Social Media as an Agenda-Setting Tool: How Social Media Is Defining the Reality of Younger Generations

Abstract

This paper examines social media as an agenda-setting tool that aims to shape a mediated reality for younger generations. Due to increased accessibility and exposure to social media, the voices and images therein are being infused and imprinted on the conscience of the younger generation during their formative years. Naively, they believe what they see and hear, oblivious to the influence these mediated voices and images have on them and their future. It is shaping their perceptions, personalities, characters, and choices as they grow, and social media reality is becoming their reality. The study revealed that the images and voices on social media are indeed a mediated reality masterminded by media establishments. These establishments are owned and/or controlled by global media lords. And that these lords have strategically crafted social media platforms not only as business entities for profit but also as channels to advance psychological warfare so that they can have full-spectrum dominance over the world population. Furthermore, the study revealed that with the onset of digital culture, the truth of God’s word is competing with the forms of truth on social media, which is significantly influencing the younger generation. Given that the majority of them have very limited knowledge of the truth that is founded on God’s word, they readily embrace the salient points on social media as truth and reality, and these are shaping who they are becoming. This study aims to raise awareness among the younger generation and the church, a partner institution, about the urgent need to forge a strategic partnership to share God’s word and its message on social media, thereby securing the younger generation with its truth. Otherwise, we could have a generation in the near future that does not know the truth, but rather a distorted form of it. The study utilizes the agenda-setting theory and draws from secondary data.