A Persuasive Research Piece
Rory Day
Lyndsey Weiner
WRT 205
3/6/2024
Unit 2 Persuasive Research Piece
Technology has been an ever evolving concept within our society, and has drastically changed human development and the way that we interact with the world around us. More specifically technology surrounding the way that we connect with one another. The internet age and rise of social media has been the catalyst for innovation and the connection of people all around the world and as of 2024 research has found that over 5 billion people use social media making up 63% of the world's population. This has allowed for people to be able to communicate and spread ideas, as well as make friends throughout the world more than ever before. There are countless positive and great impacts to our world that would not be possible without the innovations and growth of the internet and social media. Many of today's social movements that have caused significant change have started and become popular because of social media and the internet. There is an opportunity to do great things and change our society for the better. With that being said not every change that social media and the internet have been the cause of was positive. Social media is created with the intention to allow for people to stay up to date with their friends lives who they may not be able to see often, as well as a source of entertainment. The entertainment aspect is where a large issue arises because companies are incentivized to have as many people intaking their content as possible. The aforementioned constant need to grab the attention of their audiences and the constant information being available to society has caused a new type of addiction.
Content addiction is a major issue within our society and has so many detrimental impacts to those afflicted. Studies have shown that people check their phones 144 times on average everyday, with an average of four hours and thirty minutes of screen time. As well as 56 percent of poll participants admitting that they are addicted to their phones. People have the ability to be more connected than ever through social media, but seem more disconnected than ever. The increase of screen times and social media usage has been linked to an increase in social isolation, depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders. While people are also sleeping less and are less active than ever. Social media networks are being used as a distraction for real problems within their life, and compounding on the already apparent issues within our society. Attention spans have also been found to be lowering year after year because of the amount of stimulation and entertainment provided by our technology today. To the point that people really never have any down time any more. Instead of sitting and watching a show and reading a book which has much more long form content, we have seen the rise of minute long Tik Toks and short form content. There has been a new trend rising within Tik Tok because users are posting split screen videos where you can watch one side, which is usually a show or video game on one side while the other side could watch another random Tik Tok video. People are massive fans and even I have fallen into the trap of watching and enjoying them. A study on the performance of tweets found that the shorter the tweet the more engagement on the post it would garner.
In a time where people's attention spans are so low and people can have their attention grabbed and distracted in many ways we have seen this effect that we intake new information and learn. There has been an emphasis placed on attention grabbing headlines and shocking takes used to garner attention. At the same time that people are continuously scrolling and the large majority of the information they take in are those exaggerated and attention grabbing stories and headlines. Mixing the short attention spans and attention grabbing headlines causes people to miss the important information of an article and the real facts often. This has been a large cause for the spread of misinformation and disinformation. The information on these social media sites are also hard to fact check because they come from non reputable sources at times. So not only is the content we are intaking may be misleading and detrimental, but the process of absorbing and intaking the content is as well.
A video on Youtube titled We All Got Tricked into Content Addiction, by the channel Horses perfectly summarizes the issues of content addiction and how it arose in our society. He discusses the argument of dopamine and how once humans become used to one form of stimulation that it becomes the baseline and how the feeling becomes normalized. Once you return back to a normal level of dopamine and mental stimulation the enjoyment and entertainment does not feel the same as it did before. He uses a walk outside in nature as an example and how once you could listen to music while walking outside it becomes difficult to enjoy just walking outside by itself. This can be extrapolated farther to listening to a podcast as well as a Tik Tok while walking outside. All of these forms of entertainment are becoming the baseline for our attention and entertainment, and this is why he believes that people are becoming more and more addicted to social media and the never ending well of content on the internet. This ever flowing stream of information is replacing the now seen as mundane tasks which were once seen as entertainment. Another example he uses is a hypothetical that if you could press a button and receive five dollars every time which sounds great until you are given the opportunity to press a button and receive one hundred dollars. If you were forced to switch back to the five dollar button you would not find as much dopamine and happiness as a result of pressing that button. Another example of the shifting baselines of entertainment and what humans value, where Horses states, “Five dollars is only nice until you have five dollars”( Horses,3.38). This mix of widespread and easily available information mixed with humanities mental response to it has created a perfect storm for addiction. As well as businesses realizing this and the ability to profit through these people has pushed the issue even farther. This technology which was supposed to be beneficial to the society as a whole has completely backfired and been used for capital gain of a very few. At the end of the Video He poses a question that has really resonated with me which is, “When we go to the point that technology does more harm than good, when will we know”, and this has stuck with me because we might be over that line already and not know at all (Horses, 10.15). The issue of content addiction has not been around long and many people have different opinions on what dictates and causes content addiction.
