Puppets on strings

It's amazing how society has given social media the power over controlling it just like puppets on strings. When I think about social media, I think about fun, communicating, family, and friends. Other people might think it's a way of sending and receiving information while Others might think it's a way to become popular, and get updates. I’m sure thousands of people share the same definition in all.

         Social media for sure has become a big part of people’s lives in present day. Now forms of communicating are done through social media. When you don't get a reply to a text you can message the person through other means like Facebook. Instead of buying a CD to listen to your favorite sing now you can go to YouTube and watch your favorite singers videos there. Now even our cellphones are replacing newspapers. If you want to see what’s on the news you don't have to get out of bed to get the newspaper. All you have to do is reach over to your phone and look at the Twitter timeline. Job searching is done through social media even applying to jobs is done through websites when back in the day you had to apply in person. Everything surrounds around social media because it is much easier to do things through it.

Society has become dependent on social media. In a Ted talks video “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day” it explains why society has become so dependent on it. This video explains how technological companies have control rooms dedicated to steer people’s thoughts. They are dedicated to compete for people’s attention. This video gives an example of Snap Chat. Snap Chat has replaced texting for teens. This app lets you know who you have communicating 150 days in a row called a “snap streak”. Teens don't want to lose that communication so they get addicted to keeping up with their snap streak.

Another great thing this video points at is how social media uses outrage as fuel to get people sucked into giving their attention. I personally see that on my news feed daily. Right now the topic that has been blowing up my timeline on FaceBook is on a famous football player Colin Kaepernick. This football player kneeled for the anthem instead of standing. 


The reason why he said he kneeled instead of stand was because he was in support of Black Lives Matter and to protest police violence against black people. He said  “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color”. There’s a lot of outrage because of this. A lot of people are outraged that he kneeled instead of standing and are calling him disrespectful for peacefully protesting and using his freedom of speech. Consequently, he has now been voted the most disliked player from the NFL and has lost a lot of endorsements.

As you can see outrage is very good at getting peoples attention. If a person is upset at something they share on their timeline and in seconds friends can view, respond and share their post. This Ted video points out how an outrage feed would win over a calm feed and I see it and believe it. There’s more negativity on my news feed then positive feed and that sadness me. This video sure opened up my eyes.

Technology companies profit out of keeping our attention and things are only going to get worse because of it. It affects us all, we have become so dependent on social media sites that we chose SnapChatting, or Facebooking over face-to-face conversations with our friends and loved ones. You can see for yourself, next time you are out at a restaurant, instead of meaning full conversations you will see people on there cell phones. We are so easily persuaded and that is scary! This video brought so many things into perspective. It made me realize how I too have become a puppet to social media and why!