Each of us has been gifted with our own mind, and it is our sacred duty to develop our mind in a way that makes us sentient and independent thinking human beings, to the degree that we are capable of doing so. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't listen to others, or that we shouldn't learn from others, or contrarily, that we should deliberately be perverse, just to be perverse; but rather what it means is that we are ultimately responsible for our own thoughts, and what we corresponding do by our actions from those thoughts. It is important to take to heart that our purpose in life is not to be some sort of automaton, but through our own volition to try to be that which we ought to be.
Not everyone that speaks to us has our best interests in mind; which, of course, includes governments, associates, and social media. After all, most people and organizations have their own agenda that they are true to, of which, their desire may well be to see that we become an unwitting cog in their machine, so as to make their constituency and their world view stronger, and correspondingly to make our independent selves, weaker. That is why the unexamined life is always a tragic error; for if we do not have the interest, nor take the time, to discover who and what we really are -- then where we shall go, is often prone to the vicissitudes of the time, rather than being something that we take right control of as the captain of our fate.
Each us does need direction as well as instruction, but not all that do the directing as well as do the instructing, have our best interests in mind, and those that do not, are only too eager to see that we fall in line with those others, that prefer not to think for themselves, but rather compliantly obey commands, without taking the time to contemplate as to the actual legitimacy of such. The strength of any society does not consist in the conformity of its members; but rather consists of each of those members being of service to that which strengthens the bonds of all that which represents truth, justice, harmony, and fairness.
Those that do wrong, and make the excuse, that it was in conformance with those others, doing the same sort of thing, have bought into a false construct, which somehow seems to state that what we do, right or wrong, is okay, if it is done in obedience to someone or some organization which is or appears to be our superior. Remember this well, obedience to tyranny is meritless; so too, obedience to evil, should not ever be provided sanction. Each of us has an innate responsibility, to own what it is that we do and say, so that, those that cede that owning to some other agency, in the false belief, that they thereof are not responsible, have truly sold their souls for a very cheap price. Rather, recognize that those that blindly follow, questioning nothing, have discarded their innate sovereignty, for the chains of abject bondage.