Social Media and Technology

“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.” This quote is from the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma. This documentary explores the dangerous impact social media can have on everything from our health to everything else happening around us. Fake news is becoming more and more advanced and also threatening societies around the world. Our brains are being controlled and rewired by functions that are made to get our attention. They sway us to purchase items and give into ideas about the world and other things. Tech experts and top executives in the documentary such as Tristan Harris, Tim Kendall, Roger McNamee and Jeff Seibert are some of the people who got us here. Young children are going to plastic surgeons now asking to get ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia.’ This surgery is making them look more like filters and hoping to attract more likes on media, so they don’t become upset after not getting many likes. As we get older we should question everything we read online, mainly if it’s showed to us in ways that reflect a detailed understanding of our preferences. We should also resist the “attention extraction model”, which makes media seem friendly and reinforcing.