Social media is a set of platforms where everyone is free to share their thoughts and opinions. Many people use social media for entertainment and to connect with friends and family. However, social media is a dangerous space filled with tons of fake news, conspiracy theories, scams, negative messages, and elaborate crimes.

Here are some reasons why you shouldn’t trust anything on social media:

Social media presents untrue images and information

Social media is where influencers post about their “perfect” lives. This includes posting their fit bodies and flawless lifestyles. However, their lives aren’t always as perfect as they appear to be. For example, many influencers might post pictures in a mansion, or pose with designer bags. However, in reality, that mansion might just be a hotel room, and the designer bags might be knockoffs. In other words, influencers are mostly lying and setting false expectations for viewers.

Moreover, many influencers’ super slim, unnatural, and edited bodies make viewers feel insecure about their fitness because they feel they can’t measure up. According to PsychCentral, many people are anxious about their physical appearance. Because of the influence of social media, they are constantly on diets, which leads to both mental and physical problems.

Social media is all about marketing

Social media primarily earns money by advertising to users, and selling users’ data to advertisement companies.This means that most information, including advertisements you see on social media, is personalized, designed, and customized specifically to fit your tastes in order to sell you something.

Moreover, influencers and celebrities make money by selling products to their followers. So, their information might be partially untrue, or tuned to fit their followers’ interest.

In other words, almost everything you see on social media is to get you to buy things.

Governments and trolls use social media for political manipulation

Many people use social media to get news, but social media is not the best place to do so. That is because social media is easily manipulated for political purposes.

During important times such as elections, social media is crowded with tons of propaganda and fake information. For example, in 2016, Russian organizations interfered in the US presidential election by spreading false information, especially about Democrats and Hillary Clinton. This helped lead to Trump’s victory in the election. This shows that social media manipulation can brainwash voters and even interfere with a country’s election outcome.

The Chinese government also spreads propaganda through social media. Over 200 influencers work with the communist government, and they share propaganda information through their page and disguise it as daily content. Most of these influencers are fluent in their targets’ languages, and some are even British or American.

One example is Honeypots, which are Chinese women who share their daily lives on social media. Their regular content isn’t political, but their content actually points to a specific direction–praising the Chinese government. This is dangerous because the Chinese government brainwashes people using these influencers’ content.

Uyghur influencer Anni Guli shares videos and photos on social media for propaganda purposes. The content she posts claims that the Chinese government doesn’t oppress or mistret Xinjiang people, even though there’s evidence that they persecuted Uyghurs. Because her content is often the exact same as reports by China Daily which is a media controlled by CCP, clearly her content is closely monitored and controlled by the government. The purpose behind these contents is to brainwash people into believing CCP’s propaganda.

Therefore, users should be more aware when using social media, since they receive propaganda or be brainwashed without noticing.

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Next time you’re scrolling through social media, beware of the content you see. Since most information on social media is either biased or manipulated for political purposes, it is hard to get reliable news from social media. Because social media is a platform full of dangerous information, and conspiracy theories, you shouldn’t believe anything on social media.