Social Media Impact

Introduction

The purpose of this project is to describe the impact of social media on individuals as well as society. For this project, I will take a social media addiction quiz, and talk about how social media is affecting society.

Social Media Addiction Survey

Interesting Social Media Statistic

Social Media's Impact on Society

I firmly believe that whether social media is good for our society or not is based on the algorithm in the social media. Social media can very easily be a good thing, as it connects people from anywhere and everywhere to be able to communicate, and make friends. It also allows people to explore their own identities more freely than they would in their day-to-day lives. Social media also allows people to find new ideas and new ideologies that they previously may have never heard of or have seen. All of the things previously mentioned can very easily be a bad thing. While it may allow people to make friends and allow people to communicate, this can lead to people being more closed off in their in-person lives, and spend too much time online. This also may lead to people being lead astray to groups of people that they may not have connected with otherwise, who will lead them in a wrong direction or towards hurtful things for themselves or others. While it allows people to explore their own identities, it could lead people to become brazen under an online identity, leading to more dangerous identities or identifying with more extremist or dangerous values comfortably under the mask of the internet. It may allow people to find new ideas or explore ideas in more depth, but if lead down the wrong path of ideas, it is very easy to fall into a trail of misinformation, or into a bubble being fed the same ideas, when those ideas may not necessarily be healthy for the person to be viewing or exploring.

This is all determined by the algorithm and the policies of the social media platforms. Each platform has it's own individual policy on what content is allowed, and what will be deleted or reported, usually known as the content guidelines. Each platform also has it's own algorithm for the individual using the platform. This algorithm shows the person viewing the social media platform more of what the algorithm believes that they will like. This can easily lead to a information bubble on a social media platform, where the social media platform turns into an echo chamber of the same ideas, and similar ideas and content are given to the user. Depending on the content that is given to the user, this could very easily become harmful to the user. 

Overall, social media can be a good thing for society when the algorithm is not set to give the user their own content bubble, and the content guidelines are strict on allowing content that may be harmful in any way. Without these two standards, social media can very easily slide into a very harmful thing, not only for the user, but for society as a whole.

Lessons Learned

During this module, as well as this assignment, I learned a lot more about social media use in America and what is average. I also learned how demographics change social media use and the viewpoint on social media.

Sources

Auxier, B. (2020, October 15). 64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/10/15/64-of-americans-say-social-media-have-a-mostly-negative-effect-on-the-way-things-are-going-in-the-u-s-today/