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- Why choose: Presents a prominent sub-topic of the theme, thus can be a stepping stone for further explorations under the same sub-topic
- Synthesis
The Orwellian concept of truth is unsettling to wrestle with, but surely well manifests the development across all regimes, from authoritarian China and Russia to Western industrial countries: man increasingly use truth as an instrument to “transform reality into sth relative to his interests and function” - or, as Alan Harrington coined in Life in the Crystal Palace” through depicting life in a big America corporation, mobile truth. “If I work for a big corp which claims that its product is better than that of all competitors, the question whether this claim is justified or not in terms of ascertainable reality becomes irrelavent. What matters is that as long as I serve this particular corporation, this claim becomes “my” truth, and I decline to examine whether it is an objectively valid truth. In fact, if I change my job and move over to the corporation which was until now “my” competitor, I shall accept the new truth, that its producer is the best, and subjectively speaking, this will be as true as the old truth”. In a system where reality has no objective existence, one who don’t believe in what millions do must be convinced that he is insane.
The concept of doublethink entails that a sucessful manipulation of the mind is when the person thinks the opposite of what is true, not saying the opposite of what he thinks. “If he has surrendered his independence and his integrity completely, if he experiences himself as a thing which belongs to either the state, the party or the corporation, then 2+2=5, and he feels free because there is no longer any awareness of the discrepancy between truth and falsehood. When applied to ideologies, this means that the content of an ideology reverses into the opposite, and yet people still believe the ideology means what it says. “The West is guilty of this kind of falsification. We present our society as being one of free initiative, individualism and idealism, when in reality these are mostly words. We are a centralized managerial industrial society, of an essentially bureaucratic nature, and motivated by a materialism which is only slightly mitigated by religious or spiritual concerns”.
Overall, 1984 is not to insist that such dystopian world completely devoid of humanity and vitality is bound to come, but to warn against an era of dehumanization and complete alienation, in which men are only slaves to production and consumption, and to call for a renaissance of the spirit of humanism - individuality, love and critical thought. These dangers are not exclusive to communism, but inherent in the modern mode of production and organization, quite independent of various ideologies.

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Jealous of your Facebook friends? You’re not alone.

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Jealous of your Facebook friends? You’re not alone.

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https://expmag.com/2019/03/jealous-of-your-facebook-friends-youre-not-alone/
Why choose: This article provides an insightful approach towards how jealousy - a common feeling provoked by social media platforms puts a strain on our relationships; and how to fight this negative emotion.
Synthesis: The article puts the phenomenon under the microscope and analyzes it from different angles.

Thanks to Instagram, Facebook, and mobile phones, we’re never more than a click away from the evidence that somebody else is living a fantastic life, far better than our own messy existence. Social media gives us constant, immediate access to everything we’re not doing, and leads us to question both our lives and our friends. Different people feel different degrees of social media jealousy, based on their relationships with the owners of the posts, and the content of the posts.

We’re only immobilized or depressed by social media envy when we passively browse sites like Facebook and Instagram, acting like virtual voyeurs in other people’s lives. When we engage with social media actively ourselves — by posting, sharing, commenting, reacting — that depressive effect disappears. We can learn how to revel in our own lives by helping other people celebrate theirs.

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A new Experience survey reveals how much online envy is hurting our psyches - and fraying our real-life relationships

The last time I felt envious on social media was when I saw one of my best friend's posts about her weight loss transformation...I was happy for her, but also jealous because I want to be happy with my body in the same way she was. The thing that made me envious was my friend who bought a car. He kept taking pictures of it and putting it on Instagram. It was getting out of hand for me so I commented "dude stop" and he blocked me shortly after, as if I did something wrong. The post was a gender reveal video from my husband's cousin...I was so envious because I have lost three unborn babies. Even if I were to get pregnant again, I would never have the carefree attitude that the couple in the video has.
If you've ever had these kinds of feelings while browsing Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you're not alone. Social media envy shadows our online lives. It's so pervasive that there is now a thriving academic literature on the connection between social media usage, envy, and depression.

