Blog Post #2


In looking back at our first few weeks of class, I thought I’d go back to the survey that we had completed in class and the many different forms of social media we use and may not use daily.  I found it quite interesting looking at the class percentage for the amount of time we spend on social media a rather large percentage of,  85% of us saying too much and 15% saying just right. As I searched for articles and studies into the time Gen Z spends on social media, I was quite surprised at the results. A study found that Gen Z are actually using social media less than what we thought. An article published by Pew Research Center shows that users between 18 and 25 years old are the only age group to see a decrease in social media use since 2019. This is relevant to almost every social media platform expect TikTok which seems to be most popular within these age groups. 

 

    We can relate this back to one of Baym’s four perspectives on the casual relationship between technology and society. Baym states that social forces influence the shaping of technology. The choices developers and users make are dependent on their social contexts. BeReal is gaining a lot of popularity to which other social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram etc. all are copying their developments within their platforms. All of this is based on forces being shaped by everyday lives.  This gives us the impression that these social media platforms are constructing their developments based on societal views and preferences.

 

 

Below is the link to the study of Gen Z social media use.

 

https://petapixel.com/2022/07/27/gen-z-are-using-social-media-less-reshaping-the-internet-report/

Comments

  1. Kalessy KeyesOctober 3, 2022 at 2:28 PM

    Hey great post!

    This is also a topic that I find really interesting, as social media is essentially taking over a large portion of our lives and most people are having a hard time stopping it. I think that social media platforms are very intuitive and are studying user interests all of the time. That is why Instagram and TikTok are copying BeReal as they all want to be the platform where users spend the most time, which is exactly what Baym's perspective of the relationship between technology and society explains.

    ReplyDelete

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