line between your authentic self and the persona you adopt through others. At some point or the other, the line between who you really are and who you think you want to become can be drastically blurred. People invest so much time in communicating to the world that their identity is an aspiring doctor/lawyer/professor etc.. Hours are spent crafting and changing their user name, photos, and bio, making sure their feed is up to date to reflect a certain aesthetic but there’s nothing authentic about any of it. This generation is trained to perfect its outward image first and then spend maybe 5% of that effort towards actually building those qualities and putting in real work.

Cyberbullying

Bullying is as old as humanity itself, where the strong always preyed on the weak. It's essentially the result of an unequal power dynamic, that gets exploited by the one who is capable of operating with impunity. And it happens in different ways. Sometimes in the form of physical violence or verbal abuse, and other times through spreading rumors, humiliation, and exclusion. Predictably, It's also usually prolonged, since most bullies are repeat offenders, and widespread, where a bully usually abuses multiple individuals. One of the unforeseeable consequences of excessive usage of social media, especially among young people, is that bullying has taken a new and pervasive form, collectively known as cyberbullying. For the purposes of this essay, researchers define the scope of this modern phenomenon that didn’t exist before social media as including, “harassment (insults or threats), spreading rumors, impersonation, outing and trickery (gaining an individual’s trust and then using online media to distribute their secrets) or exclusion (excluding an individual from activities). The Pew Research Center conducted a 2022 survey that showed that nearly half of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 (46%) reported experiencing at least one form of cyberbullying on social media. This literally means that one out of every two teens is sure to experience cyberbullying in some form as they use social media. Imagine that someone told parents about a particular playground, where one out of two kids experiences bullying, will they ever allow their kids to go there once? Or use it regularly?

But cyberbullying is not just another form of bullying. It's far more menacing and more persisting. Before social media, bullying ended when one withdrew from the environment that precipitated bullying. But on social media, the dynamics of cyberbullying are much harder to contain. Insults and name-calling hurled at someone may be attached to that person’s name indefinitely, and unflattering or doctored pictures can stay on the internet forever. Additionally, this is not something that only hurts kids or adolescents. A study from the University of Nottingham and the University of Sheffield in the U.K., found that “8 out of 10 of the 320 adults surveyed across three different universities had been victims of cyberbullying in the last six months; about a quarter reported feeling humiliated or ignored, or being the subject of online gossip, at least once a week.” This data is indeed quite clear, and the human cost is stunning.

Victims of cyberbullying generally experience lower self-esteem, increased suicidal ideation, and various mental health pathologies, including anxiety, depression, and ill-temperament. Additionally, associations between cyberbullying and anxiety have been shown in academic studies, as do associations between cyberbullying and reports of depression, self-harm and suicidality. Furthermore, those who experienced cyberbullying were found to be over four times as likely to report thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts compared to those who did not encounter such harassment, according to another study. And to avoid conflation with other casualties, adjustments were made to account for other influential factors such as family conflict, racial discrimination, parental monitoring, and school support, which are known to impact thoughts of suicide and attempts. Yet, despite adjusting for all these factors, the associative link between cyberbullying and suicidal ideation remained strong! What’s astounding is that with regard to pretty much any type of threat, even if it's remote and unlikely, parents tend to be very cautious and vigilant, and sometimes overly protective of their children. Only when it comes to social media use, despite all the possible harms, including suicide ideation resulting from cyberbullying, that parents seem to be drastically less concerned.

