The Re-design of Social Media
Balance
An app for modern humans
By Claudio van Duijn
The Media Issue
While many people feel great about themselves and use social media without an issue, there are also many people who suffer from the downfalls of the platforms. But how can we change this? In a large way, this question is not simply about social media but instead about human psychology. The way humans view themselves in life as a whole. In order to tackle this problem, we would have to figure out how to make people feel satisfied in life, satisfied with what they are accomplishing, and doing, if we were able to tackle how people viewed themselves we might have a chance to stop these feelings at the source. Rather than blaming social media a simple ‘tool’, social media is simply making us look closer at very real human issues, inequality, and peoples envious towards others with ‘more’ than they have.
First lets take a look at the major problems with social media and how it affects us…
School Performance: Social media stimulates us to a point where we begin to develop a need for increased stimulation, this means when you sit down to read a book or listen to your teacher, you simply can’t focus and would rather be doing anything else. In a way we are becoming desensitized to the slower things in life.
Quality time: 54% of children would rather spend time watching tv than with there own fathers, we see children coming home and running to there electronic devices, almost like drug addicts. How can we focus on this problem and make kids desire these devices and networks less?
A less Empathetic Generation: If you only interact with other students via social networks you become a poor judge of character and emotion. Essentially it makes it hard to relate to others, and learn social skills.
The “Inside Generation”: Child obesity has risen by 3x since the 1980’s, whether this is due to a more sedentary lifestyle or an increase in low-quality foods is hard to say. What we can determine though is children and young adults are spending a significantly smaller amount of time outside, and more time in front of the TV or on social media. One professor dubbed the term ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ kids would rather spend time inside, then outside in nature.
Proposal:
To combat these problems I propose an app that balances the lives of the user, initially this app would be for teenagers but it would also grow with the user into adulthood.
The Environmental Issue :
Another issue we are facing with social media and the internet, in general, is the advertising economy. All these sites are based on making money through advertising. While this is just basic consumerism, the problem is with the products themselves. Many of these products are low-quality items usually advertised as something more. This leads to waste and people purchasing more of the same product. I app I propose would attempt to counteract this issue by providing people with a method for weeding out low-quality products and only purchasing things that will last.
Balance: An App for the Modern Human
Over view: ‘A yellow card’ or Elevator pitch of the idea
App Name: Balance
New Headline: The only app that can both balance your diet, environmental impact and make you feel good by streamlining your lifestyle.
Customer: Everyone. From age 16 and up, this app is specially designed for the modern human and consumer.
Customer/Problem: There is a rise in unhealthy social media, consumer and habits regarding the internet and how it is shaping our lives, with Balance you can get back on track and feel good about your effects on the world.
Benefit Promise: Balance provides you with a way to manage your diet, social media intake, buying habits and effects you have on the planet all in one simple app!
Proof: Heres how it works, Balance takes into account your media usage time, your daily food consumption, and your exercise and purchasing habits. The personalized app AI helps you decide what foods to eat, when to turn of your media, and what products are quality and environmentally friendly to purchase. Through this analyzation and recommendation the app streamlines your life, promoting well being and longevity, for both you and the planet.
The Frame Work: App
This app will attempt to combat social media issues by providing people with a guide to living a healthy productive lifestyle. Instead of ‘Likes’ the app will provide the user with ‘Karma points’ these points will be applied when the user is being healthy, purchasing quality products and taking care of themselves. A person’s Karma rating will be the level at which they are participating in the app and taking care of themselves.
The Web plugin
Along with the app, Balance will provide a web plugin. Much like other plugins it will reside in your web browser and be of use when the time arrives. The plugin will provide the user with advice regarding which products are quality and which are cheap and poorly made. Through this method, Balance will determine high-quality products that are made to last as more economically and environmentally friendly. By purchasing environmentally friendly products the user gathers Environmental Karma points.
The Web plugin Honey, as an example
Different points for different activities:
You would gather different Karma points for different activities, this is just an overview of the possibilities.
The points would look something like this:
Karma Entertainment: It would be earned through outside activities and doing homework. It would be spent on watching movies, youtube, etc.
Karma Social: Would be earned through social interactions, doing well in school, helping others, hanging out with peers and family etc.
Karma Environmental: These would be special points, they would be earned through after school activities, like volunteer work, and environmental challenges, like saving water by taking shorter showers, or recycling. They would be good for your overall Karma rating and be spendable on everything else.
Karma Exercise: These points would be earned by logging your runs, or sporting events. These points would be redeemable for discounts at local sporting stores, and sporting goods.
Karma Diet: These points would be earned by creating and maintaining a healthy diet, by eating at the right times and not overindulging.
Karma Meditate: The idea behind this one would be to calm the mind and train yourself on how to let go of daily overstimulation. It would give you control over your own mind.
The Layout and other aspects: The app would have a stats page that showed you the levels of all your different Karma aspects, it would also you the bad habits that are fighting against your Karma levels, it would be a battle between unhealthy things and healthy things.
The Integrated AI help system: This would essentially be your assistant, it would congratulate you on your accomplishments and help you understand what to do when you’re not feeling well. It would encourage you to exercise more or make a change in your diet when it finds something unhealthy. The more you use the app the more your AI assistant will know about you and how to keep you feeling good. The assistant would also do small things like remind you to drink water and breath deeply in moments of chaos.
How this app may help both children and adults
The idea is that through training and healthy habits this app will make you want to treat yourself better. It will allow you to continue doing the technology-based things you enjoy, but with a twist, in doing those activities it will attempt to make you stronger through opposite activities. Essentially counteracting any damage done by the media, by integrating good habits into your life.
For kids, this would be things like spending too much time watching tv or rushing back to video games after dinner. With this app the idea would be you counteract the harmful side of these things with there counterpart in order to provide a healthy balance for the children.
For adults, this would act more like a guide to living a healthy lifestyle and provide you with positive feedback and recommendations of how to do that.
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