Essay Sample About the Importance of Accountability in the Digital Age

A bad grade at school isn’t as bad as a lifetime prison sentence, but both are tools schools and society use to uphold accountability. This social contract is a constant background for everyday life, holding chaos and violence at bay. Fostering accountability is critical for creating a just and safe society, but it requires hard work, especially in the digital era. This essay will explore different dimensions of personal, institutional, and nation-wide accountability and the challenges that arise when it erodes under the pressure of social and technological changes.

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Accountability is taking ownership of one’s actions and their consequences. The “count” in accountability stands for calculating how an individual’s activities impact the world around them and whether these effects are positive or negative, which dictates the direct response. For example, a little white lie about Santa Claus may not have serious repercussions for parents who wish their children to believe in magic. However, lying on tax return forms may result in an audit and legal trouble, while deceiving hedge fund investors about their savings may result in bankruptcy and a prison sentence. The more severe the circumstances and the level of deception or other immoral or antisocial behavior, the worse consequences individuals must face.

Despite its critical role in society, accountability is not an inherent trait. No government holds children under a certain age accountable for their actions to the same degree as adults. However, once they reach the age of majority, they are expected to follow societal norms and suffer adult repercussions if they do not. For this reason, family members and teachers foster accountability in children from an early age to prepare them to join society. Household chores and punishments for unwanted behavior are the first forms of accountability most children encounter. At school, they are given tasks to perform, while teachers use grades to promote following the rules and fulfilling obligations. School is also the first place children discover the long-term consequences of irresponsible behavior. Failing classes and ruining their academic records may prevent them from getting into college and finding solid, high-paying jobs.

Consequently, accountability becomes ever more important in the workplace, although the levels of responsibility differ. For example, we expect medical professionals to be held accountable if they fail to deliver high-quality healthcare. The same high standards apply to engineers, drivers, and other professionals whose responsibilities may result in the loss of life. However, accountability is equally important across most vocations. Teachers shape future generations, and their irresponsible actions may cause severe psychological trauma or academic disadvantages. Marketers and sales managers are responsible for the safety and quality of the products they promote. Following this logic, government officials should be the first to be held accountable for their actions, as they can affect the lives and happiness of millions of people. Still, their positions of power often result in minimum accountability regardless of corruption or abuse of power.

Global digitization has both a positive and a negative impact on personal, institutional, and societal accountability. On the one hand, digitization breeds transparency. For example, many businesses rely on project management, customer relationship management, and other types of software for scheduling work shifts, assigning tasks, and setting goals and deadlines. Collaborative tools enable team leaders to keep track of all employee’s progress and adjust workload or support employees when necessary. At the same time, digital paper trails help reporters and investigative journalists uncover political corruption and hold elected officials accountable for abusing their positions of power.

On the other hand, digital media, including social media platforms and generative AI, proliferate fake news and keep individuals within their media bubbles through the use of recommendation algorithms. As a result, accountability suffers. For example, while respectable new outlets must follow journalistic standards, fact-check their data, and cite sources, bloggers have no such responsibilities. They can present false information to millions of followers in their audience without holding any responsibility for publishing fake news. Moreover, unlike traditional media, influencers are not required to be impartial and present a balanced take on any issue. Therefore, they can twist facts into narratives that align with their opinions and goals. Thanks to the freedom of speech, bloggers are free to voice their views without being held accountable, even though they influence millions.

At the same time, social media warps the concept of accountability into cyberbullying and cancel culture or transforms murder suspects into national heroes, depending on the overarching narrative dominating the digital landscape at the time. Both are examples of the misuse of digital tools and the concept of accountability. Although social stigma can be a form of punishment for unethical or morally unacceptable behavior, it is rarely powered by careful analysis of facts but rather by online peer pressure and passing trends. As a result, accountability transforms from a universal glue holding society together and protecting it from chaos and violence into a manipulation technique influencers use to spread suitable narratives. As such, modern-day accountability can become dangerous and harmful in the hands of politicians and opinion leaders.

To sum up, accountability is a critical element of the social contract, taught to children from a young age at home and school to be later used in professional and social settings. Global digitization can be equally helpful and harmful for accountability, depending on the people driving social narratives and their motivations. Therefore, it’s up to individuals to recognize fake news and manipulative narratives through critical thinking and to hold elected officials and opinion leaders accountable for their words and actions.