It’s designed to achieve money, that’s what every single app wants, with the numerous amounts of subscriptions and adds. I never realized it, but apps are constantly tracking you every move with everything you post. For example, in the episode of “Blaxites”, it focused on a girl who was dependent on her phone, such as with school and breathing exercises to help with her anxiety. She tried refilling her prescription for Lorazepam, and it said it was unable to. She went to the doctors to see what was going on and she was “un-compliant”, the doctor’s office was tracking her through social media and saw a pic she posted drinking a glass of wine (which is not compatible with this medication). She said she did not agree to it but the doctor insisted she did. It’s scary what social media can do these days. I mainly use it to connect with friends, to see what they’re up to base on the pictures or videos they post. This app has a button for: shopping, posting pics on your page, looking up accounts, sending messages, reels, and seeing what likes/comments you’ve received. Also, I think one thing it could have been designed to achieve is, the kind of interests the user has. So, the app would constantly post things you lie, for example, after you buy a pair of shoes, Instagram would show ads like the ones you just bought from another site/app. Not to mention, a function that could have been included is the news, anything that is occurring globally. Because at our current news stations, it’s focusing on the community that the reporters think is the most ‘important’, you don’t see the news on Asian hate crimes or BLM. According to the reading, “Engineered Equity: Are Robots Racist?” by Benjamin R., “darker people are implicitly coded as unhealthy and unfit- assumptions that are at the heart of scientific racism and eugenic ideology and policies.” (35). Beauty A1, referred to this concept as, “deep learning”.  A lot of users from Instagram expect guys and girls to be appealing to the eye when they post on their page. People are constantly trying to find ways to keep themselves young and beautiful. They photoshop pictures to the point where it doesn’t look real, no one’s skin is perfect. To the younger generation, it puts this biased expectation, “you can only be beautiful if you look like that when you’re older”. Lastly, the users that are excluded (in my opinion), are the ones that don’t keep up with the current trend, putting filters on their pics or if you don’t have that many followers. It’s sad because if you don’t have over 1000 followers, you’re considered “not cool”, I’ve heard it so many times in my life. There shouldn’t be social media at all.

            From the very start, I’ve had to force myself to stay at home and to social distance myself from friends for a while, in order to protect my parents from Covid since they’re first responders, plus I didn’t want to be selfish and constantly go out, to protect yourself and others is to be considerate and to stay home. In the news article from the New York Times, “The Virus Changed The Way we Internet” by Ella Koeze and Nathaniel Popper, immediately grasped my attention with all of the graphs. For example, between Jan. 15^th - Mar. 24^th, Netflix, Facebook and YouTube had a dramatic increase of usage. With the first death occurring on February 29^th was a huge wake-up call for citizens, they stayed home and relied on the internet for their entertainment. Especially since it was mandatory to stay home for a bit. I did the same thing; I rely on the internet for everything I do now. I constantly watch Netflix (16% increase) in my free time, especially late at night. The way we internet now, is the new normal for all of us.  Also, based on the movie, The Social Dilemma, the biggest take-away was social media is very addictive. It was intriguing to see how the internet operates and how it constantly has our attention at all times. During the film, Asa Raskin (helped start Mozilla Labs switch over to Firefox side) said, “Advertisers are the customers. We’re the thing being sold.” It twisted my brain a bit to be able to dig deeper on how the internet is so addictive and why it was difficult for me to fight the urge trying to touch my phone in Challenge #1. The internet is consistently watching everything I do, what I search up or what I look at. I’ve noticed if I buy something from a store online, next thing I know is, the same product pops up on my Instagram feed, in my mind it’s yelling at me to buy more. Not to mention, Tristan (former designer ethicist for Google) said, “The classic saying is: If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.” We are all products of Google, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. They’re all competing for our attention; our attention is the product. Google is my main platform for look up things for assignments and other personal matter. We, and I, are heavily reliant on the internet to get through our daily tasks.

 

·      Boredom (not being able to talk to friends over Snapchat or just texting through iMessage).

·      Sadness, with a hint of depression 

·      Productivity, I was able to clean my room and to get it spotless without looking at social media 

·      Made me hungry

 

I was able to go about 3 hours without any social media. The main reason why it was difficult to not go through my phone was because of Canvas, I noticed with my peripheral vision there was a bunch of them constantly popping up onto my home screen. It was either grades on assignments or schedule updates etc. It didn’t help the fact that college is all online now, where we are just so highly dependent on technology to help us succeed. Positively, when I went out to go get an iced coffee, I got into my car with my phone in the cup holder and didn’t even play music. It made me look at the world differently and what I could possibly be missing out on. I noticed all the little details of what people were doing on the streets, little details to my surroundings like if there was trash on the sidewalk, or if people were following mandatory rules and wearing masks (I started counting how many people I could find that aren’t wearing one, I got up to 7 within a 20-minute drive to Broadcast Coffee near Roosevelt). This experience also tended to make me less social with people, it’s a problem that millennials only use social media platforms to communicate rather than having bare human interaction, which is a lot healthier than staring at a screen all day. Without having my phone for three hours did make me feel a lot more awake rather than unmotivated and sleepy all the time.

            I think my favorite module is from week 5, mainly when all of us were able to create memes. Since the beginning of Covid, I noticed on social media there were a lot of memes, mainly comedic ones that would always keep me entertained. The reason why I loved it so much was we were all able to not only create our own, but create one’s based on our own preference of humor, hoping others could relate, and to just make people laugh and say, “Omg that is too relatable!”. 

            The module that challenged my thinking was week 10, from the reading, “Go Fund Yourself,” Brian Stauffer helped me challenge the way I view donation sites. I never thought too much into it, I saw it as a platform for people to ask for money to influential causes, but I didn’t think people would be shallow enough to use it for other irrational purposes like for potato salad. Even though it’s a joke, it’s still taking money when someone else who needs help, would be more beneficial towards it. A lot of people are using those platforms to help pay for their medical expenses, especially since the beginning of the pandemic since the price of medical bills skyrocketed. 

            One main idea I would pass onto the public is: Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. A prime example is when people kept insisting on the internet, when you receive your vaccination, they’re inserting a microchip to track you. Which is hysterical, because there is no evidence in them doing so, there is zero proof, and it steers the younger generation away from receiving it since they tend to believe everything, they see on the internet without going the extra mile to research the bare facts. Another thing I would tell the public: social media is tracking your every move. What I mean by that is, whenever you buy something online, you might see similar items pop onto your Facebook or Instagram feed. I’ve noticed that even if I talk about wanting something, that same exact item would pop up onto my Instagram. Most importantly, remember if you post something on the internet, it’s out there forever (so don’t post anything you don’t want out there.)