DHT: Ledger of Harms (2023) by UMaine New Media

Fake News Infographic

johnsylvain — 2023-09-12 18:47:25 UTC

Fake News on The Internet

2023-09-12 18:48:24 UTC

EATING DISORDERS

2023-09-12 18:48:54 UTC

The more time you spend on instagram, the more likely you are to develop an eating disorder. It is proven that it distrorts people's opinion on food

2023-09-12 18:50:30 UTC

Infographic

deaconwaitkevitch — 2023-09-12 18:51:12 UTC

How Social Media Rewards Misinformation

katherinefletcher2 — 2023-09-12 18:52:07 UTC

Eye Irritation, Fatigue, Blurred Vision, & More

bradleewatts — 2023-09-12 18:52:08 UTC

"the average American dedicates a staggering ten hours a day to screen time. That’s more time than the average American spends eating and sleeping combined."

Teens identifying on fake news

johnsylvain — 2023-09-12 18:53:25 UTC

Instagram Causes Eating Disorders

brettpalmer1 — 2023-09-12 18:53:35 UTC

Using Instagram has been proven to be associated with eating disorders, which are both a physical and mental issue. A 2017 study found that Instagram is the most harmful social media in this aspect. Some celebrities flaunt photoshopped images of their bodies to create an unrealistic standard. Kim Kardashian goes as far to promote sketchy diet products.

Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28251592/

Lonliness

ryanmendes1 — 2023-09-12 18:54:23 UTC

With technology becoming more prominent, the need for social interaction will decline. More and more people use technology to setup doctor's appointments and ordering pizza rather than face to face interaction.
A way to avoid this is to limit yourself from using apps like this by creating app restrictions. It will limit screen time in general as well.

TikTok's algorithm leads users from transphobic videos to far-right rabbit holes

kahlannewsom — 2023-09-12 18:54:42 UTC

https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/tiktoks-algorithm-leads-users-transphobic-videos-far-right-rabbit-holes

Decreased physical activity

2023-09-12 18:54:47 UTC

"Social media use can lead to decreased physical activity levels. This is because people who are engaged in social media are often sitting down and not moving around"

Depression and anxiety

kevinnishimwe — 2023-09-12 18:55:10 UTC

"Human beings need face-to-face contact to be mentally healthy. Nothing reduces stress and boosts your mood faster or more effectively than eye-to-eye contact with someone who cares about you."

Website

evansoucy — 2023-09-12 18:55:16 UTC

Misinformation and Disinformation

2023-09-12 18:55:18 UTC

Creators only care about profit while knowing the effects.

griffinehnstrom — 2023-09-12 18:55:35 UTC

The people who create the tech such as Steve Jobs (Creator of Apple) don't allow their own kids to use the products because they know how it effects people yet they do nothing about it, as they only care about the profit.

Social Media Addiction Bad For Hands

bradleewatts — 2023-09-12 18:56:05 UTC

"people who frequently use their thumbs to type text messages on cell phones sometimes develop radial styloid tenosynovitis, also called De Quervain syndrome, BlackBerry thumb or texting thumb, a painful affliction that involves the tendons that move the thumb."

colinpgallagher — 2023-09-12 18:56:08 UTC

While social media allows people the ability to connect, it is also provides a platform for hatred, ostracization, and misinformation.
One such example being the death of George Floyd, and how a flood of misinformation was spread through Facebook.

Affects on our Brains

sophieknox2 — 2023-09-12 18:56:24 UTC

How Social Media Affects Your Brain | Neuline (neulinehealth.com)
Social Media has links to shortening attention span due to constant new information and can shrink parts of the brain.

Blue light insomnia, Poor immune function

loganlevesque — 2023-09-12 18:56:31 UTC

Infographic

2023-09-12 18:56:46 UTC

Children and Phones

trevorfanara — 2023-09-12 18:57:01 UTC

"50% of parents reported that mobile devices typically interrupted the time they spent with their children 3 or more times each day; only 11% reported that mobile devices did NOT interrupt their time with their children."

A way to solve this could be to give kids a phone at an older age and tell them not to be on their phones during certain times to promote being engaged in whatever activity they are doing.

Identifying Bots online

johnsylvain — 2023-09-12 18:57:06 UTC

deaconwaitkevitch — 2023-09-12 18:57:13 UTC

Obesity Evidence Hub-Effect on youth

lilyheyland — 2023-09-12 18:57:23 UTC

Repetitive Stress Injuries (Thumbs)

bradleewatts — 2023-09-12 18:57:45 UTC

“Ergonomically, smartphones weren’t designed with the hands and wrists in mind.”

