iii) Social media can enable elderly to be in touch with new forms of communication and technology which we use as norms in our daily lives. They can share their ideas, interests, joy and positivity, as well as maintain relationships with their grandchildren and family members. This brings relationships in families much much closer, especially when the younger generations initiate to teach and guide the elders more about social media. It allows the different generations to communicate even when they aren’t physically together. It allows them to capture the happy moments together and look back at them memorably.

(ii) What have you learnt about social media?
-I learnt that social media is widely used by people from different age groups.
-I also learnt that Facebook and Youtube are the top platforms used by older adults by a wide margin.

(iii) How can social media transform our lives? Why?
-Social media can help us by staying engaged with life
-Social media also allows people to connect with one another in a much easier, comfortable and faster way

How false news can spread, and how false information can make a huge impact on people's lives. For example, through circular reporting where multiple publications report on the same piece of false information, in 1988, a piece of news that shared how routine vaccinations causes autism left deliberately unvaccinated children catching infections that could lead to fatality.

(ii) What have you learnt about social media?

Social media breaks the barrier between information and people. People’s desire for quick answers overpower desire to be certain of validity causing them to make bad decisions.

(iii) How can social media transform our lives? Why?

Social media can transform our lives as it can influence our decision making. This is because most of the time, our desire for quick answers overpower our desire to be certain of validity. Additionally, tracing the original source of a social media post can be tough as people often repost others' posts as their own.

 People are getting sucked into the latest social media craze on online platforms like tiktok. People spend most of their time on social media, and usually have little sleep, which is a very unhealthy lifestyle. For example, Mr Koshy, usually spends a lot of time thinking up the next viral post, and putting out at least one to two TikTok posts a day. He feels that the number of likes he gets was important to him as it is a validation for the content that he puts out. Another example was a primary 5 girl who admitted that she was addicted to tik tok. She also feels that her like count and followers meant something to her. She does tik toks to increase her likes as many people already had millions of likes.

What have I learnt about social media?

Social media can be seen as an addiction and people see that the amount of likes and followers they receive matters to them, as it makes them feel good about themselves and it shows that people like the content they post. 

How can social media transform our lives?

social media can cause us to be more anti-social and be less interactive with people physically. Although it can help us to communicate and meet new people online, it can cause us to be addicted to those platforms .

I learnt that words have many layers of meaning accumulated from the past till now, helping us to express ourselves so much more easily because these words contain a lot of meaning. Additionally, something i found quite refreshing was how common words have already been used since the past. 

I feel that social media has the capability to transform. Just the word social media covers many depths of meaning accumulated from the past. Social media allows us to explore many different possibilities, and this can be known by just the definition of ‘social’ in social media. The definition of social started with the term of ‘living with others’, which gradually changed to ‘home’, ‘companionship’, ‘follower’, to ‘friendly discourse’. This shows us how social media is seen as a comfortable space for like-minded people to become friends and share the same interests. Zooming into the word ‘media’, we can clearly see that like social media, it can be found on various platforms. Appreciating the nuance in the meanings to these terms can help us understand how people view social media. Other common terms relating to social media include ‘subscribe’, which its definition evolved from signing up, giving consent, agreeing to to become a regular buyer. This gives as another detail about social media, which is to allow people to click with others and support and appreciate their content more. Other words like ‘meme’ and ‘trend’ show us how like-minded people share similar content with one another and have similar, popular behaviours. These functions can help to transform our lives through networking and create a sense of belonging in our online community.

 

My assigned reading was about the dangers of youth’s pursuit for likes and their view on social media. 

 

(ii) What have you learnt about social media?

I have learnt that people see ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ as a source of validation and affirmation. It makes them feel as if they are popular as they have the need to be noticed. With ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ social media platforms may sometimes seem like competition and with time, it may turn into an obsession. 

 

(iii) How can social media transform our lives? Why?

It can have a positive impact on our lives when we obtain ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ as we may gain self-esteem from it and make us feel good about ourselves. On the other hand, if we fail to obtain a satisfactory amount of ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ we may feel as if we are not good enough and make us lose confidence in ourselves. Any young person would want to be “cool” and popular growing up, but taken to the extreme, such a desire breeds superficiality, insecurity, and most of all, a culture of unhealthy comparison. When all of life is mediated by a screen, and marked by portrayals of the idealised self, we learn to see others for their appearance and not for their substance. And the youth - and all of us - must learn to tell the difference.