Social media crept out of no where and has taken over the world. It has made a huge impact on how our society functions, and has given us another view on how we function as humans. I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason, so I believer social media was destined to teach us something– not sure what that is yet, but we all know thew world has changed so much since it was invented. I’m sure we will figure that reason out when the time is right though. In the meantime, it is very fascinating to see how social media plays such a huge role in our lives. It is everywhere, always. We have full power of our consumption, which is pretty comforting, however I think abuse of social media is something we all can struggle with time to time. It is important we all remember that there is a whole real world outside what people are posting, commenting, retweeting, etc..

It is hard to understand that sometimes, because it is easy for me to get caught up in the constant reward-like feeling going on social media. It gives me what I want, when I want it, and that is such a problem sometimes! Can anyone else relate? The algorithm is a very dangerous thing, and I curse Facebook for really creating that. Sorry not sorry. The article “Blue Feed, Red Feed” by The Wall Street Journal goes into some detail about how they conducted an experiment on Facebook where sources of articles that appeared on a “blue” on someone’s feed resonated with liberal views, and “red” sources would be conservative. I think this is really interesting to show how people who tend to view the same things over and over again that are backed by the same views, will most likely to continue to view those things when they aren’t even aware. In the arctlie it says,”Scholars worry that the social network can create “echo chambers”, where users see posts only from like-minded friends and media sources.” I think this a really important concept to recognize because messages could be held back and possibly manipulated from certain groups because of their algorithm that only provides them with the same kind of information over and over again.

This is a real fear of mine because I’ve seen it happen before to me. I don’t like feeling that monitored and someone predicting my next move that much. I think it is nice social media provides you with what you want to see, but sometimes I like the search! How does everyone else feel about the algorithm issue?