How kids use media

evansoucy — 2023-09-12 18:57:54 UTC

Effects on mental health

jensenaspinall — 2023-09-12 18:58:00 UTC

deaconwaitkevitch — 2023-09-12 18:58:00 UTC

Pros Cons of social media for democracy

jayfulton — 2023-09-12 18:58:01 UTC

"Of students who report spending a lot or some time on social media 50% found out what is happening in the world"

https://www.trtworld.com/perspectives/is-excessive-social-media-use-linked-to-poorer-health-researchers-say-yes-12867915

seanfuller — 2023-09-12 18:58:08 UTC

10 Types of Mis - and Disinformation

katherinefletcher2 — 2023-09-12 18:58:41 UTC

Neurological damage, sleep, and eye health

loganlevesque — 2023-09-12 18:58:54 UTC

Poor Posture - Back Problems

bradleewatts — 2023-09-12 18:59:00 UTC

"seeing an increase in patients with neck and upper back pain which is likely to be related to poor posture when using mobile phones"

anaisjendian — 2023-09-12 18:59:40 UTC

The 2020 Presidential election made voters confidence in our political system decrease, due to the fake news/misinformation that was "deliberately aimed at disrupting the democratic process".

UK Chiropractors Find Correlation Between Social Media and Back Problems

bradleewatts — 2023-09-12 19:00:45 UTC

"200 social media users in a recent study revealed the Internet has put us out of touch with
our bodies
74% reported backache, a headache or eyestrain due to their extended computer use.
94% of users are spending up to 15 hours in front of their computers
Nearly six in ten (58%) aren’t taking any precautions to protect their posture and back
Bloggers admit to accessing the Internet in front of the TV (95%) or even in bed (94%)
allowing poor posture and serious damage to their backs."

voter fraud narratives

maxxwellsmith — 2023-09-12 19:01:08 UTC

During the 2020 election there were a lot of people spread the false narrative that voter fraud was occurring during the midterms. The event caused a lot of distrust and confusion surrounding the government. The lessons that we can take away from this event is that government officials need to do a better job of stopping misinformation from spreading before it happens. Even worse, some political figures were even promoting the spread of misinformation. It's also important for people to understand how misinformation is spread on different apps, and the article does a good way of describing the differences.

self-control

kevinnishimwe — 2023-09-12 19:01:14 UTC

“If I was to continue using social media, I had to learn what would trigger my anxiety and how using different platforms made me feel,” says Michelle.

jensenaspinall — 2023-09-12 19:01:23 UTC

Dangers of tech

evansoucy — 2023-09-12 19:01:41 UTC

Impact on memory

oliviafalagario — 2023-09-12 19:01:45 UTC

Research has shown that social media can be also linked to memory deficits. The type of memory that is impacted is the transactive memory.

Attention span differences in 13 years

sophieknox2 — 2023-09-12 19:02:05 UTC

Obsession with appearance

williamkim14 — 2023-09-12 19:02:21 UTC

People have become vain and have developed an idealized appearance that is both unrealistic and incredibly ugly.

Stress, Hypertension, and Early Mortality

loganlevesque — 2023-09-12 19:02:41 UTC

Lasting effects of organized misinformation

2023-09-12 19:02:56 UTC

When the rumors of election rigging, exasperated by our then president, grew to a head, the following riot at the capitol changed how we see our government. If someone with a lot of followers can do this, and follow almost no repurcussions, what else could famous people and politicians do? Now that that floodgate is open, it's likely other politicians will try to follow suit, with differing levels of success.

seanfuller — 2023-09-12 19:02:58 UTC

#gamergate

zacharywsmith — 2023-09-12 19:04:12 UTC

Over 10,000 twitter users were actively involved and spreading hate towards a specific group of female game developers thanks to twitter's trending feature. The if the algorithm sees that enough people are tweeting about the same thing it will add that topic to the trending page. If its something positive, its a good thing. But something like gamergate makes this feature an easy way for people with the same bad ideas to communicate and spread hate.

Online Ad Targeting Using Racial Stereotypes

josiahwebber — 2023-09-12 19:04:29 UTC

Reportedly 92% of ads that appeared when searching for a black identified name on google mentioned the word "arrest." Compare that to 80% of ads for white identified names.