Since the advent of the internet, the already pervasive dilemma of sexual exploitation, particularly for children, was only exacerbated. It created an efficient platform for predators to connect with children, coerce or goad them into sharing sexually explicit material or engaging in sexual acts, and post such material for the consumption of other perpetrators. According to a widely cited New York Times investigation, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) reported cases of sexual exploitation of children on the Internet have seen a 15,000% increase in the last 15 years, tripling between 2017 and 2019 alone. This roughly coincides with the same period that witnessed the rise of social media platforms. Abusers have grown adept at exploiting emerging technologies to build communities around the harm of children, and social media has become a darling for such activities. Just to put things in perspective, Facebook reported that it removed 16.9 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content, and 1.8 million pieces of child nudity and physical abuse content, during the third quarter of 2023 alone! Shockingly, Facebook also noted that more than 90% of the reported child sexual abuse material (CSAM) content on its platforms was the “same as or visibly similar to previously reported content”. What this means is that once a piece of CSAM content is uploaded, it is shared again and again by predatory users, with each subsequent incident requiring its own report and its own individual action by platforms. This is further complicated by predators editing and distorting photos and videos to evade law enforcement tags and anti-CSAM technology. In a recent UNICEF conducted survey, children who were subjected to sexual exploitation were asked how they were targeted the last time it happened. 53% of participants said that it happened on social media platforms, and 27% said it happened while they were using online gaming.

However, sharing CSAM online is not the only problem. Increasingly, online predators take advantage of unsuspecting teens by posing as flirty peers on a social media app, shower them with flattery to entice them to send compromising photos or videos of themselves, or worse, meet them in the real world. Predators then use those pictures, videos, or encounters as leverage to demand more graphic videos or even money, a form of blackmail known as “sextortion.” As one survivor put it in the above-cited UNICEF report, “Parents are not aware that the children in their house are being groomed, with the house alarm on and the guard dog outside.” Many kids caught up in the dark webs of this malignant reality end up getting kidnapped and trafficked as sex slaves! In 2020 alone, the NCMEC reported 3,000 cases of social media-related kidnappings. This is in the US alone, and It's what got reported. The real numbers could be drastically more staggering.

And if you think this is enough to exacerbate our woes, think again. Reports are now proliferating that online AI-generated CSAM is going to be the new frontier of online battles against abusers in the upcoming years. Teens need not engage in risky behavior on social media platforms anymore to be victimized by predators. They just need to post one picture of themselves, and the rest is history. AI platforms can now process that photo into CSAM in a matter of seconds, making it available to millions on the internet. In fact, federal authorities receive tens of millions of CSAM reports each year from such platforms as Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok, and the system is already overwhelmed. Imagine how compounded the problem will be when AI-generated CSAM becomes the new norm. But the more federal authorities redirect resources to combat AI CSAM, the less attention will be allocated to the already strained mechanisms of combating actual child abuse online.

And the human cost of all of this abuse is enormously devastating. While these harmful images and videos are often the only incriminating evidence of victims’ exploitation and abuse that law enforcement officials can use to prosecute perpetrators, the rampant sharing of such material causes re-victimization each time the image of their abuse is viewed. In a 2017 survey led by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 67% of abuse survivors said the distribution of their images impacts them differently than the hands-on abuse they suffered; the distribution never ends, and the images are permanent. Additionally, children who have been subjected to online sexual abuse are known to suffer from lasting effects. According to one report, the host of long-term consequences includes a significantly high risk for later post-traumatic stress and other anxiety symptoms depression and suicide attempts, behavioral problems, including physical aggression and non-compliance, higher levels of risk behaviors, problematic sexual behavior, including high levels of promiscuity, low performance on psychometric tests, school mal performance and high school drop-out rates, substance abuse/dependence, high risk of delinquency, high rates of teen pregnancy (and the tendency to impregnate teens), obesity and eating disorders, physical health disorders including fibromyalgia, severe premenstrual syndrome, chronic headaches, irritable bowel syndrome and host of others, and the list goes on.

Enabling More Control Over Us

Imagine allowing a complete stranger to come into your house, and stay there indefinitely. The stranger makes themselves comfortable as if they own the house, and starts giving you instructions on how to live, how to spend your money, what to buy, where to eat, and where to travel. The stranger dictates your political views and fashion preferences. The stranger even becomes the source of your religious knowledge and inspiration. And over the course of time, that stranger, while bringing his questionable friends to your house, gradually isolates you from family, friends, and real-life experiences, and forces you to lock yourself up in the basement as their slave. Obviously sounds inconceivable, yet we allow it every day when we let social media govern the affairs of our lives in this age. This stranger that we allowed to come into the most intimate, private corners of our existence is not there to assist and help but to rule.

