Show What You Know

Show What you know

English Composition Assignment 4.5
 
We are smart individuals that knows what we want, we don’t have to listen to this. 
 
Today we’re discussing and critiquing the two articles “It’s Time to Unfriend and Unfollow on Social Media” and “Are you in a social media bubble? Here’s how to tell”, Both articles are telling us something we can and “should” do involving how we use social media, let’s look at the first article, Dieker brings out some great points of how we spend hours daily on social media, which isn’t too shocking hence we are in the digital age, however they use this to make their point better by following it up with “If we’re spending this much time on social media, it might as well be with the people who are most important to us.”(Para. 2). What is their point you might be wondering, Dieker brings out if we unfollow and unfriend certain people, we’ll be sure to only see what we like on our feed and not a random post that could distraught us emotionally, while that may be true, I must disagree, why? This relates back to my topic sentence, as individuals we all have our likes and dislikes, why follow someone if we didn’t like their content? Dieker brings out that people can change, and their content might change to ridiculous bullshit but well Dieker that might be true for some it isn't always the case, think about it , we all have that one acquaintance we added back in 2013 , though most of their posts are annoying once a month or even a year they post something that makes us go “Ah that’s why I followed you” and when that happens it’s refreshing, why get rid of it? My argument here is that we knew what we were getting ourselves into, do you just randomly follow someone? No, you either ran across a post of theirs that was funny and followed, maybe even took it a step further and scrolled through their page to make sure their content appealed to you, you could work with them or maybe are friends with said individual, whichever is the case those are just reasons to keep them followed. Now I won’t fully disagree with Dieker he made a point of “Cull people who are no longer in your life. I don’t know about you, but my social media feeds included a lot of people who weren’t actually part of my day-to-day life. These are the former coworkers, the people you met once at a conference or a party, the people you used to know but now rarely think about unless their names appear in your social media feeds.” (Para. 3) I agree here! Why? Well, these types of people won’t be posting anything interesting to us, think back to that one time you added your high school crush, they rarely post, you didn’t view their content, only added them in hopes of private messaging but that’s what phone numbers are for people!  

 
Time to talk about Gould’s article “Are you in a social media bubble” Gould brings out many different factors, which is pretty controversial in regards to Dieker’s, Gould brings out we should cull our feed aka unfollow some people which may sound like they’re on Dieker’s side of this whole ordeal however they mention “Don’t delete those you disagree with: Even if you’re not actively engaging with such acquaintances, exposing yourself to a variety of thought prevents you from overestimating the prevalence of your own perspective.” (Para. 5) Whilst Dieker feels we shouldn’t follow those who don’t think like us, I feel Gould has the right idea when it comes to this, the fact that we spend hours on social media already isn’t great for our mental health however imagine someone only seeing posts that they would share or say, you can imagine said individual getting wrapped up in one's own head , develop the thinking that they’re always right, because they only see posts that agrees with them instead of an disagreement which may might them think onto the subject a bit more thus change their viewpoint if they were wrong. We spend hours using TikTok , Twitter, Facebook..Etc. scrolling and not actually engaging with people (Commenting, liking, messaging, reacting..etc.) Gould brings out how culling our feed can make everything nicer, instead of getting off social media unfinished in our scroll we can reach the end of the updated feed and feel refreshed. I have to agree on that.

My conclusion, if someone followed someone there was reasoning behind it, they find them cute, funny, charming, their content entertaining to some degree, so why unfollow just so we can see more posts we “Agree” with? I may not agree with someone feeding their baby noodles but gosh dang is it cute to watch a video of one doing such!



References :
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/problem-social-media-reinforcement-bubbles-what-you-can-do-about-ncna1063896
https://lifehacker.com/its-time-to-unfriend-and-unfollow-on-social-media-1819340121