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Research methods reading reflection!

All of these articles and books examine research in emerging media and the many different methods, frameworks and impacts of this sort of research. 

Bainotti et al (2020) studies instagram stories and how an ephemeral-style of posting gained popularity despite trends of archiving on social media. The article raises questions about how we collect, analyze, and save this kind of temporary content and talks about the ethical issues involved in studying temporary posts. The article also discusses the limitations researchers have in studying ephemeral content like instagram stories. To me, instagram stories offer an interesting medium for influencers to interact with their audience more than other instagram post styles, especially as instagram adds more features like Q & A. I thought this article was an interesting look into this field of research. 

The Viviani et al article uses a collection of textual content to identify potential indicators of psychological distress in digital social interactions during COVID-19. They use a top-down and bottom-up strategy to determine how users communicated poor mental well being on twitter during the pandemic, The article ultimately identifies and analyzes potential psychological vulnerability during COVID-19, shedding light on the impact of the pandemic on mental well-being through social media interactions. 

This news article discusses a similar thing but with physicians. I think it is super interesting as it examines how they interacted on social media to describe their mental struggles: https://ldi.upenn.edu/our-work/research-updates/tweets-from-emergency-medicine-clinicians-during-covid-19-reveal-mental-distress/

I think these two articles in combination give an interesting look as to how people were discussing mental health during this time of heightened anxiety and trauma. 

The article from Literat studied Tiktok use by young students to examine how complaints about school online manifested on the video sharing app. Through a thorough analysis of 1,930 TikTok videos posted between March and June 2020, the study reveals that young people portrayed online coursework as overwhelming during the early days of the pandemic. By offering a grounded, bottom-up understanding of students' experiences and perceptions in their preferred digital spaces, the research emphasizes the importance of considering youth perspectives in shaping more equitable and empowering educational futures. I thought this article was interesting as I think it captures a time that is incredibly rare. Similar to post natural disasters, the beginning of quarantine and the start of online school was tough to navigate for young people, especially as there are so many distractions in the home. I think research on this time of confusion and anxiety is really interesting as it acts as a historical account for the emotions of the time as conveyed on social media. 

I found a really interesting article that discusses the same issue from The Cut: https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/teens-are-flooding-tiktok-with-coronavirus-content.html

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Reflection for week of 11/10

Hashtag Activism was a great book about social media in the sphere of activism and how social media can complement social movements. In my experience, I was in middle school and came across a vine someone had made protesting the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case. From there, I watched a few more on that hashtag and even started to read about it online. That was one of the first times I remember being critical of the police and being curious about social justice. The book explores how activists could circumvent traditional media to get their messages out. I thought it was really interesting how the different activist communities explored in the book and how they all grew from each other. I think studies will come out in a few years about the social media coverage of the events in Gaza that have happened recently as evidence of how social media coverage of world events may shape the public perception of social issues. I personally observed so much outrage on behalf of Israel when the initial terrorist attacks occurred, but have now seen so many of these people flip to being pro-palestine. I think the availability and sharing of videos of what is happening in Gaza in real time on social media may be why so many people who were previously disengaged from foreign affairs feel so strongly about this now. 

Montgomery (2018) explores how social media can foster community and diversity. By looking at how digital platforms allow people from underrepresented backgrounds to connect with their peers, the authors highlight how powerful social media is at connecting people. This reminds me of a group of professors at LSU who often post about the poor condition of the buildings on campus and have started to interact online with professors at Louisiana Tech and other universities about their similar issues. While many of these people are not from underrepresented groups, it’s just a connection I made to the reading. This was very similar to the Williams et al article that discusses how Black botanists build community online. 

