Anirudh Week 10: The Power of Social Media
Picture this situation:
You are exhausted after finishing a large amount of work.
You decide to take a break.
You pick up your phone and open Youtube or Instagram.
Sound familiar?
From what I have seen, this is a common occurrence in the lives of many students. Scrolling through social media is an addicting option for students because it allows them to be entertained with no effort.
With this popularity, social media is powerful. It heavily impacts the perspective of many students as it is often their only source of news. Adolescents learn about the ongoing events in their world through the posts that they see on social media.
I can speak from experience on this. I usually do not pay attention to the news, except when I see something interesting on social media. Just yesterday, I saw a video about protesters throwing food on the Mona Lisa. I would have been oblivious to this ongoing situation if this video had not shown up on my social media.
This may make it seem like the power of social media is beneficial because it opens up people to the world around them. It may reveal important information that they would have otherwise ignored. However, the extent of social media’s power needs to be considered.
At the same time that people on social media learn new facts, they might also be exposed to things like propaganda. If this is their only source of news, it may cloud their judgment on significant matters. In other words, they will only get one view of the situation and will simply adopt that view as their own.
In a world dominated by the Internet, we need to be aware of the things that are shown to us. We have given social media the power to greatly influence our lives, and as such, we need to exercise caution in how much we rely on it. It is impossible to prevent it from controlling us, so the least we can do is to minimize its effects.
Therefore, any time one sees a post that contains relevant news, I think that they should verify it instead of simply believing it and continuing to scroll through. I believe doing this will prevent social media from having the power to determine our opinions.
I thought your blog was extremely well-written. The hypothetical situation that you begin your blog with was captivating, and stoked my curiosity as to what you had to say. I appreciate how you clearly indicate that you are only stating your opinion, before delving deeper into the topic, because of how controversial your blog topic on social media could be. As I continued to explore your text, I couldn’t help but acknowledge how spot-on you were. As opposed to reading newspapers or even visiting credited news sites, I learn about current events through social media. But you make me ponder how susceptible I am to false news and dangerous opinions. In fact, reflecting back, I realize that I learned about the proceedings of 2024 elections and Israel-Palestine war through YouTube and Twitter posts, which for the most part aer subjective and skewed. And I have been negatively influenced by these sources, as during a discussion with my friends, I made a comment (I picked up from Twitter), which was ultimately false—very, very wrong that it's best I do not share here. Therefore, I agree with your ultimate conclusion—that we must be in complete control of our thoughts when reading news and verify each source’s credibility before absorbing their message.
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