Determining My Peer's Favorite Social Media Platform

A photograph, painting, canvas, or drawing today is not the same as it was a decade ago. Technology has evolved to the point where we can photoshop a person into a picture, enlarge a person’s butt, or even whiten people’s teeth. At what point do those technological advances cross a line? With social media ranging from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and Tumblr, do these media sites promote egotistical behavior? In January of 2013, John Paul Titlow discusses some of the disadvantages and advantages that Instagram has in his essay: “#Me: Instagram Narcissism and the Scourge of the Selfie” that was posted on a website called ReadWrite. Although Instagram was primarily created to simply share pictures, it has evolved to do much more than that. Some businesses use it to advertise, some people use it to share their art, but then there are some people use it to flaunt their own personal lives in the form of pictures. Titlow acknowledges that Instagram is a desirable way to share art and diverse imagery, but additionally acknowledges that it can be a place where one can promote their own self-popularity. He explains that Instagram has become remarkably important in people’s lives to the point that they cannot view life past those Instagram likes (Titlow). Ultimately, Titlow succeeds in emphasizing the issues that Instagram has created by reason of the way he expresses his text, while furthermore expressing who the audience of his essay is, and by making his overall purpose clear.

At its core, Tumblr is a blogging center. Each user can set up their own personal blog to post their original content including text, quotes, hyperlinks, photos, videos, audio files, or GIFs. Because of the wide range of posting abilities, Tumblr attracts several different types of aspiring atsits such as musicians, writers, designers, and painters. The users of Tumblr are able to “reblog” posts onto their pages and add their own additional comments. Tumblr posts can also include hashtags that other people can search for content using this hashtag. Generally, successful Tumblr users decided a specific focus to develop their blog around.

Assignment: As the documentary Miss Representation explains, “The media is now the message and the messenger.” Every day, we take in countless hours of media that influence how we view others and in turn how we view ourselves. It is our responsibility to consume media in an intelligent way AND fight back against negative messages put forth by the media.

For starters, Tumblr is a blogging and social networking website founded by David Karp and owned by yahoo incorporation, it allows users to post multimedia content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs, as well as make their own blogs private.

“In our generation, internet users are connecting with family, friends and meet people using social media app/websites.

Social media is described, by the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2015), as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)”. As few as 10 years ago the term social media was yet to be coined, but within that decade the use of these blogs, websites and sharing platforms has increased exponentially with no plateau in sight. From creating Instagram accounts for household pets, to sharing Halloween themed baking ideas over Pinterest, people today have access to social media outlets for almost everything. Today about 74% of people ages 18-65 use some form of a social networking site (Pew, 2014). Facebook takes the lead in social media usage with about 71% of those adults. LinkedIn and Pinterest are tied for second at 28% of users, 26% use Instagram, and Twitter falls last in the top 5 most used social medias with 23% of users (Pew, 2014). In September of 2013 the Pew Research Center measured that 90% of adults ages 18-29 used these social media outlets on a daily basis, which is an astonishing increase from the 9% that was measured in February 2005 (Pew, 2014). Due to the fact that young adults are increasingly involving themselves in these online platforms, it is very important to understand the long term and psychological effects (such as depression, social anxiety,

The reason catharsis fails to effectively resolve anger and hatred lies in the fact that information, once posted, remains as a constant reminder that leads them back to the source of their negativity (Bushman). During a study on Tumblr and its influence on adolescent mentality, researchers found evidence that the negative content found in Tumblr blogs correlated to more negative mentality (Cavazos-Rehg). These posts often contained ideas of self-loathing, depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Unsurprisingly, these posts correlated to many individuals’ mental health to decline in response to viewing them on their ordinary feed (Cavazos-Rehg). Nevertheless, negative posts that pertain to mental illness still have a widespread presence on social media and have caused adolescents to use finstagram as a means of reciprocating this negativity. Compared to ordinary Instagram accounts, finstagram accounts post content much more frequently. This greater number of posts per day results from the shared attitude of finstagram users and their ideology to rebel against the standard social norms of real Instagram, where users typically limit their online activity to one or two posts a day. Active finstagram users have bred a culture where not only do they allow multiple posts a day, but actually welcome it

This is true of all relationships, even the one between a news anchor and an audience. Of course, being authentically boring is a problem, which is why I tell young reporters: Live an interesting life, take risks, make mistakes—so when you share your true self, people will have something they can connect to.

