I find that social media/technology have strayed away from the aspect of life that they were created to provide in the first place– connection. Technology absolutely does allow us to connect to others with a lot less effort and across any distance now (think of Skype, Discord, your cellphone, etc.), and so does social media, but there are certain characteristics of social media nowadays that damages our ability to communicate and think without disproportionate amounts of anxiety, self-loathing, and a whole plethora of other self-esteem and image issues.

It’s been a topic of discussion for a while now. Enough that media companies like Meta, Twitter, Tiktok, etc., have added features to disable your ability to view the amount of likes/attention posts get. And although I think it’s a good start, another good direction to go would be to implement mental health and positive vs. low self-image resources for users to visit and utilize as they please, if they ever feel as though they might need it. A reoccurring issue is that because technology has evolved so quickly, we haven’t really established a universal code of ethics or rules to help keep everything in check. Or at least not nearly as much as we need to.

I think altogether there needs to be more emphasis put on the resources that could be there for users, and how we should properly approach using social media.

Obviously, the way a resources page should look more polished, personalized, and clear, but just to serveas an idea: