The Use and Abuse of Social media

Eliott                                                                                                                                          M1 CO

Lamour                                                                                                                                  Groupe 2

The Use and Abuse of Social media

« Is social media antisocial ? »

Synthesis :

Social networks are an invention that has completly changed the world in a positive and negative way. For exemple, social medias allowed to some people who felt isolated to develop a social circle. Some people who didn’t have much social interaction and who probably even need help, has could be found  this help or this comfort maybe through social medias. Today, most of us use ssocial medias and it’s true to say that they allow us to keep in touch with our entourage which is a good thing.

They have also allow to make easily visible certain social movements like the fight for the climate change, or again the fight for women’s rights and theirs defence by highlithing cases of sexual abuse or harassment for exemple. The case of filmmaker Harvey Weinstein who was accusated of sexual abuse and misogynous behaviour at work that we saw in the documents is an example.

Social networks have allow to made this case a public case and bring the culprits to justice. It is also a good thing, because it allows firstly to do justice for the victims, but also to raise awareness people and even industries about these kinds of problems. The Hollywood industry that worked with Harvey Weinstein had to be accountable and now probably much more attentive to this kind of behaviour. This is now the case in almost all industries, thanks in part of pressure who can represent the fact of having a bad image and the spreading of such negative informations on social medias.

There is also an impact on society in general because it allows a strong liberation of the liberty expression when we put a message on social medias, because we can be anonymous and our message can be transmitted to an indefinite number of recipient.

This is how certains minorities like person who suffer of racism, homophobia, sexism or other types of problems, can share their experiences and perhaps get them heard and taken into account.

But of course, there are not only the positive sides in social networks. It is possible that some people become addicted and become totally obsessed with things like the « likes » on Instagram, or again the « retweets » on Twitter. This can be explained by the fact that social medias are conceived to attract as much our attention as possible.

As it’s explained in video 2, the twitter creator imagined the followers system to keep the user engaged. In video 3, it is also explained that if we have a social network on our phone, we are manipulated. Even Apple’s creator, Steve Jobs, never imagined that this would take this importance and that everything would be done to get our attention.

One of the negative effects of this all is now we don’t have time for ourselves because we haven’t time to be bored. Our brain is constantly confronted with a lot of informations and we don’t even have time to « defrag » like an old computer as the documents say.

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