Researchers have been constantly attempting to find correlations between mental health and social media since the platform's inceptions without finding a real answer. Many researchers well versed on the topic are still finding it difficult to choose a side on the argument if social media has a negative or positive impact on mental health and peoples lives. A great editorial piece was written by Ágnes Zsila & Marc Eric S. Reyes titled Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health, finds itself directly in the middle of the argument. They point out many negative impacts and say,
“that social media may lead to body image dissatisfaction, increase the risk of addiction and cyberbullying involvement, contribute to phubbing behaviors, and negatively affect mood. Excessive use has increased loneliness, fear of missing out, and decreased subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Users at risk of social media addiction often report depressive symptoms and lower self-esteem”(Zsila, Reyes, 5),
Because of these findings it is extremely important to learn media literacy and to become aware of forming habits. Everyone has a different relationship with social media and how they intake content, so it's important to be cognizant and constantly checking yourself. If not you can become sucked into countless rabbit holes of information that waste immense amounts of time. On the other hand Zsila and Reyes have also included the possible positive impacts that these sites allow for. Social media can have positive or negative repercussions determined by many different factors; people’s self-image, relationships with different social media platforms, and interactions with peers all have an impact on the way social media can affect individuals. These ever changing and differing effects are what has caused people to not be able to draw a concrete conclusion regarding the matter. The person by person nature of this issue has allowed for this issue to become normalized and ok within our society even though many people in the younger generations are surrendering on their own. The National Library of Medicine has found that In Ontario, “the proportion of teenagers reporting moderate to serious mental distress increased from 24% in 2013, to 34% in 2015 and to 39% in 2017, with parallel increases in health service utilization” so it has been found that there was direct rise in mental health issues in tandem with the rise in social media users(National Library of Medicine,1). Especially with the youth of today, because they are going through an extremely influential and determinate point in their life. These people are extremely susceptible to the hate and negativity that is widespread throughout social media. Self harm has also increased by 110% in this time, as well as support hotlines and centers. People need to have the proper avenues to get help because the rates of self harm and suicide is much higher than the amount that reach out for help. It is a serious issue within the young people in our society that struggle to reach out to others for help and internalize their own problems that may very well stem from their time spent on social media.
There must be a change that occurs because the new generation is much more negatively impacted by social media and today's internet age than positively impacted. There should be rules and regulations formed to protect people from creating the negative habits and mental issues associated with heavy usage. If we can stop the spread of negativity and content addiction that businesses capitalize off of then we can help save lives and the mental well being of millions of people throughout the world. This is an issue that needs to be brought to light and more people to become aware of it, and unfortunately the main way that we can spread these messages is by using these platforms that we have discussed the many negative effects of. Just by word of mouth or in person will not be enough so there is a very paradoxical relationship between the problem and finding a solution. Parenting and deciding boundaries and mechanisms to help prevent these issues from arising in your child will be crucial and should be practiced in every family. Reducing their screen time by only an hour can be greatly beneficial because it “can increase productivity; improve sleep and executive function, the set of skills that helps us plan ahead and meet goals”, which is an integral to operating in daily life. There is an apparent issue within our society I believe and it is our duty to attempt to make a change for the better.
Works Cited
Abi-Jaoude, Elia, et al. “Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health.” NCBI, 10 February 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012622/. Accessed 25 March 2024.
Horses. “We All Got Tricked into Content Addiction.” YouTube, 7 April 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPe-2lv2Is. Accessed 25 March 2024.
Kerai, Alex. “Cell Phone Usage Statistics: Mornings Are for Notifications.” Reviews.org, https://www.reviews.org/mobile/cell-phone-addiction/. Accessed 25 March 2024.
Shewale, Rohit. “Social Media Users 2024 (Global Data & Statistics).” DemandSage, 4 March 2024, https://www.demandsage.com/social-media-users/. Accessed 25 March 2024.
Wylie, Ann. “What's the Ideal Length of a Tweet?” PR News, 14 January 2020, https://www.prnewsonline.com/whats-the-ideal-length-of-a-tweet/. Accessed 25 March 2024.
Here’s How Social Media Affects Your Mental Health.” McLean Hospital, 14 February 2024,
https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/it-or-not-social-medias-affecting-your-mental-health. Accessed 25 March 2024
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2749480
https://www.reviews.org/mobile/cell-phone-addiction/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPe-2lv2Is
https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/it-or-not-social-medias-affecting-your-mental-health
Comments
Post a Comment