Blog topic for Unit 3: Social Media and its influence on your life

Social Media has been a part of my life since I was a young kid. It has developed tremendously over the past few decades and I grew up during these advancements so learned to adapt easily. My age generation was exposed to social media from the start of it therefore this generation has developed a label of the social media age group. My first phone was an iPhone and I automatically created social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. I was instantly connected with all my friends texting in group chats and learning about social media. My generation has progressed to the point to where social media is such an influence in our daily lives that we wake up and go to bed connected with social media and media content. I find myself as an average consumer of media content and social media user, but I also feel that the average person my age uses social media way too much in a day. I couldn’t imagine a single day where I would look at my phone and not see a that I am tagged in a post from one of my friends, or a day where I don’t check any social media updates and send snapchats. It feels as if social media is the core of someone’s life and personality. Nowadays you can almost find out all of someone’s interest, hobbies, and relationship status by just looking and that their social media pages. I know that social media has had some negative impacts on my life. I actually think I spend just amount of time looking at social media content that does not even interest me as I do looking at content that does interest me. There is so much media being drilled at me when I open a social media app that I find myself scrolling past, filtering out so many advertisements and suggested things to follow. Chapter three of our texts refers to this my mind being in “automatic pilot” In the automatic state people are in environments where they are exposed to media messages but are not aware of those messages in the: that is, their mind is on automatic pilot as it filters out of all messages in the environment. This screening out continues automatically with no effort until some element in the message captures their attention.” When I am Social media has strengthened my ability to multitask with media content but has weakened my multitasking ability with real life conversation. For example, I can watch a tv show while sending a text and reading a social media post but if I am doing something on my phone such as scrolling through social media content, my attention is fully drawn to that screen and not interpreting the words coming from a person talking to me. In chapter three of our texts this idea is furthermore exposed. “Thus when you are paying attention to a conversation with your roommate, your attention can be grabbed by a sound or image that pops up on your computer screen and shift  that pops up on your computer screen and shift our attention away from your roommate to the screen.” I find this idea to be hypocritical in a way for me because when I am talking to someone and their attention shifts to their phone, I find it to be rude, but I know I am guilty of doing it also.