Journal #3
By: Carly Cornish
Summarize:
Summarize:
Resources:
Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think?
This video Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think, explains how the internet is helping our brains to evolve similarly as writing did thousands of years ago. Our brains use tools as an extension of our brains, which can help us evolve in a short amount of time. Technology increases our ability to multitask which is a positive aspect of technology. “Multitasking makes us more distractible”(Science). Due to the fact that we are always multitasking our ability to focus on one thing is compromised, and we can easily lose focus or be distracted, more so if we were focusing solely on one thing. The internet may be used as a means of getting information, but it’s also a drug, that’s extremely addictive. About 6% of the people in the world are estimated to be addicted to the internet as of 2014, and that number will continue to rise. One of the reasons it’s addictive is explained, when the brain experiences something pleasurable or something that makes someone happy, the brain releases a shot of dopamine. Dopamine is a “happy/reward” drug per se, we can get it from other things, like doing good deeds or doing something we love. But the internet makes it easy to get a quick hit.
Citation: Science, Inside, director. Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think? YouTube, YouTube, 13 June 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=239&v=YoowH0mIuiA.
The People Behind Your Tech Addiction Are Now Trying to Curb It
In the article The People Behind Your Tech Addiction Are Now Trying to Curb It, the statistics are staggering, when it comes to how many people are exposed to technology, specifically mobile devices. About 2 billion people in the world have cellphones, in America, 77% of American adults have a mobile device, it’s jumped from 35% in 2011, in around 8 years. An even more startling statistic is that in the same 8-year time frame, the number of children of the ages of 0-8 who had their own mobile devices went from under 1% to 43%. The article talks about how this is being considered an addiction, and an epidemic even though the internet giants refuse to acknowledge or admit it. “Anything that induces pleasure has, at its extreme, addiction,” (Schneiderman). Not only do they try to hide it, but they choose to attack this weakness and take advantage of this addiction and epidemic. “There’s conferences and workshops that teach people all these covert ways of getting people’s attention and orchestrating people’s lives. And it’s because most people don’t know that that exists that this conversation is so important.”(Schneiderman). However, the article also points out there are those who have started to fight back, including the founders of Humane Technology and Truth About Technology, who use their advocacy programs to get awareness out, specifically in schools.
Citation: Schneiderman, M. (2018, June 28). The People Behind Your Tech Addiction Are Now Trying to Curb It. Retrieved from https://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/the-people-behind-your-tech-addiction-are-now-trying-to-curb-it-20180628
The Internet Is a Force of Nature. It’s Our Job to Civilize It.
In the article, The Internet Is a Force of Nature. It’s Our Job to Civilize It, the author talks about how the internet giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc and how they became giants. It was a bandwagon situation, like many fads, a few signed on, those people got their friends to get Facebook and the cycle continued on and on. However, unlike a usual bandwagon fad, this one didn’t disappear after a few weeks or months, it’s been going on for years and getting bigger and bigger. In order to make this situation better, the author argues that we can’t backtrack, or take away technology, but using it in a different way can make it more manageable. For example, these internet giants collect an incredible amount of data from people, based on their decisions and searches. “Users supply the imputes and outputs that drive the business”(Dorrier). These giants run on our information, so he suggests a change in how the information is stored. Instead of having an A.I. running that particular platform, we have personal A.I. such as Alexa protecting our information, still collecting data but keep it from these giants, in private storage. They also bring up the point that if we gave our terms to the companies, using this privately stored infor as a bargaining trip, instead of the terms being presented to us.
Citation: Dorrier, J. (2019, September 6). The Internet Is a Force of Nature. It’s Our Job to Civilize It. Retrieved from https://singularityhub.com/2019/08/25/the-internet-is-a-force-of-nature-its-our-job-to-civilize-it/
Depression and the Secret to Happiness by Johann Hari
This video Depression and the Secret to Happiness by Johann Hari talks about how depression and anxiety are a result of our needs not being met, we crave human interaction, which we aren’t getting in today’s society. This problem didn’t start with the internet, it started with the separation of society and the idea of the individual being better than the community. The internet and social media platforms provide us a less real version of what we lost, such as friends, connections and the feeling of community. In order to combat depression and anxiety, the community needs to be involved to find a solution that might not always include drugs, but the simple changing of a situation. For example in the workforce only 13% of people like their jobs, and how things are run. In order to test their theory about a different way to format the hierarchy of a business, four men split all the work among each other along with the profits. With this new theory put into action, they realized that they were happier and less depressed, they weren’t being micromanaged. Overall the idea of working together, living in a community or “tribe” is the secret to alleviating depression, getting back what we’ve lost over time and solving problems together.
