In the bracket, the original winner was the topic of, “We use social media so we won’t be forgotten”
I came up with the new question through conversations with my initial table partner, Isabel. The quote was actually the one quote I took from our discussion. I thought it was interesting because sometimes people do not realize the impact social media has on our reputation and an outsider’s view of us. After really thinking about it, I realized that it is, in fact, true, we do use social media so we won’t be lost in the sea of insignificant people when we are long gone. Maybe that is why so many people do crazy antics and post videos and pictures of them for the sake of gaining popularity online. I came up with my question from own personal experience, I only really got an Instagram account about 1-2 years ago, and before that, whenever someone found out I did not have this social media platform they would gasp and wonder why on earth I would not make an account. A popular question would be, “How can you survive without it?”. They may have felt this way because it seems as though I did not care whether I was recognized on social media platforms and in such did not care if I was popular or seen as cool. Such an opinion seems abnormal in a day and age where social media plays such a big part in our society.
In order to fully consider the question, people do have to think about the initial question I was faced with, “Do we use social media so we won’t be forgotten?”
Some other questions that can be considered as well are, “Why does a person’s following on social media platforms matter so much?” and “How does having social media affect one’s reputation”
A logical fallacy we should avoid is personal incredulity, just because we may not understand why it is abnormal does not mean it does not happen. Another one to avoid is to keep things black-and-white, social media is very diverse and therefore full of different opinions, it is not just two possibilities. There should also not be a middle-ground like I previously said, social media is full of different opinions, it would be difficult to reach a compromise of all of them.
I feel that this question is relevant for people in grade 9. This is because many of us may feel like we do not know where we stand in the social hierarchy, especially with us moving into high school. Most grade 9s have social media and it is seen as totally unusual when someone happens to not have various social media accounts so this would be a good question to ask as there would be a variety of answers.
Link a picture that highlights my thinking
I think this question will be relevant 3 years from now, I say this because in only 8 years since the start of Instagram and it only being 1 or 2 years ago we where legally aloud to use it, the mass majority of people in out age group use it to communicate with friends, so when there is someone who doesn’t have it, it makes it hard to imagine how people communicate with their friends without it.
In order to consider a wide range of perspectives related to your question, I would have to think about these three things:
1) Who isn’t using it?
2) Why aren’t they using it?
3) What difference does social media make on our lives that makes kids “depend on it”
In response to your 3rd question about perspectives, I think it may be the idea that you are able to hide behind a screen, this makes it a lot easier for people who are too shy to speak to other in real life and are able to easily access things to fuel their creativity as well as express themselves. However, hiding behind a screen does have its disadvantages, a big example would be cyberbullying.
I think this question will be relevant in 3 years from now because as our generation becomes more technology-based and more and more people start to use social media, we would need to question more of the reasons why people use social media. I think this is a very relevant question as a lot of the people in our generation have been brought up with technology, and social media is a way for people to be remembered through photos and timelines.
In order to consider this question, we would need to look at the perspectives of many different people, including the frequent users of social media, as well as the creators of some of the social media platforms and how they made some very popular. This will help us understand the reason behind why people use social media so often.
In response to how you said how the creators make social media popular. Clearly, they are targetting the majority of people our age who can get bored easily. A good example would be the success of Snapchat, with how short and simple it is to use, it became very popular. Such a short attention span may be influenced by how the internet and social media is only getting faster and more convenient and being faced with something that may be just slightly slower is seen as too tedious. This is probably why you don’t see as many teens our age actively writing their own personal blogs and things that require a bit of maintenance online as compared to the generation before us.