Discussion: Social media

The Hangout Discuss
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So, another discussion thread I don’t think exists yet…

Social media is really the thing of this century in my opinion, in this world where everyone can share and gain knowledge so quickly. That’s exactly why I made this thread.

Disclaimer, in this thread I see social media as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.

Some questions as usual to get a conversation started!
How often do you use social media?
What do you think are benefits of social media and what do you consider downsides of them?
Which social media do you prefer and why?
Do you think social media will advance even more and become an even bigger part of our lives or do you think it will get less?

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How often do you use social media?
Unfortunately, I use social media everyday. I’m always on Instagram and Snapchat more than anything.
What do you think are benefits of social media and what do you consider downsides of them?
There are pros can cons to everything, but social media isn’t a bad thing. People are able to promote/brand themselves. I love the fact that social media enables its users to contact their friends and family members who are from another state, city and country; that is a very cool. Overall, social media is a very useful tool for everybody. However, the downsides to all social media platforms, is that it leads to cyberbullying. That is the biggest thing many young people face on social media platforms. Also, social media gives lead way to perverts and pedophiles.
Which social media do you prefer and why ?
I prefer Instagram because it’s a very easy platform to use. People are able to promote and brand themselves more easier; which is way I like it. I’m able to promote my stories more easier on Instagram.
Do you think social media will advance even more and become an even bigger part of our lives or do you think it will get less?
Since technology is constantly enhancing itself day by day, I do think social media will advance even more than it is today. Many people use social media because it is a great tool to use in different situations.

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Every day quite alot it’s part of my day

Everything has its ups and downs too much of anything can be bad. People can become addicted to likes and followers and they forget to have a life away from the phone and for some people it can affect their mental health.

I don’t think social media itself is the problem though because my mental health is not affected by it at all.

Instagram because I talk to nobody :joy:

It’s getting bigger

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Hmm

I am personally one of those people. Mainly Instagram is an issue for me, it raises your own norm of what having a good life is by seeing all those people who do a lot of exciting things and even how everyone seems to look perfect in their pictures can make me really insecure so I don’t really use my private one anymore. I recently started my art one again and I can handle it this far, but when I look too much I get also insecure cause some of the people I follow really are amazing artists and then it starts boring me that I will never be that good.

Agreed! This is personally the main thing I do like and still use social media, just to stay in touch with people.

Do you think this type of bullying is a replacement of real life bullying, like that it’s moved to the online world or do you think it actively creates more situations in which someone is bullied?

Interesting, since personally I believe social media will die out, maybe not in the next few years but I believe sooner than everyone thinks people don’t want it anymore, look for example to Facebook and how many users it lost due to multiple incidents. I feel like on longer term people won’t accept the power those companies have, and it won’t be able to be replaced by filling the market with even more social media just cause the power of it is being this big, on small scale I don’t think it would work on long term.

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True but then again I really don’t think social media can be blamed entirely. I have insecurities but I don’t follow those pages that show me how I should live my life I just follow bands and band pages so I can see photos which I actually use as motivation. I sometimes may get jealous if I see a girl who looks cooler than me or wears cooler clothes but then I am able to think yeah she looks cool and has more followers but why compare myself to her? There’s still plenty of time for me to look that cool besides 1000 followers doesn’t mean 1000 friends. I get that some people can’t differentiate but I do not think social media is to be blamed fully.

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I agree with what you say, especially about that the amount of followers doesn’t really say anything. I know comparing myself to others is more something on my side than social medias side, but isn’t that what everyone does? I feel like in some way social media makes it easier to compare yourself to everyone around the world which in my opinion is something they should be careful with instead of basically only promoting that with their algorithms. For example in my case with the art profile it’s way harder to not follow the pages that make me insecure cause they are for example active followers of me or idk how to explain it I use tags they use as well you see their art. I am part of that community and cause I am really in it it’s hard to even find something on my insta that’s not good quality art. I know I am partially to blame for that myself, since I followed some people who were artists but mainly friends but when you follow one and use a tag one time you can’t escape it anymore cause of the algorithms they use.

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Yes unless you have a gigantic ego and think you are better than everybody else :joy: but for most people feeling envy whenever you see somebody at a point you want to be is a normal thing, I just use it for motivation. But I get why other people can’t. Something that is important to remember is that likes follows and shares are not a statistic on how good or how pretty you are, most people don’t even look at what they’re following and liking.

As for the algorithms they barely affect me I follow and am followed by such a small amount of people that all the posts promoted to me are things I like and care about

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I 100% agree with what you say here. But for me personally individual posts can be a bit triggering sometimes.

Haha, that’s exactly what I mean tbh, you get recommendations based on what they think you will like. I mean they almost close you in a certain frame they think you are interested in. But I am unsure if that’s a positive or negative thing, I mean it makes sense to do that I guess… I guess like everything it has both positive and negative sides to it

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Yeah exactly there are two side to every coin, fir a while they got stuff wrong when promoting things to me and my feed was spammed with BTS and mental health stuff but the more I started liking and following bands I actually liked, that stuff stopped.

It amuses me when I get a make up tutorial because I don’t wear make up

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Yeah, the more info you give them the more it adapts to it. First thing I liked on my private one was a travel photographer, well let’s just say I still regret that till this day cause everywhere on insta and Facebook I still get only travel ads…

Yeah, it’s weird when something you aren’t interested in at all pops up out of nowhere, but then it’s based on what people who follow the same things as you follow besides that I guess, I am not an expert on how the algorithms exactly work…

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First thing’s first.

Screenshot_20190923-113014
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Everyday.

Benefits:

  1. Allows business opportunities to happen.
  2. Enable to interact with others.
  3. Long diatance relatives can stalk your ig,

Disadvantages:

  1. The screenshot
  2. The drama
  3. The minority is annoying

Instagram, because pictures > text.

