Our Fatal Weakness

Our fatal weakness: trusting Facebook. Isn't crazy that we, the users of Facebook, allow a social media site to decide what is important to read? Whether it is a friend's post or an article on Paper, we are allowing algorithms to make decisions for us.

Algorithms are probably the worst feature on social media sites. On Facebook, I always feel like I never see posts from certain people, and then see too many posts from others. Which is funny, because I rarely like anyones posts or really do anything on that site aside from invisibly scrolling. So I'm curious on to how Facebook created an algorithm based on who I would like to see on my feed. Twitter and Instagram were once my favorite sites, due to their non-use of algorithms. But now that Twitter and Instagram recently adapted algorithms to their sites, I'm slowly beginning to hate those too. Why can't we just live in a world where we see posts from friends in real-time, with no filtering and no algorithms? Is that too much to ask for?

The idea of Facebook creating a news app scares me. Facebook has been under close-eye and scrutiny for altering "Top Stories" and filtering out certain information and key words from their news feed. The thought of Facebook acting as a news site through Paper sounds ridiculous to me. Facebook should stick to social media and let actual news corporations (such as CNN, FOX, etc.) stick to news. If we begin to let Facebook branch out to all other aspects of media, then all of a sudden we will have one dominating force in society controlling everything we think, see, or hear.

No matter how much I complain about Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook using algorithms and filtering posts for me, I will never stop using these sites. I've tried, and I always come back. I guess, that too, is also another fatal weakness.

Do Millennials Care?

There is no doubt about it, millennials are avid internet users. I spend so much time online, whether it is through my phone, my laptop, my iPad, scrolling through social media, Google, or miscellaneous websites, that it's too hard to keep up with what applications and which sites are stealing my data. For instance, I had no idea that Buzzfeed aggregates quiz answers, or that those Facebook quizzes have access to your information long after you take the quiz.

Millennials have grown up in this digital age, and we know no life other than this, so I think we are just unaware and unconcerned about how websites are using our data. Personally, I go back and forth about I feel regarding privacy. Some days, I'm all about it, but then other days I just don't care. In all reality, I'm just a number, just a random profile ID, within a large pool containing thousands of people and all their data.

I think it's hard to keep a steady platform on privacy, because I don't experience any day to day consequences from these websites having access to my data. Which is scary to think about, because while I'm being ignorant about online privacy, these corporations will be altering rules, and all of a sudden these effects will be evident and detrimental.

Authentic Self

I had just gotten off the phone with a friend, where we were chatting about the negative effects social media has on us, and then I open my laptop to read these assigned readings and they perfectly correlate with what I was just discussing. The irony! Anyways, I just felt like that was too funny not to share. 

A key idea I took away from these articles, (all of which, I would like to mention, I found extremely interesting), is the problem within differentiating authenticity. We are all so caught up in perfecting an online presence that we lose sight of our personal authenticity. We focus more on how people view us, than how we view ourselves. I often hear the phrase, "Do it for the 'gram," implying that you should only partake in certain activities for the sole purpose of posting it to Instagram. Because of this, sometimes your online self doesn't quite align with your real world self. You lose sight of your authenticity.

At the beginning of the semester, when I saw everyone moving back to their college towns and moving into apartments with their three best friends, I began to feel sad. I saw everyone having so much fun and living so independently all over Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. They were posting pictures of their cute, decorated, new rooms. Selfies of them and their roommates flooded my feeds. And I felt envious. I felt sad that I was still living at home, in the town that I grew up in, not experiencing any of that. I fed into this idea that they were enjoying life more than I was, that their life was better than mine because of how they portrayed it online. But, I had to remind myself that not everything is as it seems. I connected this personal experience with the findings in the article, "Will Facebook Make You Sad? Depends How You Use It". I agree with the statement, "Grazing on the content of other people’s idealized lives may make reality painful". And it did, until I reminded myself that these people were only posting the positives that were going on in their lives. I shouldn't be envious of a life where I am ignorant beyond what they portray online.

Instant Gratification

I hear time and time again that instant gratification is what is ruining our society. Everyone is losing patience and because of that our attention span is suffering. Within seconds of posting an Instagram picture or Facebook post, you can simultaneously feel satisfied by receiving a like. As learned in the article, people are only waiting two seconds, on average, for a video to load. Two seconds. But to be honest, I can't really say I'm surprised by this. I can start to feel my blood boil if my wi-fi is slow or if my connection is poor. I wouldn't wait more than two seconds for a video to load either... and I'm a little embarrassed. When did I become like this?