If social media envy is a widespread experience, however, it's still an isolating one. We nurse our hurts and grudges in private. But we won't conquer social media envy until we can publicly acknowledge all the ways it affects us.

That's why we put the phenomenon under the microscope. In a survey conducted online last summer, we asked more than a thousand Americans to tell us about their feelings as they scroll through social feeds, and to describe the posts that inspired their latest envy pangs.

Our survey, deployed via Amazon's Mechanical Turk, was completed on July 24, 2018. Though our respondents don't perfectly match the demographics of U.S. internet users, the results still underscore the breadth and depth of the online envy phenomenon. Two thirds of our respondents reported experiencing pangs of social media envy in the previous month. Nearly a quarter said that during that month, they had felt social media envy three or more times.

Even more telling, many shared achingly personal stories about grief, self-doubt, and frayed relationships. These comments suggest that social media has unleashed a deep, pervasive, negative emotional force - something that threatens to tear apart our most precious relationships, as well as the day-to-day social fabric of casual friendship.

But there may still be a way out. Amidst the growing interest in digital well-being, we see more experts - and more individuals - charting best practices to avoid or mitigate the experience of social media envy. I've spent the past 15 years advising individuals and organizations on how to work with social media, yet only recently have these conversations turned to what people and platforms can do to stem the tide of envy. Before we can conquer social media envy, however, we need to understand it.

Thanks to Instagram, Facebook, and mobile phones, we're never more than a click away from the evidence that somebody else is living a fantastic life, far better than our own messy existence. Social media gives us constant, immediate access to everything we're not doing, and leads us to question both our lives and our friends.

If social media envy is now commonplace, however, that doesn't mean it's evenly distributed. Jan Crusius is a psychology professor at the University of Cologne, Germany and an expert on social comparison - a field that has turned its attention to social media envy in countries around the world. "Not every kind of person is equally vulnerable," Crusius says, "In our own research, we found that people who scored higher on depression were more vulnerable to react with envy to attractive Facebook profiles."

Some kinds of updates seem particularly likely to trigger envy pangs. In our survey, vacation and travel photos were the number one cause of social media envy, followed closely by posts that showcased money, wealth, or lifestyle.

Still, not all envy is created equal. Crusius contrasts malicious envy - "the hostile kind of envy, in which you don't want another person to have the better fortune" - with the "benign envy" of "Damn it, I want this too!"

Social media posts tend to trigger the benign form, says Sonja Utz, a professor of communication at the University of Tübingen, Germany and a leading expert on social media envy. "Relationship strength also matters," she says. "The closer we are to the person who shares positive moments of their life, the more happiness and benign envy we experience."

Our survey bears out this pattern. Respondents reported that the people who triggered the most envy, in many cases, weren't their dearest friends. On the contrary: the lion's share of envy-generating updates came from casual friends. That phenomenon was particularly strong among women, who were twice as likely to be triggered by casual friends than by close friends.

Precisely because it's now so easy to stay in touch with everyone we've ever known, social media increases the surface area of our vulnerability, extending the range of people we can envy and the ways in which we can envy them. When it isn't homing in on our deepest, most painful hurts, social media envy can inflict a thousand shallow cuts.

That emotional punch can have a real impact on our offline relationships, affecting our feelings for those who would otherwise be near and dear: Nearly 1 in 10 of our respondents reported that seeing an envy-triggering post from a friend or family member actually made them like that person less (though nearly as many reported that an envy-triggering post made them like that person more - proof that some relationships are strong enough to withstand a little online envy.)

Fighting the green-eyed monster

If envy is now a routine part of our online lives, that doesn't mean we're powerless against it. The majority of our survey respondents who experienced social media envy also reported taking specific steps to mitigate it.

The most common strategy is to simply go offline. Some also use unfriending or unfollowing as a tool to manage envy, or turn to meditation or self-reflection to get out of the envy spiral. Yet many people in our survey - a third of those who reported experiencing envy in the past month - did nothing to address the problem, and seemed insteadto treat social media envy as part of the price of life online.