Definitely will be more advance. Technology is getting more and more advance, and so is social media.

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To be honest I don’t use social media anymore. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram really messed up my mental health and it did cause a lot of trust issues which I don’t want to talk about. I am not on any social media because I am trying to stay anonymous because I don’t want my ex-friends to stalk me since they all have broken my trust which is a very long story so I don’t really want to get into details about that. Also, social media has enabled my eating disorder so I had to stop using Instagram because when I used IG, I only wanted to look for gym workout videos but ended up having these unrealistic expecations on weight loss (not talking about this stupid diarrhoea tea btw) I meant them IG models who are super slim which made me feel shit about myself.

But I don’t know if this forum counts as social media since I am staying anonymous here in case someone I knew is stalking me on there which I doubt that. Hopefully I can find more alternative social media platforms that do allow free speech and anonymity.

There are way too many downsides of social media to be honest. But that’s my business that I don’t want to use them anymore since I prefer e-mailing. I just can’t stand WhatsApp because people don’t seem to respect my privacy when I put up a status saying, “Do not message me after 9pm” because that is when I’m either sleeping or watching a film. After I found out to switch off my “last seen” thing, I still get annoyed that people (talking about people I used to be friends with) message me when I tell them that I don’t want to talk. I couldn’t take it anymore so I had to remove WhatsApp because it’s awfully boring and annoying; especially with these dumb group chats where relatives feel the need to pick a bone with you over what you talk about and stuff.

Another downside of social media is when people are more likely to doxx you (this means to leak out very sensitive information like your home address, work address, school etc.) and don’t forget that cyberbullying still exists. Also, it’s scary that there are children under 13 using the internet and they do things that are completely inappropriate. Yes, I am looking at you Danielle Cohn and Melody (some Brazilian IG child model) but the parents need to put on their big pants on and stop letting their kids do stuff like that! I know I am ranting & raving here but I think parents need to stop letting anyone under 13 use the internet because:

  1. They don’t know they are talking to
  2. Posting sexy images at that age is not cute, you’re letting paedophiles win by preying on you (talking about them minors)
  3. You don’t know what your kids are up to on the internet these days

I think parents need to stop being so irresponsible by spoiling their kids under 13 with tablets, iPhones & iPods and laptops. Kids need to enjoy being kids!

I don’t use any social media since I can’t be bothered to catch up with people I used to be friends with cause I knew they were only friends with me for gossip. I have Tumblr but I stay anonymous because I don’t want anyone to find out who I am on there but I think that Tumblr needs to remove really disgusting accounts that promotes eating disorders, pornography, paedophilia and bestiality.

But I just prefer writing in my diary so I don’t have to share such personal information as some of the stuff I write are either controversial or aggressive. It’s a way to vent instead of venting to those who are more likely to respond with “oh” or “That sucks” and then change the topic to something unecessary.

I don’t know and I don’t care. I think I’m better off here than any other stupid social media platform. Just don’t ask me to get Facebook, IG, Snapchat and all that trash.

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Oh, gosh, that screenshot is disturbing :zipper_mouth_face: But at least they stopped after that…

Hmm, maybe in that way you are right, but it getting more advanced will probably mean more and more algorithms and things like that, what is your opinion on that?

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First of all I am sorry to hear you had such a negative experience with social media. It’s annoying your friends didn’t respect you didn’t want to be messaged after 9…

I get what you mean here, but personally I think it’s so common these days to be really young when you first get acces to social media, that almost makes it impossible as parent. I mean if I would have a kid and they are in primary school and everyone around them is using social media, well what I try to say it’s hard to not give in then in this digital generation.

Okay, a what if situation for you, say in 20 years time the only way you can get a normal job is if you have an outstanding organized social media with enough followers, what would you do in that case?

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I don’t think I want to be popular on social media so I’m gonna pass.

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Alright, that totally makes sense but I was curious to see! But honestly I really hope this world isn’t actually going that direction where your social media is more important than anything else

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My question for social media ain’t that deep or something …i actually would love to follow you guys on Insta as well , cause I ten to disappear from here sometimes …so what are your usernames if u want me to follow u :eyes::eyes:

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Recently, very rarely. I’ve been offline from social media.

Benefits:

  • Connecting with friends/family.
    -Staying informed.
  • Becoming famous?

Downsides:

  • Easy to become addicted.
  • Can be dangerous.
  • Sometimes unhealthy.

Back when I was active on social media, probably instagram.

Hopefully it stays at this level, or becomes a little less important to our lives. I’m not really a fan of social media.

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Basically everyday. I don’t do a lot though I might post but I just like checking my feed.

Pros: Communication with people across the world, communication is quick, memes, easy to use, entertaining, easier to talk behind screens than face to face
Cons: Cyberbullying, doxxing, triggering images and posts, enables scholastic terrorism/indoctrination, becoming addicted to it

Instagram because I can just like a few posts then go :joy:

It will advance. If you look at influencer culture like on Youtube or Instagram you can easily make money and gain success off social media, so people will further take advantage of that. Social media is also used for practical things like school and police announcements too because so many people use social media so it’s easy to get their attention. Also,if you look at the Spill drama on Youtube it seems likely that companies will continue to get involved in social media.

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Everyday!

You can interact with other people which is nice and they have group chats. I also made friends from social media as well. However, there is always drama which is really annoying. And it’s so annoying getting invited to disgusting gcs with random strangers, plus social media creeps because I’ve faced with them before. It does ruin health as well if you’re constantly going to Instagram. And people are addicted to having like so many followers

Definitely Instagram because I can get to post pics and I can post stories

I think social media will advance more!