Social media has essentially defined the 2010’s generation. From the early stages of the decade where MySpace was in its late stages of popularity, till the last twilight years of the decade where Facebook has become a mega corporation hoarding its users private data without their knowledge or consent. For most of the population and basically all of my peers, the only time they aren’t connected is when they first wake up and go to sleep.I consider myself a relatively knowledgeable user when it come to social media presence, and I don’t really like to think too much about how many likes I’m getting or how many people are viewing my posts.
I think that rising social media usage among teens and rising depression rates is not correlation, but direct causation.
The results show that depression increased significantly among persons in the U.S. from 2005 to 2015, from 6.6 percent to 7.3 percent. Notably, the rise was most rapid among those ages 12 to 17, increasing from 8.7 percent in 2005 to 12.7 percent in 2015.
I am not surprised by this study from researchers at Colombia University, and it makes me worry for the future. Will these rates keep raising or will we somehow find a way to combat the declining mental health of our nations youth. I know personally that in middle school social media definitely negatively impacted the way I viewed myself and had similar effects on many of my friends as well. If I had to choose one specific reason or contributing factor in these issues, it would be the usage of the like button as a form of acceptance or fulfillment. Instagram is the worst offender of this, as the false equivalency of more likes = better picture has basically been adopted by most people. Since Instagram often involves users posting pictures of themselves, a low number of likes on a picture of you must mean you aren’t good looking, right? This leads to people comparing their normal lives with specifically chosen highlights of someone else’s.
The worst parts of social media are superficiality, depression, self-consciousness, and addiction. The best parts of social media are connection, discussion, community, and sharing ideas and creations. If I was to redesign a social media, I would want to highlight the best parts about it while limiting the negative aspects. One of my favorite social media apps is Letterboxd. This app allows the user to review, like, save, and categorize movies. I am a pretty big fan of movies, and like to keep track of my favorite ones, and make lists of ones I want to watch. The social media aspect of the app allows you to view other users profiles, and see what their favorite movies are too. You can also leave written reviews, 0-5 star ratings, create organized lists of films, and also view upcoming releases. I like to leave reviews of new movies whenever I see them in theaters, and its interesting when I get to see my opinions or views change upon subsequent re-watches. Upon first booting up the app, the user will be shown a gallery of the most popular movies of all time, and be asked to like, rate, or pass on the displayed movies. This allows new users to create a sort of profile, without them having to search up their favorite movies one by one. I have had most of my cinephile friends also download this app as well, and we often create curated lists for each other of our favorite films. This app has singlehandedly shown me films I never would’ve discovered otherwise. This is when social media is at its strongest to me, when I am able to find stuff right up my alley through the recommendation of other users.
If I was to redesign this app, I wouldn’t want to remove anything. I think the things it does right are perfect, and it doesn’t really have any glaring negative aspects. However, I think there is some things that the app would benefit from adding.
Pros:
Allows users to discover new content
Easily guides new users into features of app
Lets users choose rating system ( 0-5 stars, 1-100, etc)
Very few instances of a dopamine reward, not main purpose of app
can add amateur/student films to website database
unique, interesting lists from other users
Cons:
Very niche audience
Would benefit from addition of TV Shows, Video games, books?
Tough to discover amateur reviewers
large dichotomy of film buffs favorite movies
sometimes confusing UI
I think the values of this app are nearly, perfect and the only flaws come with some features the app is lacking. However, I think the addition to converse with the filmmaker or other involved people would be a extremely unique addition to the app. One benefit of the niche audience is that trolls or deliberately hateful people aren’t likely to spend time making a curated profile on a movie reviewing website. With that in mind, I think the ability to send messages ( If the film making user allows this) directly to the filmmaker or production would be really interesting. I recently visited the Camden Film Festival, and found that many filmmakers were more than happy to talk about their films, even if what was said was constructive criticism. This would more likely be used primarily by amateur film makers or aspiring students, but it would still benefit them greatly. Having an audience of people who want to help you with your creative process is a very big opportunity that I think this app could refine into a safe, helpful experience.
Another redesign I would propose is adding not just movies, but TV shows, video games, books, and other similar entertainment forms. This app is essentially already able to do this, as nothing in it caters specifically to movies alone. All you would need to do is upload an image and a description of the product, and it would be entered into the database. I think this addition would be really effective for people like me, who like to categorize their favorite things, and also reduce online clutter, by putting all the watch lists spread over Netflix, Hulu and amazon into one easy place. The app could also tell you which platform or streaming service carries each specific film or TV show. This addition of other various entertainment mediums could allow people to not just find movies, but books, TV shows, and maybe even music that they would really enjoy. If someone eventually adds enough films, books, video games, or TV shows, the app would be able to create a custom profile for this user and recommend them very specifically catered things. This could allow people to find life changing stories they never would’ve found otherwise.
I have created a couple mock-ups of ideas I had for potential designs. The first shows what a page would look like for a user on a filmmakers page, and the others show what a sample page would look like with my changes and additions of other sources of entertainment.
Here is a page I edited. Lets pretend you are a Filmmaker named James Cameron and you opened the app. You would see this page and the box on the right. This contains messages from users and you can choose to open them if you want, Here some users ask you questions about many different things.
Here is another page that I changed. Here is a mock up featuring my homepage. I included some of my favorite books, movies, TV shows and video games. This gives you a much clearer idea of the type of things I like. I also included a meter that shows how our likes compare with each others, and a percentage of things that we like that match.
I think my changes would make this app much more social, and bring in unique ideas to a wider audience. Social media is designed to connect people, and one of my favorite benefits is the ability to share content. These changes would allow much more freedom to share different types of entertainment, specially tailored to a specific user.
Sources:
https://letterboxd.com/
https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/depression-rise-us-especially-among-young-teens
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