But we don't have to resign ourselves to the inevitability of social media envy. It's up to all of us to mitigate its impact - not just for our own individual sanity, but to ensure that our relationships and communities aren't undermined by the virtual green-eyed monster. And there are steps we can take to handle our feelings, even as we stay online.

For instance, research suggests that we're only immobilized or depressed by social media envy when we passively browse sites like Facebook and Instagram, acting like virtual voyeurs in other people's lives. When we engage with social media actively ourselves - by posting, sharing, commenting, reacting - that depressive effect disappears. We can learn how to revel in our own lives by helping other people celebrate theirs.

That recommendation lines up with my own experience as a compulsive social media user and professional social media trainer and consultant. I suspect one of the reasons I'm only intermittently tortured by social media envy is that my digital habits - I rarely look at my newsfeeds, and spend most of my time reviewing comments people have left on my own posts - insulate me from its worst effects. (On the dangers of social media narcissism, I have no comment.)

We can also rethink what we share. No, it's not your job to protect friends who might feel envious of your new car or job or hot tub - but do you really want to be the person who regularly makes other people feel bad about their lives? Recognizing the ubiquity of social media envy should encourage us to take some responsibility for the image we project online, which means having some empathy for how our updates affect other people.

You don't need to refrain from sharing your good news, and you don't need to whine or complain about every setback. You just need to scrutinize the cumulative impact of your profile to assess whether it reflects a generally accurate picture of your life. If you feel like you're airbrushing your life story, consider injecting some vulnerability into your posts, or setting a quota on how often you allow yourself a brag. (My personal practice is to cap myself at one unrepentant brag per month.)

You might also limit the audience for your envy-inducing posts by thinking carefully about who sees each of your updates. "To avoid inducing envy in others, people should also post mainly to their closer friends," Utz advises. ( You can do this easily on Facebook by using lists to target different kinds of updates to different people.) "Hashtags can also influence appraisals about deservedness," Utz says. "#richkid triggers more envy than #workedhard #adreamcametrue."

Get experience in your inbox

Next, consider the psychological impact social media has on your mood and self-esteem. If you have friends who consistently depress you with their fabulous (or suspiciously fabulous) lives, consider unfollowing or unfriending them. I'm absolutely ruthless about hiding people from my Facebook feed if I see more than the occasional post about their dazzling life and accomplishments - and even my most beloved friends may get hidden from my feed for the month of their trek through Thailand. (Yes, I'm happy for them, but I can be happy without dwelling on their joy each and every day of their vacation.)

Once you've taken the technical steps to stem the tide of incoming envy, you can start thinking about how to become the kind of noble human being who rises above the lust for someone else's beach house or beach body. After all, each of us only has so much emotional stamina, so if you use yours up trying not to envy your elementary school classmate for her new Porsche, you may be out of generosity when it comes time to celebrate your current best friend's latest promotion.

This ultimately comes down to changing the internal narrative that plays whenever we see someone else getting that new house or new job: the voice that says you are a failure, or at least an also-ran, when you're not experiencing the same joys or acquiring the same possessions as your friends.

If you still find yourself bedeviled by envy when you're surfing the latest Facebook or Instagram updates, remember that envy can be useful - at least when it comes to benign envy, which doesn't involve hostility. In giving us a new (if often painful) perspective on others, social media envy can bring us back to ourselves. What we see online can and does inspire us to ask questions about our own choices and priorities, like the survey respondent who told us that, while other artist's successes sometimes inspire envy, "I let it inspire me to work harder."

"Envy can be quite functional in motivating us," Crusius says. "Benign envy motivates us to invest more effort, potentially leading to better outcomes." Indeed, learning to convert social media envy into fuel - so that it inspires rather than saps us - may be an essential skill for thriving in a digital world.
ABOUT OUR SAMPLE
Our survey was conducted on July 24, 2018, and deployed on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. Virtually all of our 1,075 respondents use at least one major social network, and 98 percent use one or more networks at least once a week. Our sample skews slightly female (52 percent female, 48 percent male) and also skews young: 75 percent of respondents were under 40 (compared with 38 percent in the U.S. population) and only 12.6 percent were over 50 (compared to 44 percent in the general population).

