‘Social media’ is inherently a selfish medium.

Interpreting the Topic

The hinge is the word 'inherently'. Nobody disputes that social media hosts selfishness; the question is whether selfishness is essential to the medium — built into its architecture — or contingent on its current business model and our habits. Argue both sides with evidence, then resolve: selfish by design incentives, not by destiny.

Dimensions to Develop

• The selfish architecture: the attention economy monetises self-display; likes and follower counts quantify the self into a scoreboard; recommendation algorithms feed echo chambers that flatter existing beliefs; the very grammar of the medium — profile, feed, broadcast — puts 'me' at the centre.
• The harms that follow: comparison-driven anxiety among adolescents, trolling and performative outrage, polarisation, misinformation travelling faster than truth, and rumour-fuelled violence such as the 2018 WhatsApp lynchings.
• The selfless counter-record: Kerala's 2018 floods saw rescue coordinated over social media; the 2021 oxygen and plasma SOS networks saved lives; #MeToo converted private injury into collective voice; farmers, artisans and MSMEs found markets; teacher-creators democratised learning.
• Resolving 'inherently': the same connective tissue produces narcissism under advertising incentives and solidarity under crisis — which shows selfishness is a property of the business model, not the essence of the medium; Wikipedia and open-source communities prove pro-social architectures are possible.
• Reclaiming the social: platform accountability (IT Rules 2021), data rights (DPDP Act 2023), algorithmic transparency debates, digital literacy in schools, and personal disciplines of digital minimalism restore agency to users.

Quotes and Anchors

• Sherry Turkle's 'Alone Together' — connection without intimacy.
• 'The Social Dilemma' on persuasive design; the aphorism that when the product is free, you are the product.
• Kerala floods 2018 and the COVID second wave 2021 as the medium's finest hours.

Closing Synthesis

Conclude that social media is a mirror with a magnifier: it reflects human nature and amplifies whatever its incentives reward. Today those incentives reward the self, so the medium tilts selfish — but inherently so, no. Redesign the incentives, regulate the platforms, educate the users, and the social can be put back into social media.