Opinion: Catching Up in The Age Of Social Media
[March 2018] In January, Facebook announced in an overhaul plan for the News Feed feature that it would prioritize posts by families and friends over those from businesses and pages. Many people feel relieved: Facebook, at long last, knows how to step back from the media landscape and stay true to its original role. After accusations of diluting news with false facts and building up echo chambers, the social media giant has come to realize the limit of its power.
Or it has not. The influence of Facebook is hardly, if ever, limited to spreading news or competing with the newspaper industry. From the beginning, Facebook was imagined as a platform in which people can see and watch whatever is happening outside their bordered lives within minutes. As Facebook matures, many of its kind start taking over the digital world. Social media, when transforming from a tool into a reality, have significant effects on the mental well-being of young generations.
There has been much discussion about the relationship between the expanding reach of social media and deteriorating mental health among young people. Most of these conversations, however, are centered around adolescents with concerns related to emotional triggers. On the contrary, college students often count themselves among Millennials, no longer that young and naive enough to jump on the social-media bandwagon fanatically. We have aged, to some extent, out of a crave for attention that a number of likes would have fulfilled for our teenage selves.
However, even with an informed awareness, college students can still be unsettled by what is posted on social networking sites. Looking at perfect achievements and all-so-bright experiences of others is likely to elicit a sense of insecurity and inferiority. Incomplete and imperfect as we are, undergraduates can become impatient and find it difficult to concentrate on long-term goals which take time to materialize. This is a source of pressure for post-teenagers who are facing big life questions involving career paths and personal identity.
Danielle Jaffe, a transfer student and a major in neuroscience and psychology, does not own any social media account.
“I don’t like the idea of crafting a perfect life to go along with social media,” Jaffe said, “and the thought that “I’m not doing what the other people are doing” ”.
Though she understood the idea of connection and being able to reach out, “It can make you feel inadequate.” Jaffe said.
Undergraduates have a lot on their plates. Sometimes, it is less about personal feelings than about more concrete matters, such as viewpoints in general.
At a stage when university students learn to form their own judgments through observation and questioning, the overload of one-sided dictations on social media can be too much to catch up with, sparing little time for young people to reflect on themselves and ask “where do I stand?”, “what have I known?”. In other words, we no longer think for ourselves but get distracted by trending opinions, which very often belong to non-political topics such as perception of beauty and happiness.
Admittedly, it partly comes down to users who should beware and take heed of whatever they read online, as in the same manner that information is handled in the real world: judging and thinking critically. Professor Gregg Feistman, Director of the Public Relations department, said that alternative facts are not an exclusive issue of social media. “For any form of media, you should be skeptical of what you see and hear, and go check it out yourself.” he said. “False facts have always been around, but social media just makes it clearer”.
This suggestion rings true but turns out to be difficult to follow: we scroll down the News Feed and glimpse a 140-word status much faster than when we normally absorb news in person. Technology helps (unchecked) ideas spread quickly. And although social networking sites encourage two-way communication, most of the time users accept essentially subjective viewpoints without reciprocating despite — or rather because of — the obscurity of the information.
So the decision by Facebook to refocus on close personal connections and minimize exposure to public content only solves part of the problem. As long as people belong to a broader network, any information flashing through their minds needs to be filtered.
We cannot run away from social media or abandon a bunch of new friends we have made there. But what draws us to these platforms in the first place may be the most valuable thing they ever offer.
“Social media is a two-way conversation. That’s why it is called “social”.” said Matthew Ray, a media professor and an expert on digital advertising. “People, businesses and organizations can send out a message, respond to that message and hopefully have a dialogue.” College students can train to become actively well-prepared and diligent in processing whatever content social media may feed them: news articles, facts or shared opinions. Asking questions, reaching out to sources and constantly drawing on what we have known are useful rules of thumb.
“We can all participate.” said Ray, when I asked him what distinguishes social media from traditional forms. “I can send a tweet to the President right now.”