The way social media platforms started a couple of decades ago, its premise was not sinister. They were used to connect with friends and family that live far from us. The notion of posting our birthday wishes and Ramadan mubaraks for everyone else to see has always been peculiar, but at least the underlying purposes were clear and simple. Today, social media has absolutely nothing to do with family connectedness. In fact, it's not hyperbole to state that our social media activities are now about anything but family connections. Modern-day algorithms have designed social media feeds and posts to differentiate us into “bubbles”. These bubbles stratify users based on interests. Liberals, bikers, waffle lovers, pro-Israel diehards, gym rats, cheerleader dance-watching creeps, and the like. Of course, there is an overlap between the bubbles, but based on our initial usage, activities, GPS location and even audio conversations (social media app user agreements allow for those companies to collect data about our conversations as well that get processed by big algorithmic computer models) social media apps will have you subsumed to one particular algorithmic category or the other, so that most of what you see on your feed is not family and friends anymore, but posts produced by users of a similar interest from your friends list, or - most importantly for their purposes - companies that produce a product you are likely to buy. And as you get more and more exposed to posts, pictures, and videos produced by members of your “stratum”, not only that you will be more than likely to act on your preferences by, let’s say, making the next purchase or paying for the next subscription service, but to also espouse a host of social, political and historical views that are characteristics of that stratum. In other words, social media bubbles do not only respond to our existing biases and predispositions, but accentuate them, or create new ones altogether.

As human beings, we’re constantly changing. We evolve and change our preferences, ideas, and convictions. Some of our values could obviously be immutable, but many of our positions change over time. We experience the world, interact with people, travel, step out of our comfort zones, allow other ideas to challenge our own, and let ourselves grow, in the most real sense of the word. Those of us who keep an open mind and let themselves nuance their views and adjust to the ever-changing world without compromising their values are the ones who usually do best. And a little bit of skepticism can be healthy. We often question what we see, search for alternatives, verify and corroborate, and we’re better off for it. In reality, very little of these dynamics take place on social media, as a result of its structural makeup. Being with “like-minded” people, getting exposed to mostly the same ideas all the time, and meeting no challenge for the most part, leads to the solidification of our ideas, good or bad, into permanence. This happens because of the sheer exposure to those ideas within the bubble, or the echo chamber as some like to call it until one starts to think that better ideas simply don’t exist, and if other ideas did exit, they’re bad and offensive. And consequently, anyone who espouses those opposing ideas is automatically removed from the bubble, or canceled, using prevailing lingo, leading to further isolation and further homogenizing of the flow of information within the bubble. In other words, social media reinforces our biases, and this view is supported by ongoing research.

This may lead to catastrophic results. Not only that, within the confinements of our prospective echo chambers we become prone to making drastic choices, from purchasing decisions to voting, but more ominously, social media begins to train us, where our thoughts, feelings, and motivations gradually become shaped by powerful technology designed to keep us engaged, and enslaved. And surreptitiously, social media sneaks up on us, teaching us new behaviors and warped values about what’s important, behaviors and values that stick, even when they’re not good for us. When algorithms tell us what we want to believe, we become more polarized, and shared understanding across society simply erodes. While more research needs to be empirically done to link the two, it's not a surprise that the US has witnessed its absolute most polarizing days since the inception of the union, over the last two decades, which also coincided with the rise of social media platforms.

The impact of social media echo chambers can also take very twisted turns. The more one spends on certain platforms, surrounded by “like-minded” people, consuming the same nonsense every day until it becomes accepted truth, the more one would be willing to act, at their peril. A case in point is social media beauty standards. Millions follow Instagram models, gym influencers, and beauty queens. Their collective behavior imposed a particular beauty standard that is impossible to meet without plastic surgery and other procedures. And what did this lead to? An overwhelming desire among young social media users to find ways to meet that standard, thinking it's the only way to go. According to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (ASPS), in 2020, nearly 230,000 cosmetic surgeries and nearly 140,000 non-invasive cosmetic procedures were performed on teens ages 13-19. The days of the “Sephora kids” when teens were known for the excessive use of skin care products to “look perfect”, are nearly over, and now we entered the era of “corporeal mutilation”. According to the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS), there has been a significant increase in demand for facial plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures in 2022, similar to the rise in 2021. The survey also found that 75% of facial plastic surgeons reported a rise in the number of patients under the age of 30 who are seeking injections and cosmetic procedures. This is mostly owed to social media apps, particularly TikTok. Consequently, trends like lip flips, nose jobs, blepharoplasties, and “Brotox” are incredibly popular on social media. Brazilian butt lifts, or BBLs, are known to be quite harmful and even sometimes fatal. Yet, BBLs have witnessed a significant rise in popularity, despite those dangers.

But social media manages to take control of our behavior in a variety of other ways too, albeit less threatening. Firstly, when we are bombarded with notifications, our brains light up and the lust for dopamine compels us to “check” those notifications. But ultimately, this compromises our ability to attend to what is important, from school, to work to family. Furthermore, the endless content produced on social media creates an overwhelming amount of demand and want, and we can end up clicking and scrolling, and mindlessly consuming that content, ultimately, draining completely of our energy and leaving us with lethargy and stupor. Additionally, when we’re frequently exposed to negative content on social media, fear and outrage can become the norm, obliterating our innate sense of goodness, and we end up losing confidence in the virtuousness of humanity and looking at everyone suspiciously.

Who makes Money from Social Media and How

One of the biggest questions users ask is: how do social media corporations make money when one can use their products for free? According to Statista, as of the 4th quarter of 2023, META, formerly Facebook, had 2.96 billion monthly active users. Twitter (now X) stopped reporting monthly active users, but the last count in the first quarter of 2019 was 330 million, while LinkedIn had about 900 million monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2023. Most of those users open their accounts for free and get to use most of the platform’s services without charge. How is it then that large companies such as META, X, or TikTok make their money? The answer is simple: advertisement. It has been said time and again: if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product! Many use social media for free and keep saying to themselves: I don’t understand how those idiots allow billions to use their platforms and have fun while charging them nothing! But the real transaction here isn’t the user receiving fun or pleasure in the form of a free service that offers a needed respite from the tensions of the day, at META or TikTok’s expense. Rather, it's the social media corporation offering the user as a sacrifice on the altar of advertisement gods. Social media companies make money by giving access to advertisement companies to the trillions and trillions of terabytes that were collected from their “free” users. In other words, social media corporations, almost quite literally, rent your eyeballs to their advertisers.

Most of us still remember the TV days, when for every half-hour episode of popular TV shows, such as Everybody Loves Raymond, a viewer would be forced to watch, on average, 8 minutes worth of ads. In general, for every hour of TV programming, viewers had to watch 18-23 minutes worth of ads, amounting to about 30% or more of their watching time. This is why paid streaming services became so popular. They gave people more time to enjoy their favorite TV shows without interruption from intrusive ads. But the key word here is “paid”. They’ll get you one way or the other. And then came social media and everything changed. Now advertisement companies not only have access to astronomically more users, but also their individualized behavior and personal tastes, making advertising to them particularly geared to their needs, wants, and desires, saving on cost and increasing efficiency. Based on age, gender, political views, region, and a variety of other factors, advertisement companies can now tailor their ads to be a near-perfect fit to maximize purchasing potential. And Social media companies are all the most profitable for it! There’s a reason why META’s 10-K filings with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) use the acronym ARPU, which means average revenue per user! META’s ARPU at the end of 2022 was $39.63. That’s nearly $40 that META makes off every user on its platforms! Now you can understand why META had a market capitalization of over $1 trillion at its height.