The Giusta & Jaworska article looked at how experts interact on twitter and how they share their expertise. I thought this was an interesting topic to examine as its something I never thought about despite the fact that I follow a lot of experts and definitely note a bunch of the trends discussed in the article. The Martin and MacDonald article only examines scientists on social media and how their posts may foster two way communication with their audiences. The same was discussed in the Cote and Darling (2018) article which examines the follower type of scientists on twitter. For the most part, the scientists examined were only followed by other scientists until they crossed the threshold of 1000 followers. From there, they had more diversity in the types of people they followed. The authors use this to encourage scientists to use their platforms to promote their work and the sciences. 

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This week all of the readings focus on some negative effects of emerging media, namely social media and the negative impacts it can have on users. 

The Groshek & Koc-Michalska (2017) piece focuses on populism during the 2016 election and how that functioned and spun out of control on social media. Many people thought Trump’s social media presence would result in more support for him, but the results found more social media use, both active and passive, was correlated with negative feelings for Trump. Additionally, social media did not have the  political influence it may have had in 2008 or 2012 and was roughly the same level of influence as watching television. For populist candidates on the left like Bernie Sanders, more social media use was correlated with positive feelings for the candidate. To me, this makes a lot of sense. Trump’s attention on socials painted him as a villain or a schoolyard bully, where Sanders seemed like a sweet grandpa trying to be helpful.

The Kleemans et al (2016) article was also very interesting to me as it focused on how the use of filters and retouching on social media impacts the body image of girls ages 14 to 18. I think this time will be looked back on similar to the early 2000s. In the same way people look back and cringe on Yoplait or SlimFast, Tiktok filters that alter appearances so much will probably be a major red flag in 10-20 years. I also think this study could be replicated to include retouching on posts that are not static. Since the majority of content is video, I would be very interested to see if the results still indicate the same as this study. For example, researchers could examine the impact of girls watching videos of girls doing Tiktok dances with the filter that makes them look thinner. I think with how rampant body issues are for young girls and boys, it will be a large area of research for future media scholars. 

Here’s an article I found on the Tiktok skinny filter: 

Some countries are even making laws to address what retouching on social media may do for body image, here’s an article I found on a law in Norway

Similarly, the Paakkari (2021) article looks at the risk that social media activity can have on adolescents. Researchers grouped the adolescents in the study by their level of risk to perform problematic behaviors. The results ultimately indicated that teenagers with problematic social media usage also experienced negative health impacts. Eden et al (2015) describes how certain media behaviors during COVID-19 lead to exacerbated or reduced levels of stress. To be honest, in reading these articles I can’t help but think, why does anyone even use social media? Is the connection worth it for the obvious negative impacts described in these studies?

I think it would be interesting to examine all of these studies on the negative impacts of social media with the media multitasking that Kazakova et al (2015) describes. Since the results of the two studies they did found that media multitasking dilutes the impact of media messages, I think it would be interesting to see if multi tasking reduced the body image problems or the negative health impacts described. 

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Fake news

The book this week explores the role of the media in shaping public perception, the challenges of reporting the truth, and the historical context of media's evolution, from the printing press to the digital age. It also touches on the psychological and cultural factors that influence how we perceive and consume news and information. 

I actually really loved the comic book! I thought it such an interesting choice to illustrate this sort of content and I also really enjoyed the illustration style a lot. I also think the choice to demonstrate this information via a shorter comic book probably makes the information more approachable and accessible. 

The Guo and Vargo (2018) article examined satirical, fake news and misinformation websites to determine how they interacted with traditional news media during the 2016 election. Overall, purposeful misinformation sites followed the agenda-setting pattern the traditional news media did. However, satire sites broke away from what the traditional news media was creating and focused on other topics. To me, the results of this study make a lot of sense. Of course, the fake news websites would focus on the stories other news outlets may also be covering because they want to seem more legitimate. It reminds me of the piece we read last week on the way online conspiracy theories and the news media were so interconnected. I really liked this article as well because I love satire sites like The Onion and Reductress. 