I have a good friend that is a dance teacher and she has told me on numerous occasions that this younger group of dancers are the hardest to teach. Simply because they're growing up in this instant gratification age. Learning how to dance and mastering a skill isn't something that can be 'instant'. These kids are not seeing results instantly and so they're giving up faster, throwing fits, and simply not working hard. They want to be instantly satisfied and given praise, and when they're not, they're just throwing in the towel instead of working harder. Their attention span is allowing them to give up and move on to something else. Although, she does not have the science and facts to back this idea up, it seems pretty credible to me.

Overall, instant gratification is a concept that is somewhat new to our society today and has only started its early stages of effects on us. I believe as technology evolves even more, the effect will become even stronger and become more detrimental to society.

It's All About Mindset

It’s all about mindset. The day you’re going to have is the day you prepare yourself for. If you wake up in the morning with a negative outlook, I promise you will have a bad day. That’s one of the reasons Monday’s have such a stereotype. Nobody wants their weekend to end so they wake up Monday morning dreading the day since it’s no longer Sunday. Because society labels it as a “Monday,” you treat it as such. This example goes back to the priming idea. Monday’s are labeled as “tiresome” and “start of a long week” and because of this, you have that mindset the entire day. On the contrary, Friday’s are labeled the complete opposite and typically enjoyed much more than Monday’s. But, if we woke up every Monday treating it like a Friday, would our Monday’s become different?

Referencing the article, “Opinion: Dress well, test well mantra gives confidence, results on exam day," I just want to say that I completely agree with this author. I have always said that if you dress well, you feel better about your day. It goes back to how you approach your day. I have noticed that when I throw on a pair of jeans rather than a pair of sweats, I am way more productive with my day – maybe because I’m not constantly thinking about jumping back in bed. How we look ultimately ties back to how we feel, not only about ourselves, but for the day. Confidence is key; and everyone feels more confident when they look and feel their best.

Priming is such an influential aspect due to the fact that humans are so malleable. For example, in "Mind Games: Sometimes a White Coat Isn't Just a White Coat" people perceived the same white coat differently whether it belonged to a doctor or a painter. But oddly enough, I do that in my daily lifestyle. When I'm not feeling confident in the look I'm wearing, I'll change my feeling towards it by changing my outlook. For example, if I'm wearing leggings and a workout tank with no makeup on and my hair up, instead of feeling as un-put together as I look, I'll embrace a more positive persona. Such as, someone who is super athletic, who probably just left pilates class. Another example is when you wear all black; instead of viewing is as simple, think of it as chic. It's such a silly thing to do, but when give off that type of persona, you start to believe it yourself and have much more confidence. 

So to summarize everything I just said, I'm going to reference the first sentence of this post - It's all about mindset.

The Gatekeepers (9/27)

For 9/27

When I think of the term, "gatekeeper", I immediately envision a security guard standing outside a big, fancy, iron-detailed gate. But, in the world of media, a gatekeeper isn't necessarily that. A gatekeeper is anyone (or any company) that filters information and decides what the general public knows. Facebook, Google, and many news sources such as Fox and CNN are some of the more common known gatekeepers of mass media.

Recently, Facebook has been under heat for being too good of a gatekeeper. Former Facebook employees have come out and said that they routinely suppressed conservative stories from their trending news section. With the 2016 presidential election being right around the corner, this really upset people and brought attention to the influence media might be having on the ballot. Not only did these curators decide what stories appeared to be trending, but they also injected news stories when they deemed appropriate - whether it was trending or not. Due to Facebook's algorithm, it takes longer for big stories to make its way to the top of a newsfeed; in comparison to Twitter's instant visibility. Because these curators had the power to inject stories, they were able to release the bias version of the story that congenially aligned with their opinions. Once again, acting as a gatekeeper and furthering the news/media agenda.
(Here's an article going into more detail about this Facebook story: http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006)

The purpose of social media is to see what YOUR friends are thinking, saying, and sharing. The purpose of Google is to receive information and learn. The purpose of news is to understand the world around you by knowing about current events. I know many people tune into specific new sources to align with their congenial opinions, but their audience needs to be aware of the agenda setting bias that occurs. With Facebook and Google, the users of this site do not always realize the effects that algorithms have on the visibility of information. Overall, the general public needs to be smart about how they interpret media.

As one of the articles said, "Humans are very manipulable..." and because of this, it is important we understand the influence mass media has on us.