Social Media and Social Life Fall 2022

My biggest takeaway from this semester is the number of friends you have on social media versus the number of friends you have in person. I had an experience when I was in secondary school; there was a well-known person on social media in town. Every time I would ask people about that particular person, they informed me that in school, this person was very kept to themselves and was an introvert but outside of the school, she was this well-known person on social media. Going back to Dunbar‘s theory about how Everyone who has 150 friends on social media talks to about 50 of those 150 people, and out of those 50 friends, only 15 are considered good friends, and out of those 15 good friends, five are considered close friends. My young self assumed that since this individual was prevalent on social media, they must have many friends in person, but in reality, it wasn’t the case. This made me realize that you can’t always trust what you see on social media because, in the scenario, as it tu...

 

JENNA TRANTAU Tumblr does not have an algorithm or any sorts and that is a key element to why so many people still used the platform after all the scandals it's gone through with child pornography in 2018.  “Forty-eight percent of its active users and sixty-one percent of its new ones are Generation Z.” (Chayka, 2022). This makes me wonder where the direction of social media is going. It is proven in many studies how social media cannot replicate the same authenticity as in person because of the constant judgement and need to fit into societal ideologies. So will we turn to anonymity for an escape of these online expectations or continue to fuel unrealistic standards that we face each day. As a consumer I am getting tired of all the influencer's trying to sell me products and have a career with doing so. The targeted marketing is invasive and Generation Z I predict in the future will try and put a stop to this. People also feel like social media addiction is a real issue that n...

  After completing the course many interesting things were learned. One of the key platforms discussed was BeReal. This platform ultimately attempts to provide its users with a realistic experience as one is required to upload a picture within a two-minute time frame. However, it can also be argued that the platform can lack authenticity and intimacy as one can postpone their uploaded posts and skip the required time frame. In saying such, I wrote my midterm on this topic and learned many key things. One of the main overarching ideas was that it is understood that social media platforms such as BeReal find it challenging to provide one with a feeling of authenticity and intimacy, as uploaded posts are not always accurate within the time frame their user uploads them. In light of these explanations, I found that utilizing course concepts to support this point enabled me to achieve a strong understanding of why platforms like BeReal can lack authenticity and intimacy.

 

The Platonic (or Socratic) critique of writing is one that really interests me as it reveals anxieties about the uptake of new media that are still relevant in our contemporary society. However, one element of Socrates' critique of writing that we did not really dive into during this course is that of eros, which is a kind of intimacy that moves beyond the meeting of the minds and into the intertwining of the souls. It is sort of considered the ultimate level of authenticity and intimacy, and therefore eros should be the goal of communicative exchanges. When examining whether or not a communicative medium is authentic or not, Socrates would be concerned with whether or not that medium facilitates the development of eros.  However, Socrates believes that this can only occur through face-face communication with a specific audience in a shared space. With this understanding, can we even say that reaching eros is possible in our current media ecology? Socrates would say no, there may b...

 The Dunbar Number theory has been a focus this semester talking about different numbers in regard to various social media apps. The Dunbar Number theory states that we can only maintain a relationship with 150 people. Then Dunbar breaks down that number into different categories of relationships with those 150 people.  Dunbar argues that we maintain 5 close friends, 15 good friends, 50 friends, and 150 acquaintances. As I said earlier, this theory can then be applied to various social media apps. For example, many people have more than 150 followers on Instagram and follow over 150 people. Many people who they don't know personally but keep in connection with over Instagram. On Snapchat, most people I know talk to around 50 people, while they may have more friends on the app they only really connect with a group of around 50. On Be Real, many people have fewer friends around 15 because the app is more intimate many want to just have their good friends on the app. Then imessag...

       Throughout this course, we have discussed the many impacts, social cues and cultures within the social interactivity of social media, and how these can impact our consumption and everyday lives. As demonstrated in Eighth Grade , social media can have a huge impact on individual lives. People can create a false identity, and become whoever and whatever they desire. People are also able to hide behind a screen and say whatever they want to others, without directly receiving the consequences. Not only do users spend hours a day staring at a screen and social media, but the information shared on these platforms can obstruct real life experiences.      Overall, there are many stresses of social media. The content shared can have a huge reach, spanning to anyone if it is not private. People are able to replicate anything online, potentially claiming content as their own and plagiarizing. Also, the media shared is stored forever in the internet hemisph...