The Donovan and Boyd (2019) article discusses the concept of strategic silence in the news which occurs when news media uses editorial discretion to try to reduce harm related to a specific topic. This article uses two case studies to understand this concept: white violence and suicide. I thought the points made on these two topics and their relation to the media was very poignant and not something I had ever thought of. Then the article discusses how the new focus on user-generated content has reduced the well-intentioned selective silence that news outlets used to employ. 

The Ekstron et al (2020)  paper discusses the evolving role of journalism in society due to the digitization of news media and the spread of misinformation. Journalists, long seen as keepers of reliable information, face challenges in maintaining their authority in an increasingly digital age. 

For this week, I decided to write a shorter reflection, but I started thinking about social media campaigns that could be aimed at college-aged students. I designed a (very small) toolkit of posts that could be used in a campaign against fake news. One is very matter-of-fact and educational, but I tried to have fun with the rest!

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Artificial intelligence and machine learning!

This week’s readings all explore artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

The Shahsavari et al (2020) piece examined how online communities and the news had a symbiotic relationship when it came to discussing COVID-19. A conspiracy community online would  begin discussing a phenomenon, the news would cover it, then the conspiracy community would discuss the news coverage. In exploring conspiracy theories like stories or folklore, this article provides interesting insight on how conspiracy theories preyed on a lack of knowledge and information during the early phases of COVID-19. 

The Kreps (2020) report  discusses something similar. In this report, Kreps (2020) looks at how artificial intelligence can be used to increase the volume of fake news online. For example, rather than relying on a room of people to make accounts, produce content over time so the accounts look genuine, research American sentiments about an issue then make posts on these topics, ChatGPT could easily create talking points or provide this information. This article offers some solutions for overcoming the threat of AI being used to create massive misinformation campaigns. One is educational interventions, which has been shown through many readings this semester to be effective. Another is using even more technology and AI to help people determine what might be fake news. 

The Stahl chapter explores the ethics and virtues associated with artificial intelligence. While AI could be used for things like social control, ultimately it should be used for what the author calls “human flourishing.” The book discusses issues surrounding AI including problems with copyright and the exacerbation of the digital divide Stahl argues that regulation from organizations and government entities might curtail the ethical issues. 

After reading these three articles, I started to think about the potential for someone to use AI to deliberately mislead people.Because you have to teach AI to be able to have it generate content, I started thinking about people deliberately teaching it lies and having it give people information. Of course, sometimes ChatGPT gives you slightly incorrect information, but could there one day be a medical AI chat program that bad actors could program to deliberately mislead people? I think the technology one day becoming more accessible could lead to things like this becoming more of a problem. For example, if Healthline develops its own AI on their site that would use their articles to teach the AI, what if they started deliberately including false information in their articles? To me, this is similar to Algorithms of Oppression where the author discussed how algorithms can only be as unbiased as their creators. I think it would be interesting to explore if the same is true for AI. 

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Misinformation and the COVID-19 pandemic

All of the readings this week focused on misinformation and its prevalence online. Many of the shorter articles surround their examination of misinfo on the COVID-19 pandemic. 

According to the article from the World Health Organization, infodemics emerge when there is so much information on a subject, including false information, that people become oversaturated with information and cannot distinguish between what is true and false. This was especially true during the initial stages of the COVID- 19 pandemic and the vaccine rollout process. In the case of COVID-19 mis and disinformation, combating false information was a public health issue.

Mheidly and Fares (2020) offer an “infodemic response checklist” to combat the deluge of false information crises like COVID-19 brought on. I designed this graphic on canva to illustrate some of the checklist on how to respond to an infodemic. 

Hamaguchi et al (2020) found that visual aids and communication strategies were very powerful in spreading accurate information about COVID-19. While this article focused more on graphics and was written earlier in the pandemic, I think it would be interesting to explore how the phenomenon of everyone’s posts about receiving their vaccine acted as a promotion for the vaccine. When people started to get vaccinated in the spring of 2021, I feel like every instagram or facebook post I saw was people posing with their red walgreens bandaid or their vaccine card. 

