Social media has been rated the least trusted industry in a new global survey

Social Media has been ranked as the least trusted industry in a survey of 15,000 people across 15 countries worldwide.

Global communications firm Edelman conducted the report. It revealed the social media industry has received the lowest trust rating.

A total of 12 industries were presented in the survey, and social media came in last at just 47%.

While, the technology Industry led the survey as most trusted, with a score of 76%.

This latest report also found that an average of 73% of global respondents worry about their data privacy.

Untrustworthy culprits

The results support a smaller study of 2225 social media users in the United States, conducted by Insider Intelligence.

It found Facebook was the least trusted social media platform, for the second year running.

On the contrary, Pinterest ranked as the most trusted platform, beating previous favourite LinkedIn.

Diminishing trust

The worsening trust in social media is to be expected, when reflecting on the serious issues plaguing the industry recently.

The industry has experienced data privacy breaches, misinformation, disinformation and violent content due to a lack of moderation.

At one point, Facebook even temporarily blocked Australian content to dispute government regulations.

The instability of the social media industry has never been more apparent than over the past few weeks.

Elon Musk has taken the reigns of Twitter, and has been quick to make drastic changes, with far-reaching consequences.

Other tech giant tycoon, Mark Zuckerberg has laid off thousands of staff due to his vision of the Metaverse becoming more virtual than reality.

Social media is in a state of constant change.

The platforms are ill equipped to keep up with the number of users and volume of content being generated on a daily basis.

Therefore, instilling and increasing public trust in the industry may be an extremely challenging goal to achieve.

Report by Dr Karen Sutherland, University of the Sunshine Coast and Dharana Digital