Citation: News, Double Down, director. Depression and The Secret to Happiness. YouTube, YouTube, 12 Aug. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1185&v=6R0fTRTIQCE.
Research Issue/Question:
What factors affect social media use in our lives? The reason I ask this question is that different factors in our lives affect how and when we use social media, which then affects our mental health. So I curious if there are factors in our lives that will increase the likeliness of going to social media or the internet in general and falling into that downward spiral.
6-7 Articles:
–https://izea.com/2017/03/16/key-factors-affect-social-media-engagement/
–https://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/
–https://curatti.com/social-media-positive-effects/
–http://ijbcnet.com/3-1/IJBC-13-2802.pdf
–http://www.questjournals.org/jrbm/papers/vol4-issue2/A420107.pdf
Chosen Articles:
URL:https://izea.com/2017/03/16/key-factors-affect-social-media-engagement/
This article focuses more on the marketer’s point of view, so it shows what factors go into keeping the viewer’s attention. It names 6 factors, relevance, voice, quality, user-generated content, volume, and timing. For relevance, it talks about how the posts need to be current, and relevant to the brand or the viewers they have in mind. For voice, it talks about engagement with the viewers, using Wendy’s twitter feed as a great example. The platform needs to have a good amount of content, but not only do they need a lot of content, but they also need good content. The viewers of these platforms need to keep in mind what and how their viewers remember things. “People retain 10 percent of the information they hear after three days — and 65 percent of the details they see in images.” Personally, an image helps to catch my attention, when I see a large block of text on social media, I scroll past, but with an image I more likely to stop and read it. User-generated content is when customers help to advertise the brand, they do this by bringing the “voice” to engage with their viewers/customers. They talked about using volume, such as if you have a larger marketers base there will be an increase in “content output”. Also, the more points of contact the business can have with the consumer using social media increases the likelihood of sales and future customers. Lastly, timing, timing is very important, for example, with TV, the 2 am show was for either bad shows or shows that were dying. The same goes for social media if Facebook posts after lunch/during lunch or after what is considered a workday, a lot of people will be looking at Facebook.
URL:https://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/
This article is more statistics than an actual article. It breaks down the use of social media by factors or race, gender, education, income, community, and age. It also goes into detail of what type of social media platform is the most popular, and how these numbers have changed over the years. For example, for people 65 or older, a group most would think wouldn’t use social media, in 2005 only 2% used social media. However, that number jumped to 40% in 2019. This happens with almost all ages, races because of the bandwagon and the fact that it’s become more accessible. When it comes to income in 2005, the more income you had the more you used social media, however later in 2019, that changed. In 2019, 78% of people who had an income of over $75,000 used social media, but 83% of people who make $50,000-74,999 used social media, that’s a 5% difference. There are so many factors that this article talks about that seemingly affect the use of social media.
Conclusion:
I really had no idea what type of factors could affect social media use, I knew there would probably be some. I didn’t think that it could be broken down into income, education, gender, race, community, etc. But these articles opened my eyes to the different factors that affect people using social media, but also how marketing uses different factors to increase the numbers of people on social media and to keep their attention. These articles make me curious to see if there are even more factors, more personal factors, like living situations if their parents are married, single, deceased, if mental disorders, morals or religions can make an impact.
Adaption/Redesign:
One thing I might do to make a better design for a social media platform is, perhaps have a questionnaire, of preferences at the beginning of downloading or logging on. Like what are you looking for from this platform, what do you expect as the viewer, as the consumer? Use this information to create a profile more suited to the individual. It could use timing to post things that could be inspirational for the morning, of calm things at night, sending subliminal messages for healthier lifestyles to the consumer. Like if they need help fighting addiction, then the profile will organize posts to help them, connect them with people who suffer from the same thing. Or it could find someone or something to help provide them what they need, not as a virtual form, but as a connection to something real outside of the platform. Going a step further it could analyze people’s emotions and connect them with someone that can help, like suicide or sadness. If they’re happy, then it’s less active, allowing the person to have real happiness outside of the social media platform. If someone becomes easily distracted, it will somehow lock itself for people to sit down and do the work, etc.
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