This is a little cringeworthy, but here is one of my own tweets I sent out while waiting to get my most recent booster shot and flu shot last week. It feels relevant to the idea of people posting about receiving the vaccine last year and how that may have created a social pressure on getting vaccinated,

Hernandez et al (2021) found that only 10% of the discourse on vaccines on Twitter was from medical professionals which led to the proliferation of false narratives about the vaccine.  They describe a new phenomenon called Health Care Provider Social Media Hesitancy to describe the risk that stems from doctors and medical officials failing to provide health information to combat the false narratives that were spread on social media at the time. They close the article by encouraging doctors to be more active as medical professionals on social media and follow the lead of other healthcare professionals that have found success on the platform. While I do agree with this overall assessment, I think this may be a bit unrealistic and unattainable for many health care professionals during a public health crisis. My sister has worked as an ER nurse for many years, and she worked in the ER all throughout the spiking rates of COVID-19 even when she was pregnant. I saw her stress firsthand and can only imagine this stress was much worse for physicians. I think the expectation that doctors see patients all day, respond to patients after hours through platforms like MyChart and also become social media advocates in their free time is a high demand for a field that already has high rates of burnout. Perhaps it should fall to professional organizations rather than individual doctors to do this work. 

For example, larger figures like the surgeon general or hospital directors could more realistically do this work compared to doctors. Here's a video I found on the surgeon general discussing combatting vaccine misinformation.

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Misinformation!

All of this week’s readings focus on misinformation online and how rampant it has grown in the last few years, especially in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This reading made me think a lot about the beginning of COVID, before shutdowns, when so much misinformation was spreading online and in person. In fact, I remember very distinctly when a coworker told me drinking water could help prevent covid because any droplets in your spit would go to your stomach acid and you wouldn’t get sick. 

This misinformation was only exacerbated by the emergence of vaccines. While I do recognize why some people may have been apprehensive of the vaccine at the beginning. However, so many capitalized on this fear and caused deep seated anxiety over the anxiety. I think this exemplifies the many ways smaller influencers online can yield similar results to large thought leaders like Donal Trump and Tucker Carlson. For example, a viral TIkTok of vaccine conspiracy could have more impact than a traditional news for younger individuals. 

I found an interesting news story on vaccine misinformation and its dangerous consequences:

All of the readings suggest that improved digital media literacy improved people’s awareness of fake news. Guess et al found that a minor media literacy intervention led to people being more aware of fake news overall in the United States and India. This aligns with the idea of technological utopianism discussed in the book where you understand media and emerging technology and know how to use it to your benefit. People that think this way know how to protect their privacy in the age of digital media and are aware of the many pros and cons of emerging media. 

I was telling some friends about what I was writing about while doing this assignment, and they wanted to help me. Here is a video we made about how casually misinformation seeps into our lives. Alex wants to clear the record that he was acting and is not anti-vax!

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Algorithms of oppression reflection

Algorithms of oppression explores the impact that the algorithms of search engines shape our understanding of the world and how biases present in algorithms may be a negative consequence of this. 

Noble touches on a good point that I think many people forget. All tech companies, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. all exist to make money and earn capital. I did catch myself in the line of thinking that these platforms are neutral and existed to provide a service. It’s easy to think Google engineers really just want you to find that word on the tip of your tongue, or Facebook’s coders just want to make sure you can save your child’s baby pictures. In reality, these companies want to be profitable, and many times this results in a marginalized group being further marginalized on these sites. 