JENNA TRANTAU Each December Spotify and Apple music come out with your personal statistics usage of music/podcasts since January. It is a great marketing tactic because people love music and only truly care about themselves. " It's also unclear why users are so enamoured with the idea of having their private data packaged and sold back to them. One digital rights advocacy group described Wrapped as a "business model ... based on surveillance" (Weaver, 2022).  Many other platforms wouldn't have the same effect. For example, if TikTok c ame out with it's own "TikTok Wrapped" and showed something like how many hours you've watched the same creator or spent on the app in general it would discourage users and many would feel embarrassed of how much time they truly spend on the app.  Spotify and Apple's marketing team really hit the nail on the head with this one because it would only just "expose" people's music tastes which can be ...

 Throughout the time of this course, we have looked at social media and the effect it has on our mental health. I think it's safe to say that in many scenarios its effect is certainly a negative one but it varies from person to person and app to app. Looking at the article posted in the classroom about Molly Russell and how she fell into a vortex of depression through the dark side of social media which ended in her killing herself, I personally think that social media addiction and all of the fake things that we see online is something that needs fixing In the article, Molly's mom talks about the algorithm of apps and how scary it is because it keeps you trapped within the app. For example, what we have learned about TikTok and the way its algorithm is so personalized to make you see strictly things that you are interested in ultimately keeps you glued to the app and it makes it significantly harder to take a break from it and use the app less because of the fear of missing ou...

The Platonic Critique of Writing - By Sarah Humphreys In this course, the platonic critique of writing was very fascinating, so for this last post, I will discuss this critique and present a few discussion questions to reflect on. The platonic critique of writing includes the platonic criticism of the written word, examining Socrates's appraisal of writing. Socrates believes that writing is not an effective communication form as it lacks adequate contexts of speech, which include an individual's nonverbal cues and body language, which are used to provide an extensive understanding of what an individual is trying to convey.  Socrates suggests that without this understanding of conveyance, there is a risk of misinterpretation as the written word does not include emotion, and as stated in Plato's Phaedrus  is soulless, corrupting the integrity of the human soul (Herman, 2022). Socrates also mentions how writing can undermine memory and create distortion; altering an idea that ...

Throughout the semester, a concept that has really stuck out to me is the ways in which social media distorts self-perception and alters the ways that we interact with our environment. We are constantly surrounded by social media, and it has become such a large factor in our everyday lives. This idea directly relates to Coudry and Hepp's concept of mediatization, in which media is fundamentally interwoven into the texture of everyday life. In this sense, social media is ultimately enfolded into everyday life and changing the ways in which life is perceived. In my opinion, I think that social media makes people more vulnerable and truly dissects our understanding of the world and reality in general. Edited photos and inaccurate depictions have become so normalized, and because of this people's expectations have become extremely distorted, which is worrying to think about. In this course, we spent a large majority of time discussing popular apps such as TikTok and Bereal. These a...

 The Dunbar Number has been a theory of interest within the class for quite some time. Embedded in this theory is the idea that we are only capable of maintaining 150 relationships with people. With such a large number of relationships, there are different levels of familiarity. Dunbar argues that we maintain 5 close friends, 15 good friends (including the 5 "close" relationships), 50 friends (including the other 15 relationships) and 150 acquaintances (including all other numbers). The science behind this grand total derives from the fact that historically speaking, the average group size has always been approximately 150 people.  This number can be applied to social media nowadays with the amount of followers that many people, including myself, maintain on social media platforms. For instance, let's consider my Instagram account. I have over 1,100 followers, however, many of them are individuals that I haven't formed close relationships with. This causes me to be mo...

     For my final blog post, I focused on The Dunbar Theory of the Social Brain. I was unfamiliar with his theory before this class; however, after learning about it, I thought it was vital to the social world we all live in today. This theory by Dunbar states that the maximum number of humans to manage a stable network is 150. This number is broken into several categories; friends, good friends and close friends. With close friends, Dunbar states that people usually have around five friends. People can also have a group of approximately 50 people classified as friends, and finally, good friends, 15 friends plus the five close friends. The Dunbar number is broken down into these categories to encompass the people within each circle of friends. Thus, generating an understanding of closeness within these relationships and the maximum number of people who can maintain good friendships. This theory can be further proved and explained by people's friendships on the social medi...