When you hear the word “Social Media,” the mind often instantly thinks of the usual suspects that are the major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. I would describe these companies and platforms as the pioneering powerhouses of social media. These platforms earned this title through many factors. Whether it be the timing of the social media uprise during the ever-increasing digital age or the manipulation of our wants and needs for attention and social status; these platforms have effectively increased in popularity and profit, with some focus on how it’s affecting their large population of users. But is this attention that they’re giving enough? I would have to disagree, since the mental health of the youth is at an all-time low, and it just happens that the exact opposite is happening to the profits of these social media platforms. The features that these companies created to increase our dopamine releases also have the opposite effect. For example, nowadays, it’s a big deal if you get less likes on a photo on Instagram than usual. The ‘Like’ button created by Justin Rosenstein, one of many of Facebook’s designers, was never expected to turn into the cultural phenomenon that it is today.
“The main intention I had was to make positivity the path of least resistance, and I think it succeeded in its goals, but it also created large unintended negative side effects. In a way, it was too successful.” – Rosenstein
The adverse side effects that Rosenstein is referring to are how people have changed due to this digital currency. Consider for a second, the concept of social class, usually social class refers to your wealth or income. This concept has been in place since the early days of civilization. However, we are presented with a new social class, the “Social Media Class.” I have personally seen many people view someone’s Instagram follower count, or perhaps their ratio of followers to the number of people they’re following. This ‘attention economy’ is causing great harm to the minds of both older and younger generations. The only way we can fix this problem is to recognize how vulnerable we’ve become to social media and curate our own lives outside of our mobile phones. My solution to this problem would be to focus on your physical health and let the little dopamine releases come as a reward since there are studies that show that good physical health can correlate to good mental health as well. My design would be an app, let’s call it “Proactive” for now, since I’m sure the acne treatment company is a fan of that name, and probably wouldn’t be too enticed to give it up anytime soon.
“Proactive” would be a social media app that encourages working out or being fit and having a positive body image. I would ideally like to have a ‘like’ button to entice the user. However, after researching the adverse effects of the feature, I would not include the function. Instead, the user posts about a workout or an athletic action they performed during the day, whether the post would be about how far they walked in a day, or how much weight they lifted. My app would showcase the workouts that the user has done, and you could feature some of the activities that you’d want to showcase. I could not program it myself, but there would ideally be an algorithm that would score your actions based on difficulty/impressiveness. Now I understand that this could be something that ends up like the ‘Like’ button and end up making people feel weak or not as good as others, but in return, that would push the user to get more athletic and stronger. As an ex-collegiate athlete, I love to compete with my gym buddies, and if I lack in performance, compared to my buddies, it pushes me even harder to try to catch up/ exceed them. Perhaps this is just a personal interest of mine. Still, I am a firm believer that if you’re interested in something, no matter what it is, there will always be a ton of people who are just as, if not more interested or passionate about it.
I think a practical and user aware approach to designing this app is necessary to creating a successful app that allows us to use said design while being mentally and physically healthy.
PROS: promotes physical health, aware of user mental health and prioritizes it over profit, allows you to connect with your friends about your physical activities, does not feature any of the social media features that lead to low self-esteem or F.O.M.O. (Fear of missing out). Healthy competition to push users to further their physical health. Ability to track progress and report on it.
CONS: ‘Healthy’ competition, meaning that some may not view it as a catch-up tactic and instead view the “athletic scoring” as a deprecating feature. It does not account for those who are physically disabled and cannot perform to the extent that enabled persons can. Limitations to how much users can do since humans are physically capable of lifting so much weight or run so far. Maybe a little repetitive since, once again, there are only so many exercises a person can do.
REDESIGN & VISUAL CONCEPT:
To realistically design this app I had in mind, I decided to use some of the layouts and designs from some apps I’ve used, for this example, I used the app ‘Fitbod’ and redesigned parts of it to give an idea of what I’m visualizing in my head.
The scores are meaningless as of right now, but they’re in place to give in idea on what I’m going for; I would include guides on lifting correctly to make sure that the user is given the devices to safely workout. It wouldn’t just be lifting weight, but that’s all Fitbod provides as of right now. Ideally, you’d complete your customizable workout and have the ability to showcase or share it with your followers. Another part that I didn’t touch on above is that I also want to implement a follower system but not include the digital currency aspect of the number of followers someone has. I think that the solution to this problem would be to allow followers, but not to showcase them on your profile, but instead to keep it as a number, only you could see if you wanted to. This feat would ‘hopefully’ negate the effect of wanting more followers than your friends or others since you and only you would be able to see them. Sure, you could show your friends and compare, which could have some negative implications. Still, it wouldn’t allow people to have an upfront lesser view on someone just because of the number of followers they have, since the followers wouldn’t have immediate access to the amount of people following you.
References:
https://www.fitbod.me/
(https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/30/the-attention-economy-created-by-silicon-valley-is-bankrupting-us/
You must be logged in to post a comment.