I found an article that discusses biases of AI and thought it was pretty interesting: 

Noble’s discussion of Dylan Roof was very interesting to me. While I agreed with her summation of Google radicalizing Roof to kill worshipers in Charleston, I also think the topic of Trayvon Martin specifically made me think a lot about the internet and activism. In particular, I thought about the first time I ever saw a video of a Black man or woman killed by police. I think I was probably very young, maybe under 15. I agree that more people should film their interactions with the police in an attempt to capture the truth, but I do wonder if seeing this content at such a young age is beneficial to anyone. At age 19, when George Floyd was murdered by police, I was completely used to seeing these videos. Her discussion of Dylan Roof made me think more about how the algorithm optimizes these videos. I know they’re important for people to see, they are an accurate depiction of reality, but I do think it’s weird content like that gets pushed. 

I recognize these videos have to be seen, but algorithms pushing them creates a bit of cognitive dissonance for me. Really not sure how to feel! 

The other readings this week surrounding different forms of digital inequality were also very interesting. I agree with the Robinson et al. piece that digital inequalities will soon be as prominent as other divides in our society. A phone in your pocket that can connect you with others, deliver an answer in seconds and create engaging content is becoming a sign of privilege. Of course, the Stevens et al. piece describes how these devices can be negative as the tensions and problems faced in real life are then replicated online. 

This article I found discusses the algorithmic feedback loop and how this may make inequalities worse rather than minimizing them: 

Overall these readings made me think a lot about how white privilege thrives online and also how my own white privilege made me unaware of a lot of these issues. I feel like I fail to notice these small trends that do point to very large inequalities. . 

I wanted to explore the problem Noble first examined a little bit on my own. 

I decided to see the difference in googling just “why are men” and “why are women” to see if any algorithmic bias would be present. I googled the following items to try to note any changes. Maybe Google knew this was a problem from Noble’s work and altered the auto-fill, but this is what I got! 

I really wanted to do a different medium for my reflection this week but cannot remember my Adobe login for Premier pro! Hopefully next week!!!!

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I started by searching for the word, “abortion.” Based on my past Google searches as well as Youtube account activity, I was correct in assuming google would skew my results to be more pro choice.

From here, I started doing searches that I thought would make Google think that I feel differently about abortion. 

First, I searched, “why is abortion wrong” and I clicked on the first link and interacted with the page it took me to. 

From here, I googled “is it morally wrong to be pro choice” 

To “cement” this idea and mimic like I was thinking through switching sides, I then googled “why should I be pro life” 

I spent some time (about 5 minutes) on this site to try to make google think I was reading it. 

When I started working on this, I also noticed an echo chamber in my group of friends. A few of us were at the library working when I started doing the searches and when one of them saw my screen covered in ultrasound pictures they were like “why are you googling ‘is abortion wrong’”

I explained the assignment to them as well as the part where it was recommended we choose a “controversial” opinion to use for the activity to which one of them said, “really its not that controversial” which I did agree for my friend group but also for people like my parents who won’t even say abortion i felt it was aptly controversial. 

At the table after this, it sort of became a game to suggest searches. Every 5 or so minutes someone would look up and suggest another search and we would all laugh. While I realize a group of people laughing at “will having an abortion make me go to hell” might seem rude to people that have these concerns, I think as a group of pro choice women in their early 20s we were just venting some of our frustrations at the current political landscape surrounding abortion.

I also wanted to seem like I was starting to believe common pro life talking points. One of which is the “post birth abortion” which is not performed and is often use to justify the “slippery slope” many pro life arguments rely on. Basically the idea is that if you allow abortion at any point of a pregnancy that some women will choose to have an abortion during their birth. Of course this is false as most abortions take place well before 20 weeks (I was going to google this statistic but didn’t want to ruin my bubble busting). 

I clicked on one of the search results, and spent a few minutes scrolling through and expanding certain sections to make it seem like I was using the site. 

I searched “abortion” one more time to see if any changes happened. The results were the same so I decided to wait until the next morning. 

When I searched “abortion” in the morning, instead of starting with just the news stories, it started with a wikipedia entry on abortion and the same group of articles I saw before with some breaking news stories that came out overnight.

