Social Media Usage

Project Description

The objective of this social media project is to go over some current social media stats and current research about social media's impact. This page will discuss the results of a personal social media addiction quiz that we took during the module.

Social Media's Impact on Society

My personal opinion on social media overall is that it is a double edged sword. There can be very useful and productive instances of social media utilization such as connecting with like minded people, making friends, and building professional connections. Social media can also be an extremely beneficial learning tool. Personally, I have learned and taught myself a lot with YouTube. I have also made great connections and made new friends over Discord. 

However the other side of social media can be very ugly. There are plenty of people that use social media to seek attention or build a fake persona. In my experience, social media is ripe with vain people who have inflated egos. Everyone posts the highlights of their life so unrealistic expectations are built in their own minds and the minds of others. I think this could be a factor in the general depression, anxiety, and displeasure that is increasingly being associated with irresponsible social media usage. Unfortunately, I think young people are particularly susceptible and increasingly exposed to the negative aspects of social media at younger ages.

Social media platforms are also having large impacts in terms of public opinion in society. The power of social media influence has attracted both corporations and governments who would like to profit and impose their agendas through social media. This could involve simple advertising and lobbying to far more concerning methods designed to control public opinion. The most obvious example of extreme social media manipulation is China, which uses social media to control and influence what information its people see and how its populations think.

Lessons Learned

I think that the most important lesson I learned this week was to expand my definition of social media to include platforms like YouTube and Discord. These are the main platforms that I use but I never really thought of them as social media. However, after this lesson I realized that they are quite literally social media. I was also interested with many of the statistics we learned while reading the Pew Research on social media. Specifically, I was curious about social media usage by income level and age group.

References

Auxier & Anderson. (2021). Social Media Use In 2021. Pew Research Center. Retrieved April 26, 2024 from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/.