A lot of shifts and movements have taken place in the world of social media and how users are engaging with its platforms. The change was inevitable since a lot of users were discovering this new world every day. However, what most users, early ones in particular, can instantly point out is that the room for discussions and freely exchanging opinions was getting smaller and smaller by the day. The vast realm of cyber space sometimes felt like a suffocating, surrounded with walls area where ideas are lost, and discussions stripped off its civilized tone. The place just turned into a big, noisy space where everyone shouts, and no body listens.

Nevertheless, out of all this noise, social media seems to be still causing preconceived conceptions to change and take a whole new direction, that is what a new research by Pew Research Center has found.

Influenced by the recent election in the United States, the center tried to find out the possibility of social media users changing their political stands because of their social media interactions and exposure. The study found that around “20 percent of social media users say they’ve modified their stance on a social or political issue because of material they saw on social media, and 17 percent say social media has helped to change their views about a specific political candidate.”

It was really interesting to see that the wheels of social media changing minds in play. In the study, users who reported changing their political stands have been asked to write in their words what actually led them to change their minds. For example, one of the users wrote “I saw a video on Reddit that ultimately swayed me from voting independent in this election to voting for Hillary Clinton.” While another one wrote “I thought Donald Trump was leaning one way on an issue and a friend posted something that was opposite of what I believe. This caused me to think less of him than I once I did.”

What seems to be happening here is an unconscious sway between opinions we thought we embraced and then drastically moved in a new direction, all because of something we read or see on social media. What happens in politics applies to many other walks of life; our social values, our cultural norms and customs, and most importantly, and dangerously maybe, our moral compass.

Social media, despite all its shortcoming, is a powerful tool. We have seen its heavy weight in so many incidents and examples, most recently in the very case of the American election in which the president-elect had successfully harbored the fruits of using social media in a powerful and smart way. Beneficial and socially powerful as may it gets, it is also a dangerous weapon. With every thing we read and see in the wild ocean of social media, as much as we need to keep an open mind, we need to develop an eye that is able to critique and distinguish between truths and lies, something easily said than done, I know, but at least we need to try.

— Saad Al-Dosari is a Saudi writer based in Jeddah.