Junior Theme Reflection

Social Media Addiction

Abstract

Over the past few months I have been extensively researching social media addictions: its causes, its effects, and the aspects that make it so addicting. I chose this topic because social media has become a daily use for a majority of the people I know; including myself. Before writing this paper I didn’t think social media addiction was a real issue, more of an excuse for being on your phone so much. However, after finishing my research I’ve found that this is a serious problem that isn’t talked about enough. 

Reflection

    I was surprised by many things that I found throughout my research, most perhaps by the amount of people that suffer from social media addictions. It is estimated that 210 million people suffer from social media and internet addictions worldwide (Longstreet). When I was trying to find a subject to research and stumbled onto social media addictions, I originally assumed that it was problematic but not a huge issue, now I know that it affects millions of people and has very serious problems associated with it. Expert on the subject Adam Alter, who recently wrote a book on social media addictions, said, “All addiction essentially involves the treatment of a psychological need that isn’t met elsewhere: insecurity, loneliness, anxiety, and so on. Social media addiction is this way too.” In this way social media is very similar to substance addictions which is a huge issue. I also found it quite interesting that Alter said that teens were more susceptible to social media addictions because, “Teens are susceptible because they’re at a developmental stage that makes them prone to social insecurity.” I had no idea that social media addiction was this big of an issue, now more than ever. The world is becoming more and more digital and as people start spending more and more time on social media rather than face to face people are going to start becoming addicted to social media because they depend on it just how other substance addictions work, you depend on it so you keep going back to it. I’m very passionate about trying to resolve this issue because on its current trajectory this problem is only going to get worse. In my research I found that breaks from social media as well as time restrictions can help keep people from being addicted. 

Longstreet, Phil, and Stoney Brooks. “Life Satisfaction: A Key to Managing Internet & Social Media Addiction.” Technology in Society, Pergamon, 28 May 2017, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X16301634.

Between The World and Me

“Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world,” says Tanahasee Coates in his book Between the World and Me. Racism happens not because of people’s differences, but because of the historical separation of different races. Laquan McDonald had his life taken away because of his race. He was shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke who said he “felt threatened” by Laquan. This case was disputed for a long time, Officer Van Dyke argued that Laquan was lunging at him with a weapon and only shot him once in response. Eventually the dash cam footage was released and everyone saw that Laquan was walking away when the officer shot him 16 times even after he had already collapsed. All of this because a police officer felt threatened by someone whos skin was a different color then his.
Racism can be traced to humans’ natural dislike for people different than themselves. Differences threaten ones’ sense of self and safety on a very instinctive level. This is what caused Officer Van Dyke to fire at Laquan. Had it been a white man in a suit the story would have been very different and that’s what’s sad about the world we live in. “In America, it is tradition to destroy black body--it is heritage.” Tanahasee Coates could not be more right. Racism can be tracked to virtually the beginning of civilization in Ancient Mesopotamia where kings would take slaves from different lands and use them to better their kingdom. In Between the World and Me, Coates is paving the way for his son to survive and succeed in this world where racism is a problem that he is going to encounter.
Racism is outdated, in a day and age where people are more different than ever, racism should start to fade but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be happening. Often people will go out of their way to not be racist which isn’t horrible but in the eyes of Tanahasee Coates it isn’t good. While talking about the struggle of black people on television, “the host flashed a widely shared picture of an eleven-year-old black boy tearfully hugging a white police officer. Then she asked me about “hope.” And I knew then that I had failed.” He is saying he failed, not because his point didn’t get across. He failed because he was trying to get her to understand, not to have her look at the bright side because in reality there isn’t a bright side.
  In a perfect world Laquan McDonald would still be alive because the officer wouldn’t have felt the need to shoot him 16 times. While the death of Laquan is 100% the police officers fault, the stereotype that poor black men are always dangerous is very damaging to society and especially police officers that get into these types of situations. Tanahassee Coates knows believes that racism exists because of the historical separation of black people and white people and I have to agree. While this isn’t the only reason, history plays a major role in how race is viewed and how race turned into racism.

Social Media

While social media can often be a great tool for talking to friends and meeting new people, it is also the source of a lot of negative things. Im not going to be talking about the negative aspects of social media, instead focusing on how these giant social media companies make their apps and websites addictive and how this addiction has lead to a change in values over the years.

Social media giants have many different strategies to make keep people on social media every day for hours at a time. One of the strategies they used is called the infinite scroll method, which basically has users continue scrolling without ever having to click anything, "If you don't give your brain time to catch up with your impulses, you just keep scrolling," says a former engineer of the computer user face company, Humanized. Another tactic used is one by snapchat, 'streaks' which is a number that appears next to someones name representing how many days in a row you've 'snapped' them. People will often get upset when they lose a streak so this tactic is a way to make sure that people are on snapchat every day. (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959)

At this point in time it is very uncommon for someone to not have social media, almost everyone has some form of social media and most people probably have multiple accounts across many different social media platforms at this point having a social media platform is almost an expectation from society. So while maybe 15-20 years ago communities valued people talking in real life and spending time with each other in person, it seems now that communities are more focused on spending time on social media instead of spending time with real people in real life.

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