As with the general population, about half our sample has a household income of 50k or less. But our sample significantly under-represents the most affluent: While a quarter of the U.S. population lives in households with incomes over 100k, only 12 percent of our sample does. Our analysis suggests that income has only a very modest impact on social media envy. However, people with household incomes over $100k reported social media envy at identical rates to those with incomes of $50-100k, and those with household incomes under $50k differed only in being slightly more likely to experience social media envy frequently (25 percent of those with household incomes under $50k reported experiencing social media envy 3 or more times in the previous month, vs. 21 percent of those with household incomes of 50-100k and 20 percent of those with incomes over $100k).

Alexandra Samuel is a data journalist and technology consultant

Illustration by Grégoire Gicquel

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Jealous of your Facebook friends? You're not alone.

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A new Experience survey reveals how much online envy is hurting our psyches - and fraying our real-life relationships The last time I felt envious on social media was when I saw one of my best friend's posts about her weight loss transformation...I was happy for her, but also jealous because I want to be happy with my body in the same way she was.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xwbJP5EpnRLR69eY1rCG1sYA58MWZrxZ/view?usp=sharing

Contributor: Linh P.

Why chosen: Technology greatly contributes to the separation of our generation with older ones. This excerpt offers an analytical look into how technology of all kinds affect sociological concepts like the pace of life, quality of life, labor, and inequality.

Synthesis: Technology is not just the Internet, but also any tool invented to enhance productivity in general. It has forever transforms the relationship between labor and human in various ways: emphasizing specialization (the concept in which each person does the thing that they are the most productive in), enabling an individual the independence from others, blurring the line between work and leisure, etc.

The author discusses how technology enhances productivity, but at the same time deepens class inequality and competition.The question posed in the text is provoking: Does technology harm or help us? Is technology inherently a bad thing, or we are just not using it appropriately?

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Alcohol-Related Posts by Instagram Influencers Popular Among Adolescents and Young Adults

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Alcohol-Related Posts by Instagram Influencers Popular Among Adolescents and Young Adults

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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02991/full

why choose: an interesting research that we could have never thought of before. Despite the fact that drinking under 18 is banned in my household, my mind slowly normalize drinking after having seen too many posts of my friends being drunk.

synthesis: Research has shown that young people post a lot of alcohol-related posts (i.e., alcoholposts) on social media and these posts have been shown to increase drinking behaviors. Because social influencers may have a strong influence on young people, it is important to know whether and how often they post about alcohol. Furthermore, because by using influencers alcohol brands may have found a way to circumvent regulations that prohibit advertising for minors, it is important to understand whether alcohol brands are visible in influencers’ posts and whether influencers use disclosures (e.g., “#ad”) to notify viewers.

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https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_us/topics/advisory/ey-gen-z-contradictions-april-2020.pdf

why choose: this research covers many attributes of gen Z that could explain how this young generation views the world. It is recommended to read through this one before moving on to other gen Z-related guiding materials.

synthesis: The culmination of changes and the intense pressure Gen Z has faced in their youth created a diverse group of adults different from any generation we’ve seen before. Gen Z was born into an era of "changes" & "disasters" with Sep 11 attack,  2008 Great Recession; at the same time, emerging technologies gave Gen Z immediate access to a world of information, as well as a front-row seat to the turbulence and uneasiness that’s become our new norm. The education for this new gen focuses on developing the mindsets that followed into independent, problem-solvers who could fend for themselves.

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https://blog.linkedin.com/2018/october/11/the-job-hopping-generation-young-professionals-are-on-the-move
Why choose: In the fast-changing era, more and more young people are looking forward to the best job offer. This survey doesn't serve to encourage or discourage anyone, but serves to provide an overview about this trend. Feel free to interpret the datas from your own perspective.
Synthesis: Young professionals are making moves to find the right job that aligns with their values. In addition, they requires more from a job, rather than just salary and benefits. This ideology has been widespread among Gen Z and Millennials. There are several reasons for this change in which the most considerable reason is FOMO. The main questions raised from this survey are whether job-hopping tendency does more harm than good and whether FOMO is really that bad.

