While reading the debate "Is Digital Connectedness Good or Bad for People", I realized how big social media can be. one of the good things that has come out of social media is how fast we can spread awareness about an issue. One of the authors discusses how the ALS ice bucket challenge was able to raise awareness about the disease and raise a tremendous amount of money for research. In many cases like these, our screens played a huge factor in the success of a community coming together to help with an ongoing issue. However, a con we are very aware about is how quickly we can become detached from the rest of the world. Sometimes the person is not aware of it, but their friends and family see it and can become worried. We can become way too focused on what happens on our screens, we forgot about reality.
-Julissa Mendoza
I mostly agree. All too often we get so lost following someone who's life we would love to have that we forget to live our own and experience new things. Or we become so involved with posting and attempting to get Instagram or Twitter famous that we get lost in a sea of likes and comments. This leads to the feeling of needing to share every detail of our lives and we begin doing things for the picture taking and scenery alone to show off instead of for ourselves. None of these are healthy attributes to have from a mental nor physical standpoint.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, you said that digital connectedness allows us to raise and spread awareness about various diseases and illnesses. However the drawbacks of people becoming addicted to these sites is not worth the pros. For mass, quick awareness it would be just as effective to use text messaging. Furthermore, sometimes these really good, heartwarming funds can be shams. Take the New York couple and the fake homeless guy who ripped off hundreds of thousands of people using these platforms to 'spread awareness'. Its sad that people are this way. but it makes me and probably millions of other Americans hesitant to trust every fundraising attempt on social media.
I agree that social media can be a good thing in the sense that a global trend can spread awareness, and help towards an issue. Though it could help some problems in the world, it raises other issues.
ReplyDeletePeople tend to desire approval from others on social media platforms. Some people spend a few days on deciding which picture looks the best to post, and how it will look when combined with previous photos. Posts are usually made based on whether or not it will look appealing to other people viewing it as opposed to something that the user genuinely liked. Not all people upload photos to please others, but this is the case for some people.
I also mostly agree, in my opinion I feel that with social media, i can keep in contact with family members and who I don't see alot, and I can see what they are doing on the daily. As a person who doesn't watch the news, I can get alerts about things that are happening around the world. But I do still the see the down sides to social media. I compare myself to others way to much, especially in the summertime, when everyone seems to be having the "perfect summer". But I think this emotion can be over come if we all realized that it's all a set up.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you when you say that social media can be a good thing because of how fast awareness is able to spread. Plus it also does allow people to connect with others so much easier. Just like anything it does have it's cons, for example people can spend way to much time on it and then people start comparing themselves to others which can make them dislike certain features they have. I think for me that's one of the huge downsides people start to critique themselves when they really shouldn't. Although some public figures are trying to help with that it's still going to happen which is sad.
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