But advertisement is not the only source of revenue for social media companies. META for example recognized the potential risk of putting all their eggs in one basket and relying solely on advertisement for revenue generation. This prompted Mark Zuckerberg to launch a new initiative at Meta, eventually aimed at the domination of what is dubbed as the "Metaverse." Whether this new strategy will pan out is yet to be determined, since advertising remains META’s highest source of revenue, by a long margin (in 2022 alone, Meta's advertising revenue was nearly $114 billion.) Twitter, now X, tried other strategies as well. The company now “sells” the blue "verified" checkmark system. These verified checkmarks used to be granted to high-profile users who went through a certain verification process. Now they’re included in X’s premium subscription, which costs $8 a month per user. In addition to the astounding advertisement revenue, Google for instance also makes money from selling space on their cloud storage, or by mailing you a physical photo album. LinkedIn has a premium subscription service that enables users to have better professional access and see who looked them up. Of course, it's not just social media companies that make money on social media. So-called content creators, and influencers, can make a lot of money as well, but it's mostly advertisement income still.

Essentially, this is the behemoth industry that we average individuals are dealing with. We’re not just grappling with the unpleasant consequences of a stranger that entered our home and took over our lives, but a foreign army that occupied not only our homes but our entire existence and relentlessly ruled over our destinies. And the irony in all of this is that while most of what we get from these platforms, barring some limited benefits, is destruction, we are being used as income-generating patsies, slaving ourselves away so that the architects of the Matrix fill their pockets and accounts. With all of this in mind, though, and in the interest of honesty and objectivity, it is not yet time to draw a direct causal relationship between the aforementioned perils and social media usage. More empirical studies, surveys, and research need to be done to conclude the causality unequivocally. Meanwhile, it is safe to infer that the data at least indicates a preponderance of evidence pointing us in the direction of great harm associated with social media usage, despite its spotty record of benefit (something I will discuss later in this essay.) For us parents, teachers, educators, mentors, and people of faith in general, the above substantive data should be enough to at least elevate the threat level about social media to red, and to begin conversations pertaining to the examination of ways to either dramatically cut down on its usage, or cut it out of our lives altogether.

An Islamic Perspective

Thus far, we attempted to objectively assess and analyze the effects of social media on its heavy users, from scientific and statistical angles. We showcased the potentially harmful ramifications of excessive social media consumption, ranging from the heavy mental health costs, isolation, addiction, and neurological changes, to the perils of the culture of comparison and living vicariously through others, cyberbullying, sexploitation, and giving up control of our lives to social media corporations. I even discussed how profits are made off of us on social media to raise the alarm that perhaps we the users are the product that is being bought and sold. These are all important points. In essence, however, spiritual considerations inform my decision-making dynamic a lot more than the aforementioned domains. Islamic teachings are comprehensively didactic, not only in the sense of offering its followers a sensible list of what one ought to do or avoid but how to live one’s life to the fullest. For me, as a Muslim, this is the only undertaking that matters the most. To exert the needed effort to make oneself aware of the expectations of the divine and the prohibitions of the scriptures. If one believes that Islam offers its adherents a non-crooked path toward the fulfillment of a good life, then it logically follows that one ought to explore whether the usage of social media keeps us on that path or distracts us from it. Therefore, it's imperative for us to examine the Islamic perspective on the type of human activities that social media promotes and judge them against that backdrop. The reason I led the essay with the secular arguments was only in anticipation of the possible exposure of a wider, non-Muslim audience to the essay. One would not want others to dismiss the information shared here as a religiously motivated discourse.