Additionally, the search results after the news portion were different. On my first search, I mostly got pro choice organizations. While Planned Parenthood was in both, in the first one its the pink PP logo which is for their political action work. The second is their navy logo which is primarily used for their medical care centers. When I googled to try to verify the different color logos and started with “blue vs pink” the autofill was things like “Blue vs pink pregnancy test accuracy.” I’m starting to think maybe in addition to trying to convince Google that I am against abortion I may have also accidentally made google think I'm pregnant. 

Since I didn't have as much time before work to dedicate to the searching, I quickly googled the following topics: 

When can aborted babies feel pain ? 

When do aborted babies have certain features? 

When is the march for life? 

Where is the march for life? 

When is the anniversary of roe v wade 

March for life groups near me 

I clicked on one link for every search and spent some time on the pages. I decided to wait a few more hours before checking the progress again and doing more searches.

That night, I did the same search of just "abortion" and found that my results hadn't really changed. I think because I have had this google account since I was about 13 years old, so it knows my interests and opinions very well at this point.

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The Internet Trap by Matthew Hindman

The Internet by Matthew Hindman discusses the digital media landscape and major companies that operate within it

One concept introduced early on in the book is “stickiness” on a website. Stickiness is the appeal that makes people want to stay on a site and makes them reuse the site afterwards. 

For many sites, speed is the most important attribute as a user’s feelings towards a site are heavily influenced by how long they wait for that site to load. I think of this like sitting in traffic. Would a person rather sit in traffic for an hour on their way to work, or would they rather have a seamless drive where they rarely hit red lights? 

Visual appeals are also very important to sites as the book discussed the large sums of money digital giants have spent to improve the uniformity of their sites. I definitely think that this is one area that is worth giving a lot of focus as I’m very aware of website design, and it definitely influences how long I stay on the site. For example, I really enjoy shopping at Zara, but I never do because their website is very hard to navigate and poorly designed. Because there is no Zara in Baton Rouge, this means I rarely buy their products. 

Another way sites improve their stickiness is by developing algorithms that attempt to push recommendations based on your activity. One platform that does this notoriously well is TikTok. I have heard many friends remark about how tailored the content they see on TikTok is, and the importance of maintaining that. I asked a few friends to describe how accurate or inaccurate their Tiktok algorithm is and designed this graphic on Canva based on their responses. I noticed most described their TikTok algorithm like a friend and used that as inspiration for the graphic. 

One website I’ve noticed that needs to work on its recommendation algorithm is Amazon, particularly the one they developed for Kindles. I read a lot of fiction books in my free time.  A few times a day, the Kindle app sends me a push notification with recommendations based on my reading. About 90% of the time, these are books I have already read on my Kindle. While this definitely doesn’t dissuade me from using my Kindle,the recommendation system was one major reason I opted to use that system and it has never worked. 

This book also discusses big tech and local news. As Hindman discussed earlier in the book, attention online is extremely valuable. Unfortunately, very little of this attention is dedicated to news sites, and an even smaller amount goes to local news sites. In my opinion, this is why so many local news sites have turned to pushing clickbait-esque articles with crazy headlines even if the event is not local. For example, this is the local news station in Ascension parish. Even though the flight was from Atlanta to Barcelona, the news station posted as if it was local. I think the declining overall quality is also to blame for local news struggling to survive in the digital landscape. 

Overall, this book is an interesting look at the power dynamics on the modern internet. While the dispersed nature of the internet made people think it would be more democratized, the centralization of power has made less than 5 companies the most powerful in the digital landscape, and likely the entire world.

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The Reality Game by Samuel Woolley reflection

The Reality Game by Samuel Woolley gives readers an idea of the many facets of technology that could lead to the degradation of “truth” and how this impacts social and political systems. 

The book discusses the prominence of technology like bots, augmented reality techniques and deepfakes in politics and how it can and has impacted elections. For example, bots that originated from Russia spread significant disinformation during the 2016 presidential election, and emerging technology can only strengthen these bots. 

The book also discussed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which removed blame from content posted online from the internet service providers. This kept companies like Facebook and Reddit from being under constant legal scrutiny. However, Woolley argues that this has kept them from taking accountability for rapid disinformation or hate speech on these sites. Similarly, I believe companies should do the morally correct thing in addition to the legal requirements. For example, a few years ago Reddit removed the community R/Incel and created a new policy that communities that incited violence would be banned. This came after a man shot six people in California and it was revealed he was a prominent figure in this community. These changes show how internet service providers can do the “right” thing to protect people online even if they are not legally required to do so. 

I found the portion on deepfakes very interesting and also very apt as apps like TikTok make the creation and consumption of deepfakes more widespread. For example, last year there was a series of comedic videos that sounded like President Biden and Barack Obama were having a heartfelt conversation on how difficult it is to be president. While these were very funny, the ability to mimic voices so accurately does create the risk of bad actors using this technology to spread disinformation. For example, recently a phone call was leaked that featured President Biden telling his troubled son Hunter that he loved him and was supporting him through his struggle with addiction. When I first heard this clip, I was’t entirely sure that it was real because I had seen previous Biden deepfakses. 

Here’s an example of the comedic deepfakes people make of the former presidents:

Outside of politics, the advanced technology described in the book can create many other problems for people online. This is briefly touched on, but some people use images influencers post online to create fake pornography that can be damaging to their reputation. This actually happened pretty recently to an influencer that streams herself playing video games. The issue with this, besides the obvious, is that this sort of content has never been regulated. Unlike revenge pornography, the influencer this happened to had no legal recourse to take when her image was superimposed on the inappropriate content. 

Here’s the vice article I read on this issue and the young woman’s response : 

One part of the book that really intrigued me was the portion where he discussed the many items and tools that have been replaced by technology. I made a graphic reflection on this notion of tools becoming obsolete. For example, I never carry my wallet because I have Apple Pay enabled in most places. I never go to the physical library anymore because I can access free ebooks with my library card that I can read on my phone or Kindle. 

After reading this book and the related readings, I did have some questions I thought would be interesting for the class. 

How do we balance using AI and deepfakes for comedy when they can actually be used maliciously? To what extent do you think social media companies like TikTok should limit their AI capabilities to avoid it being used for misinformation? 

The book discussed section 230 and the protections it gives social media platforms against the content posted on their site. what extent do you think consumers of social media accounts can and should demand more than the legal minimum for these sites to monitor content?

I can't wait to discuss this in class on Friday!

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My experience with a digital detox

On Sunday, I did my digital detox and attempted to limit my social media usage as much as possible. While I really expected to write this reflection on how difficult it was, I found it to be pretty easy and overall refreshing.

I started my day with an impromptu celebration for my friend's engagement that was the night before, and my day ended with a fun game night with some friends. In between that, I was able to really focus on my school work knowing that I was supposed to be detoxing. One thing that really pushed me to try hard on this exercise was the fact that on Sunday mornings I get a notification about my screen time on my phone. Last week, it was (embarrassingly) high, so I felt very motivated to try hard on this exercise.

I felt like I could really be present with my friends while we were together because I was limiting my social media use. I put my phone across the room during the game night so there was no temptation to start scrolling when it wasn't my turn to play. During my workout class, I didn't pick up my phone to check my notifications during a brief break and felt so much more focused on the class and like my yoga flow was improved because of it.

I also had the chance to finish a novel that I had been reading in my free time. I always want to read before bed, but I end up scrolling!

Overall, I thought this was a very healthy exercise for me and it motivated me to use social media much less overall in an attempt to be more present and focused with the people in my life.

I was curious to read other people's experiences about doing these exercises, so I searched the term on Youtube and found this great TedTalk from a TedX event in Stockholm about a man's journey with limiting his screen usage. Super interesting!