Changing Our Behavior, Accountability, and Recognizing Bad From Good
My first instinct is to always defend social media. Social media and my generation have a long history - some of us a healthy union, others a dark and tumultuous road. It can feel like a funny way to think about it, but it is the longest relationship I have ever been in on a day to day basis apart from my family. Hell, I see my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds more than I see my parents. This instinct to defend comes from a place of innocence of course. Social media for myself and a lot of people my age has been a positive impact on our lives. I touched on this in my previous blog.
In the past few weeks I have been diving into the scope of the relationship we have with our devices and social media. While it has been informative, it has been increasingly exhausting. Exhausting, yes from the scale of social media, but more from the amount of discoveries that companies and institutions uncover. The statistics that have come forward have made the public’s stomach’s turn, along with an overall sense of dread it seems. Sifting through all the damning information of how the companies that we have spent years with using and pushing their product have hid information to protect their pockets versus their users state of mind is frustrating. The question it seems that everyone is asking theirselves now is: What are they going to do about this, if anything? Is it time to start warning the public, young and old, of what social media has the potential of doing?
Let’s dive in to the scope of our mental, parenting as it pertains to social media and technology, and how do we make a conscious effort to be better?
A look at the negative aspects:
Again, not all social media is bad. Plenty of positive aspects are present everyday and making meaningful change across the world. For the sake of what we are touching on, we will be taking a look at some of the negative consequences that users have been reporting.
While the effects of social media are wide range across all ages of its users, the most obsessive and directly effected are teenagers. A study from helpguide.com list negative aspects that social media use causes for its users, starting with inadequacies about your life and your appearance. More and more teens see altered images, sometimes even knowingly, and wish they were able to look like these unrealistic images they are seeing. Young, and vulnerable teens who are going through changes in their body are sometimes left with guard down when viewing these images. Unrealistic expectations enter their mind of what they believe they should look like. Reports from plastic surgeons say they have seen upticks in young people and adults seeking out surgery procedures that make them look more like their Snapchat filters, a term they are coining as Snapchat Dysmorphia. Isolation and the fear of missing out (FOMO) lead among causes of the negative aspects that social media can bring to its users. Over exaggerated images, videos, and other media of your "friends" all together at events or gatherings without you being there. Viewing these activities can have the user attached to their phone no matter the environment you might be in - behind the wheel of a car, at your job, or in bed losing sleep.
Parenting and Social Media: My upbringing with it and how our generation can do better
Everyone is wired differently. Everyone is raised differently. As I made my way through my early 20’s and began to understand more and more about people in general outside the scope of my high school, I started to realize the argument to good parenting. Today, I often call my father and laugh about how I react to situations - sometimes great, others not so great. He responds in laughter with, “I’m sorry” every once in a while because he knows where that reaction was learned/observed. Everyone I was around suddenly started to make more sense to me in positive, and sometimes negative, ways. I was just around a bunch of people who were subconsciously going through the world as mini versions of their parents or sometimes complete polar opposites of their parents. But all their behaviors stem from one place it seemed - their environment. It’s a tale as long as time, that parents across the world have to protect the interest and well being of their children because an outside force, or for our sake a company of a product or service does not look out for their best interest, besides financially. The digital environment that people's children are now apart of acts as another tall challenge for parents around the world today.
Parents speak about the wonders of how much they learn from their children. That way their children’s eyes light up, astonished, from a new activity or realization. I remember my parents in 2008 being uneasy as their 12 year old asked if it were okay if I could set up a Facebook account. A site they knew nothing about, other than a meager comparison to my obnoxious MySpace account, and the fact that my father didn't understand that it was not able to be accessed from his Motorola Razer. But they knew I was passionate about it, that always got their attention. Growing up with social media in its beginning stages allowed for interesting interactions with parents and their children. Lessons from children on how to set up an account and explanations that Facebook is not the same as e-mail. Overall while my brother and I were the guinea pigs of the our household for social media, we have found more positive impact from usage with our family. Fun, healthy interactions were present in my household. This can of course not be said for everyone.
As those preteens and teenagers from 2008 begin to become parents in today's world, there is a better understanding of how social media should be meshed into the household. Some choose to tread more cautiously than that of their childhood, some are choosing to place screens in front of their children's faces from before the age of 1. Just as the generational arguments before us on parenting "the right way" existed, those arguments concerning children's use of social media and technology are on the forefront of the public's mind.
As Millennials and Gen Z move toward parenthood, these generations of people are paving the way as the first to have grown up with this technology at hand. No group more apt to make decisions on how we allow to parent with technology/social media has been present. This group of people are the most familiar with the history and effects of these sites as they can relate to how they have felt from years of using them on a daily basis. Parents will always have a massive responsibility to protect their children as they prepare to be the future generation that leads. Setting examples now for them regarding technology and it’s use in our lives can gives us a chance to be the ones to make things better before “they get out of hand.” Breaking a trend of children not being able to speak to their parents regarding what or how they are feeling, instead of them posting online to where it is stamped forever.
How do we be better?
From a personal point of view, recognizing the individual causes of why we use social media is the place to start. What makes you so connected to your device and social networking accounts and how can we replace these potentially negative habits with more beneficial actions? Changing our focus when we pick up our devices can lead to a healthier relationship with technology. Becoming an active user, rather than a passive, leads to a more connected experience when logging on. Engaging with friends meaningfully, checking in on family, etc. Passively using social media in times of boredom can increase the feeling of isolation, beginning a vicious cycle of revisiting your device every few minutes to subconsciously dig yourself deeper. A more active lifestyle with meaningful interaction on social sites could turn around a trend that points towards a more self isolating society.
From an industry standpoint, the pressure is mounting for companies to begin addressing the building concerns that users of social networking sites are experiencing. People want these companies to have accountability for the way they choose to influence users and the way their private information is shared.
The public continues to compare the recent social media congressional and Senate hearings to “Social Media’s Big Tobacco” moment. Just as tobacco companies hid information regarding the health risks from using their product to protect their product, technology companies seem to be doing the same. Sure you don’t get cancer from being on Facebook too much. But as an increasing number of people begin to accept and notice mental health issues, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the interactions we are taking place with online are deteriorating people’s mental. Some worse than others, sure. But more and more of the world’s youth population are stuck in a whirlwind of unfair comparisons of their personal image and how they feel about themselves.
Companies, such as Facebook or Instagram, promote the idea that they are working on these efforts, but time and time again it is shown that they are falling short. For years now figureheads of social platforms go before a panel of elected officials every few months and defend the company they represent as if they are doing everything in their power to tackle this task. Not to have a pessimistic view concerning the topic, but unfortunately it seems as if more and more eyes will have to be on the heads of these companies for them to start acting in a manner that people see as humane. Social networking sites are in the business of making money, and the more that their product is scrutinized and restricted the more money they believe they will lose. The good news, is that year after year that pressure mounts and strides are made to a safer and healthier experience.
We are at this point of where the knowledge of what these devices and sites are doing to a large chunk of the population mentally. We can either accept that this is how we want to continue to move forward with reactionary, hyper-emotional based decision making. Or understand that technology is going to be apart of our lives in bigger ways than we could ever imagine - let’s take a breath and understand how we can have a healthy, productive relationship with this tool so that it helps us all and not just a few.