Sharing our Good and Bad News with the World

In the Quran, Allah (SWT) engages us in a scathing portrait of the unbecoming behavior of a group of believers who suffer from a dangerous weakness in their character and frailty in their faith. Allah says:

وَإِذَا جَاءَهُمْ أَمْرٌ مِّنَ الْأَمْنِ أَوِ الْخَوْفِ أَذَاعُوا بِهِ

“And when they hear news of security or fear, they publicize it.” The issue that is being highlighted by this verse is the ubiquitous character flaw in many, who, upon receiving any type of news, whether it pertains to matters of prosperity or diversity, they feel compelled to spread such news and divulge it, as opposed to keeping it to themselves or releasing it in a calculated manner. In other words, they always feel the need to share what’s happening in their lives, whether good news or bad news, with others, without discretion or purpose. Their state of mind is: why not? Their motto is simple and quite disconcerting: whatever happens to me, I need to share it with the world. Essentially, the ayah was revealed in the context of believers who feel an urgency to share news in times of war with others, when it should have been kept under wraps, in order not to give people a false sense of hope or despair. But the essence of it still holds: one should always keep the details of their lives private, as a matter of principle, and sharing it needs to be the exception, and it needs to be measured and justified. Before sharing with others, one needs to decide who, when, and why. Not everything needs to be shared with everyone.

This ethic is clearly the exact opposite of modern-day social media modus operandi. The question in the minds of most social media users is not why I should share, but why I shouldn’t. People who use social media share information about their food, clothes, private dwellings, eating habits, relationships, religious practices, vacations, financial transactions, and politics, with anyone and everyone, without limitation or discretion. And the irony is that Islamic guidance is quite clear on the matter. Sharing one’s private information is the exception. As a matter of principle, one should always exercise discretion and release information to others in a controlled manner. In the hadith, the Messenger (PBUH) clearly stated:

اسْتَعِينُوا عَلَي قَضَاءِ حَوَائِجَكُمْ بِالْكِتْمَانِ

“Seek help in fulfilling your needs through discretion." Some suggest a different course of action when they refer to the ayah in surat ad-Duha, where Allah (SWT) says:

وَأَمَّا بِنِعْمَةِ رَبِّكَ فَحَدِّثْ

“And proclaim the blessings of your Lord.” At face value, the two statements may appear to be mutually exclusive. One suggests that we should keep the progress of our lives to ourselves, and the other encourages us to proclaim at least the blessings. But the scholars of Tafseer are clear on this. The ayah from surat ad-Duha lends itself to being thankful for God’s blessings, by showing gratitude, giving charity, acting generously, and ensuring that Allah’s blessings are not intentionally hidden from other people’s eyes, where one pretends to be poor or destitute. It doesn't instruct us to “proactively” go around and tell others how much we make or the blessings we enjoy. There’s an ocean of difference between showing practical gratitude for God’s blessings and bragging about them.

Argumentations, Contentions, and Debates

In our forms of expression on social media, we don’t just share what should have been kept private or spread uncorroborated stories, we also engage in the worst kind of egregious argumentation. In the Islamic tradition, this is not innocent fun. It's unlawful. The Messenger (PBUH) made it clear:

مَا ضَلَّ قَوْمٌ بَعْدَ هُدًى كَانُوا عَلَيْهِ إِلاَّ أُوتُوا الْجَدَلَ

“No people go astray after having followed the right guidance, except that they start indulging in hostile debates.” This is a sure path to misguidance. It damages relationships, hurts people, causes strife in society, and ultimately turns us into bullies. And it never ends with argumentation. Once debates start, they usually devolve into mockery and ad hominem attacks. It's the slippery slope that quickly becomes inevitable. Allah says:

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا يَسْخَرْ قَوْمٌ مِّن قَوْمٍ

“O you who have attained to faith, let not a people ridicule other people..” Any articulations that involve making fun of others, putting them down, and ridiculing them, are considered to be grave sins in the Islamic tradition. Clearly, unnecessary debates, heated arguments, and making fun of people are integral habits and essential qualities of social media interactions. They’re all incompatible with relational ethics in Islam.

Spreading Filth

Categories: Essays