As a matter of a current world state observations, it is evident that social media has linked the entire world, where most of its population feeds of it daily and where it has become a significant part of people's lives.
People scroll for hours and hours through countless web pages, web applications and mobile social media applications.
And it's factual and verifiable to say that all of that has major significance in shaping people's minds and opinions.
And while that has its benefits in spreading good words, trends, innovations, technologies, human experiences, real life videos from anywhere in the world, -you name it-, it also has its bad effects and sinister side and turn to it, as do a lot of things in life.
The easiness to use, the ability to reach anyone and the existence of platforms to share opinions and gather followers can combine to make a deadly combination.
The ways these mechanisms can propagate and diffuse radical, extreme and dangerous ideas is indeed a curious case and something worth studying and analyzing...
With just some superficial analysis and by just taking a glimpse of the surface, it can be quite apparently seen that the many aspects of social media added up to their effects on human psychology are the main driving factor for the spread of radicalization.
Social media presents a lot of information and data and with that constant screen bombarding, the lure of radical thoughts which are generally presented in a confident way, and have that energy of certainty and a big intellectual commitment to defend them can easily sway people and souls to their side.
This can specifically target and affect people who are quite 'lost' or to be more specific indecisive people who are not so sure about their ideas and that have the right profile to accept those radical ideas.
Social media platforms also work in favor of radicals and extremists with its grouping and gathering effects, an interesting and quite spoken about phenomenon can be observed here; as a matter of fact, social media has that effect of enforcing people's opinions by providing positive signals and a positive feedback, and in the process create a sense of group and sectarianism, and in a lot of cases it creates certainties that are not necessarily very conform with the real world, as these groups and fanatics tend to overestimate their numbers and impact on the real world.
This then eventually creates a sense of conflict and confusion about the place of their ideas in the real world which can then be seen in actions or debates and discussions and real world translations of that exiting conflict between these ideas and their holders and the rest of the existing society.
And since there's an exponential or to better say a snowball effect with these platforms, you can go from singular individuals to groups to larger portions of the population all over the world.
And it's also needless to say that the same psychological effects and patterns come to play on this sort of 'macro level' of this phenomenon.
And this is where things tend to become observable, and where real life consequences of social media start to become evident and observable, and this is where discussions and actions appear as a counter-reaction and society starts to be affected.
The effects of social media on society are real and existing, and are definitely known in mainstream and official higher echelons of societal power, that's why terms and concepts such as 'fact checking' or 'fake news' came to light in the few recent years, proving in the process that social media platforms are one big player in the field of human exchange and its years of existence and experiences.
That's why these topics must get well rounded-up studies, and must be analyzed correctly, making their mechanisms, effects and patterns known to both the people and the authorities, in order to have a correctly functioning society that knows what it's doing and has the controllable aspects of its present and future in its hands.
