Impact of Social Media

How Addicted are You?

This week, we took a quiz to see how addicted to social media we were. Here are my results! *drum roll pls*

My Results

The "fairly reliant" outcome:

"You're fairly reliant on social media, but there are far worse culprits! Still, it's good to be reminded that UK adults spend an avergae of 8 hrs 41 mins on screens every day, and 4 of those hours are on smartphone apps alone - mainly social media. That's about a third od each day checking apps. Do you need to rethink your social media habits and the amount of time you spend scrolling?

Reflection

I agreed with this result. Checking my phone, scrolling, or being on social media are some of the ways I procrastinate or "destress" after a long day (which I'll touch on further down the page.) It can be a little detrimental when I have lots of work to do, so it's a bit of a vicious cycle.

I want to start having a day of the week where I'm not on my phone for anything excpet work-related things, or if I'm listening to a podcast while I work.

Social Media Elsewhere in the World

Another thing we did this week, was look on Pew at some stats on social media. In class, we just looked at social media use and its demographics. While scrolling through the search results of "Social media," I came across this interesting article about the Germans use of the Internet vs. Social Media.

I chose this because I think the usage in the US would be such a giant difference. I kind of thought social media usage would be greater than or equal to the access to the Internet, but that's not the case in Germany - even within the demographics of adults under 40. Even in other countries, like Sweden and Italy, there's a much smaller difference between social media and internet usage.

Social Media's Impact on Society

I'm on the fence about what distinctive role social media has on our world. On one hand, it is a very powerful tool for speaking up for the minorities, advocating for rights, and shedding light on the harsh realities that a lot of people ignore. It is a space where you can find a community that makes you feel heard and seen and uplifts you, which is especially needed in the times we live in now.

But on the other hand, it is a very negative thing to have access to at all times. I mentioned earlier that I use it to procrastinate working and destressing, but there are many times where I'm swarmed by the pure hatred some people pour into their content or comments. Or its full of false news that is spread out of ignorance to the truth. It's a mentally draining place to be sometimes and it so easy to get caught up into it.

I think an amazing thing about social media is that you can kind of finetune what you want to see anyways. So, from an individualistic view, it can sway positive or negative, depending on what YOU want to see.

Lessons Learned

In this module, I learned about how social media has formed over time, which demographics flock to which social media site the most, and how to use digital media in lots of different ways. Overall, this was a fun module to learn about different statistics of media usage, and I really enjoyed taking the social media addiction quiz!

Sources

Gramlich, J. (2024, March 6). Germans stand out for their comparitvely light use of social media. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/06/germans-stand-out-for-their-comparatively-light-use-of-social-media/

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse