Blog Post #4 - Effects of Social Media
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 hemisphere, which can potentially have impacts on a person's future, career, lifestyle, etc. Technology has now become domesticated, and its negative or positive effects have become interwoven into the everyday lives of consumers. As social media adapts and advances along with the rest of technology, it will just consume and affect our lives even more. Social media definitely has its benefits, like being able to connect with people all over the world, share content, and discover new opportunities. But, it also has many scary aspects that could potentially prove that social media was not worthwhile.
Social media has interconnected us all and given us similar experiences. If we all agree that it is bad and we use it too much why can't we figure out mass solutions to prevent these measures. I am interested to see how societal ideologies become more interwoven with social media. It is so prominent and has so much influence and power over ideas of what an ideal life should look like and what it shouldn't. People are losing their jobs; cancel culture is at it's all time high so saying your true opinions can have great effects on how people perceive you. The accessibility and allowance into your life has also created many privacy issues that will only become more invasive and advanced in the future. I am extremely intrigued on where society will be in 10 years and what changes we will have to face.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I really enjoyed reading your point on how social media can create false identities. Social media allows users to construct a life that may not be authentic. For example, Instagram allows us to post a reel of life highlights, deceiving followers and often showcasing an unrealistic lifestyle to vulnerable followers. This unrealistic lifestyle creates unattainable expectations that can hinder users, resulting in inadequacy about life or appearances. In Eighth Grade, we saw an example of a social media false identity portrayed by the main character Kayla. Kayla views her classmates on social media and strives to gain acceptance from her peers, so she creates a false identify on her YouTube, providing advice on how to overcome obstacles faced in middle school, however, in reality she is struggling to overcome the presented obstacles.
ReplyDeleteGreat post,
ReplyDeleteAs a society, we have become very engaged in the social media world, and I agree with your comments on how packs are in everyday life. People start to question their beauty due to the things they see on social media personalities like the Kim Kardashians in the world and others due to the unrealistic beauty standards of social media. And a lot of bullying happens online since people are allowed to say whatever they want without any severe repercussions. But some things are starting to happen to prevent these certain negative aspects; if someone were to try to share content that is not their own but the claim as if it's their own, they could get their account removed for plagiarizing someone else's content. And if you continue to use hate speech on social media platforms and many people start to report you for the words you use, that may also cause you to lose your account. The way social media has brought a lot of people together in terms of being able to reach people that live miles and miles away from one another. As well as how social media has helped people see the injustices that happened to minorities in countries like the US; this has helped gather people together to create change in our society. People are being held accountable for their actions; an example of this would be the George Floyd incident. People could get together to protest for the officer to be removed and held responsible for his death. If it wasn't for this push for the public, we might still be living in a time where officers would continue killing innocent black men and getting away with it without consequences. Social media has helped bring awareness to things people were unaware of in the past; for this reason, the positive aspects of social media outweigh the negative.
-Antony Kaseba
Really great post! It's crucial, in my opinion, to emphasize the potential effects of social media on our daily life as a whole. Additionally, I appreciated how you illustrated how many individuals hide behind devices and assume false identities by using the example of eighth grade. The movie also helped me realize that by enabling individuals to conceal their true identities, social media can cause them to experience personal struggles like insecurity about who they really are. Once they have created this fake persona, they may then spread misleading information in order to conform to social norms and ideologies that are heavily promoted and sought after online.
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