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The Personalising of Politics: Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation

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The Personalising of Politics: Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation

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Linh L
Why choose: a thorough research study that explains how social media has changed voters' actions & beliefs from being group-based to being individualised. Suitable to discuss how personal ethnical values influence people's decisions.
Synthesis: This article proposes a framework for understanding
large-scale individualized collective action that is often coordinated through digital media technologies. Social fragmentation and the decline of group loyalties have given rise to an era of personalized politics in which individually expressive personal action frames displace collective action frames in many protest causes. This trend can be spotted in the rise of large-scale, rapidly forming political participation aimed at a variety of targets, ranging from parties and candidates, to corporations, brands, and transnational organizations. The
group-based “identity politics” of the “new social movements” that arose after the 1960s still exist, but the
recent period has seen more diverse mobilizations in which individuals are mobilized around personal lifestyle values to engage with multiple causes such as economic justice (fair trade, inequality, and development policies), environmental protection, and worker and human rights.

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How social media shapes our identity (The New Yorker, by Nausicaa Renner, 2019)

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How social media shapes our identity (The New Yorker, by Nausicaa Renner, 2019)

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https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-social-media-shapes-our-identity

why choose: written lightheartedly, this article tackles on a few profound implications of why the mechanisms of social media might hinders personal growth, deludes the thrill of experiencing life by minimizing it at merely an observable projection, all the while allowing young people to generate their own life stories.
synthesis: day-to-day recounts of ordinary people's impression of their social media feed versus their own first-hand experience at life unveils a reality that not many are aware of. One man, annoyed by the existence of his old high school photos having reemerged onto his Facebook feed, disappointedly accepts that his unfavorable past will be on display for eternity. It is argued that, the problem with our ability, as younger generations, to curate our own life experience instead of letting that to the adults, presents ourselves to a possibility of perpetual childhood, which is the same with parents who documented their young children with photos on social media. By reaffirming that humans are granted to have an experimental phase, between their shift from teens to grown adults, the unfortunate chance that this forgettable phase can be stored online forever is a dangerous threat, heightened by  how employers would examine such profiles during the hiring process. Similarly, the benefit of recalling painful memories from the past can be an important part that makes life more meaningful, yet rarely ever do moments of failure or disappointment is captured online. The author ended by calling for the establishment of a right to forget and let go of who we are and what we did, or an informal expression of data privacy.

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The Effect of Social Media on Identity Construction 

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The Effect of Social Media on Identity Construction 

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Linh L
Why choose: a short and understandable study that explains how identity is constructed virtually through online communities and how real life identity correspondingly changed.
Synthesis: The main purpose of this study is to develop a framework for understanding and analysing
social media as an autonomous social structure in which to construct an identity. This study also
explores practical aspects of identity construction, relating to issues virtual communities and social
media. It also analyses the probable reasons that individuals feel the need to create a virtual
identity for themselves as well as “the spiral of transformation”, that is, the creation period goes
ahead of the internet to reach the real life. This study also aims at concentrating on the virtual
communities appearing in the social networks while questioning their social and cultural qualities
and values.

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Is social media feeding into the confirmation bias?(INFOGRAPHIC)

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Is social media feeding into the confirmation bias?(INFOGRAPHIC)

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https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Social-Media-Feeding-Confirmation-Bias-IG.jpg.webp
reason: an easily digestible infographic that provides an overall look at the reality of how social media is feeding into confirmation bias of humans. readers can use this to generate deeper insights into the phenomenon.
synthesis: from lack of diversity due to algorithmically generated media content, leading up to the events of voters' division during recent elections, it turns out that social media is the least reliable platform to get news from. Behind this phenomenon, the tactic of trying to gain as much attention and interaction from users have meant our ancient ability to filter out irrelevant information is being exploited at the advantage of bigger media companies and third parties.