Creators are willing to harm others for profit

justinsardano — 2023-09-12 19:04:30 UTC

Certain creations have an impact on people, and the creators of these creations know about it, yet continue to market and sell their products. The point of a creation is obviously to make profit, but it is also to have a positive effect on individuals. A lot of creations have had a negative impact, which can sometimes be hard to see, that the creator knows about, an example being Steve Jobs of Apple, who limited the amount of time his kids could use technology, even though he created a major piece of it.

Tech Leaders are more strict than others when it comes to technology.

walkerphillips1 — 2023-09-12 19:04:57 UTC

Tony Fadell, inventor of the iPod, said" We’ve unleashed a beast, but there’s a lot of unintended consequences" stating that these leaders don't know the long-term effect these technologies will have on us. What concerns me is how cautious they are with their own families and yet, when they are at work their mindset shifts and they only think about how they can profit and keep people addicted.

Delayed Gratifacation

oliviamerenberg — 2023-09-12 19:06:04 UTC

Children are showing incapability of delayed gratification. Due to small amounts of dopamine hits people receive every few seconds with phone notifications, they don't have a reason to pursue delayed gratification.

Study Finds Fake News Spreads Faster Than Real News on Twitter

kahlannewsom — 2023-09-12 19:08:05 UTC

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) recent research, ... delved into 126,000 stories tweeted by around 3 million accounts from 2006 to 2017. The researchers, Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, found that fake news stories spread faster and were more likely to be retweeted than true stories. Fake news cascade down to between 1,000 and 100,000 Twitter users. True or verified stories, however, take six times longer to reach 1,500 people. They also note that fake news was frequently retweeted more by humans than bots.

Impacts of Social Media Addiction for the Mind

cypriandove — 2023-09-12 19:10:06 UTC

The augmentation hypothesis describes the internet has its own existing social capital offline. Receiving and giving social support that the user can recognize as positive effects. A really great way to hook someone into an addiction.
The displacement hypothesis lies in opposition to the augmentation hypothesis; internet use diminishes offline social capital. This creates negative side effects for the human behind the user.
Social media cannot replace face to face contact as a means of gaining social capital. The internet is a subjective source, and feeds the user what their mutuals and what they desire to see. This is interpreted as the addiction, and disturbs the user’s overall mental health.
In the journal article below by Glaser et al., “Results showed that social media use for networking's relationship with anxiety and depression was mediated by both offline social capital and internet addiction. Anxiety and depression were lower when mediated by offline social capital, and higher when mediated by internet addiction, (Glaser et al., 2018).” When users engaged in face to face offline contact, levels of anxiety, stress, and depression were augmented by addiction to social media.

It’s in a balance between offline and online interaction. Our ability to use new media in this generation is new, but with the future and present comes the ability for it to harm us in ways the user does not notice. It is a privilege to use the internet, so use it responsibly.
^{Cyprian Dove, 2023}

Citations:

^{Glaser, P., Liu, J. H., Hakim, M. A., Vilar, R., & Zhang, R. (2018). Is Social Media Use for Networking Positive or Negative? Offline Social Capital and Internet Addiction as Mediators for the Relationship between Social Media Use and Mental Health.}^{New Zealand Journal of Psychology}^,⁴⁷^{(3), 12+. https://link-gale-com.wv-o-ursus-proxy02.ursus.maine.edu/apps/doc/A568973088/HRCA?u=maine_orono&sid=summon&xid=cd763b19}

Creators protect their own family than others from tech the make.

mattayoimontgomery — 2023-09-13 13:00:19 UTC

For example, Chamath Palihapitiya ( former VP of user growth at Facebook) doesn’t allow his own kids to use tech.

Nicholas Carr

johnsylvain — 2023-09-14 18:18:40 UTC

"We have this desire deep in our biology to know what is going on around us."

Nicholas Carr

katherinefletcher2 — 2023-09-14 18:19:39 UTC

"we have deep instincts to go out and gather as much information as possible"

Dopamine

2023-09-14 18:19:40 UTC

According to carr's ted talk, Dopamine is released in our brains when we seek out information on our cell phones. This is the same chemical that is released when we use drugs. It is what encourages us to do something over and over again.;

Dangers of Dopamine (Nicholas Carr inspired)

evansoucy — 2023-09-14 18:21:14 UTC

In-Class Video

oliviamerenberg — 2023-09-14 18:21:39 UTC

We have a desire to know everything—having the world at your fingertips makes delayed gratification a useless thing of the past.
Dopamine is released when we learn new info—pulling out your phone is almost an automatic response at this point.

Social Media & Dopamine

brettpalmer1 — 2023-09-14 18:23:08 UTC

Knowing what other people think about us boosts our happiness. Therefore, figures such as likes and follows are correlated with boosts in our dopamine.

Nicholas Carr Video

jensenaspinall — 2023-09-14 18:25:28 UTC

Happiness thrives when we learn more information about others and about what others think of us.

How to tame a media addiction

lilyheyland — 2023-09-14 18:28:57 UTC

An effective way to release our minds of this false and harmful info, is cutting ourselves off completely from it. We also need to take a step back and analyze what we have just read online.

Nicholas Carr thoughts on thinking ability

jensenaspinall — 2023-09-14 18:29:59 UTC

We are sacrificing the ability to determine what our minds are really thinking about. We are basically being told what our minds should be thinking about and not letting us think deeper due to an overload of information.

sophieknox2 — 2023-09-14 18:33:53 UTC

Having your phone present decreases our attention to what is happening in the real world. Social Media platforms are competing for our attention.

In-Class Discussion + Article

averyhaskell — 2023-09-14 18:39:09 UTC

As we use the internet, information is being pushed onto us (ie. advertisements, etc). While it may seem as though we are in control of our own attention, other people are in fact the ones who are “hacking” our attention and using it for their own benefit. Technology is stealing our attention simply by being in our presence — by having our phone nearby, our attention automatically is lowered in comparison to if technology was not present.

In the article above, it is suggested that, due to the instant gratification given through technology and social media, perception of time has been warped and has consequentially lowered our attention span.

The Technique of Digital Distraction

cypriandove — 2023-09-14 18:40:15 UTC

Imagine if you had to use the internet as responsibly as you had to with alcohol. Some restrictions like no phone use while driving in the state of Maine are already showing our addictions are becoming as intensive as drug use. But you do not do the phone, you just browse on it- how does it change the chemical formatting of your brain?

Fun fact: Internet addiction is a newer term than PTSD by about 15 years. To show the importance of how long the DSM has been around, many psychologists are rediscovering the DSM V today in 2023. We consider misdiagnosis a mistake of the past when we revolutionize, and today we find much of ourselves addicted and depressed because of the convenience of technology. The age of technology is new, so we are suffering today to no avail or answer until we can no longer help ourselves.

In addition to damaging a person’s social capital as clarified in my last post, social media creates an addiction and withdrawal similar to hard drugs for its users. Dopamine is the chemical released to the brain as an award, and lack of dopamine causes depressive effects. When the brain learns to link dopamine to an activity, such as smoking or browsing the web, the user will seek out their happy high to avoid the deficits of addiction- depression and anxiety. Considering dopamine is critical for thinking, carrying, attentiveness, motivation, mood and more, a considerable lack of it can ruin a person’s drive to live. Or, for many addicts, their new addiction IS their drive to live.

Cited:

Macit, H. B. , Macit, G. & Güngör, O. (2018). A RESEARCH ON SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION AND DOPAMINE DRIVEN FEEDBACK . Mehmet Akif Ersoy Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi , 5 (3) , 882-897 . DOI: 10.30798/makuiibf.435845

Video Notes

maxxwellsmith — 2023-09-14 18:57:44 UTC

They were able to get more people to vote - the social dilemma

Deceit in Democracy

tylerjedwards — 2023-09-14 18:58:23 UTC

"we put deceit and sneakiness into the absolute center of everything we do"
- The Social Dilemma

Both users and and tech companies participate in lying and deceit, its human nature. However, this can be disastrous for democracy. Fake ads can be created, and tech companies will put them up for the right price, thus misinforming users, making it so they can't make a well informed decision.

Attention with ads - Tiktok

sophieknox2 — 2023-09-14 19:05:00 UTC

Our attention spans are so low that we depend on instant gratification. Social Media has to be quick and engaging or else users will lose their focus and go elsewhere for that gratification.
One example we thought about was TikTok, there is always something for you, and it's video after video, so if you don't like one video you can just keep scrolling. And now there are even more sponsors and advertisements that can seem like actual videos and grab our attention even more while making money in the process.

Doom-scrolling

2024-09-25 15:29:53 UTC

In recent, times, social media apps such as "TikTok", "Instagram reels", or even "Youtube shorts" are a design to keep us strapped down. These apps specifically target you to keep scrolling and scrolling to get that small dose of dopamine. We're searching for a rush, a reward when scrolling. This also doesn't help, as the factor of the algorithm plays into this. The algorithm is essentially a robot that tries to find your interests and shows you more of that specific content. However, they can show you things you might not like, as things people dislike get a lot of engagement.