Tumblr has been compared to the sea. It’s blue. It gets progressively scarier the deeper you go. It’s full of ships. (The uninformed might call these “couples” or “relationships”.)

To begin with, the twenty first century has focused more on social network than ever before, and has made it possible for people all around the world to share their conceptions, that focus more on information with a personal point of view. Blogging, for example has made things available for people with common interests to connect with one another Google blog is one of them; it gives people an opportunity to link an idea together and share it among their friends. However, texting while driving is now the leading cause of death among youth in america (Noder, 2009). After reading a blog, people view things differently and start communicating with their peers about certain objects that they want to buy or become involved in a certain movement that

Something as simple as a social media site called instagram has brought a sense of awkwardness to my life while at the same time creating opportunity to meet and communicate with new people. “What Systrom calls the app's "superpower" is its ability to cater to the hyper specific passions and obsessions of a wide range of interest groups. (Instagrams’s big picture. 3)” Instagram has proven to be an addicting app hard to ever get your mind off of for a long amount of time. It has been proposed that this social media site has “super powers” obtaining people's interests and obsessions. Today’s average teen could easily spend up to two hours on social media I occasionally find myself wanting to start conversation with a cute girl I lay my eyes on. I ask myself where the lack of motivation come from. I believe Instagram is the culprit. It has made me a bit socially awkward due to the lack of amount of real communication face to face with new people. It is easier drop a like or slide in a girls DMs rather than to go up to her and spark conversation. Instagram has had this effect on me while at the same time it has achieved the complete opposite effect. It has also made me more comfortable meeting new people I already know a little bit about through instagram. “Technology changes, but Systrom's original vision for Instagram remains: Create a visual record of

The article Journalism and the power of emotions, by Bech Sillesen, Chris Ip, and David Uberti, discusses the varying ways in which storytelling has evolved as it travels between mediums, especially in the digital age; through this, the article discusses how the digital world could be potentially limiting both to our thoughts and the degree of empathy that we feel. This article is a review of a project made to examine this concept, and is broken down into three components: what empathy is, how narratives summon empathy, and lastly the effect that technology has on our capability to express it. Empathy is described as “everyday mind reading,” or the ability to which you understand other’s mental and emotional states based on body language and words. Our ability to do this increases as we spend more time with the person, meaning that empathy is dependant on time. The main way we feel empathy is through “experience sharing,” meaning that as you see someone expressing a passionate emotion, your brain produces your own version of the pain/story within yourself to relate. Our brains intertwine due to the social nature of humans, but it’s important to note that it’s similarity that draws out empathy. If we perceive a person as too different or see no way to relate, this bond does not occur, which leads second part of this paper - the nature of storytelling. The next stage of “experience sharing” is “transportation theory.” This is when you become so engaged in a story that you

Albert Costill, writer for Search Engine Journal, reports that 66% of Tumblr users are under 35 years old, while 39% are under the age of 25. Costill also noted that 13% of 18-to-29 year olds have used the social media platform (Costill).These statistics prove how common and thus influential Tumblr is amongst young adults. Tumblr is a social media website and application that allows users to make their own personal blog with posts consisting of text, pictures, and videos. One of the main reasons that Tumblr is so prominent amongst young people is because of the sense of anonymity that the website can provide. Whereas normal social media platform’s ask the user to identify themselves by name, on Tumblr there is a choice; a user gets to make

Tumblr can be referred to as a blogging service that makes sharing pictures, videos, audio posts, and text posts fun and easy. It is somewhere between Twitter and Facebook and any other type of traditional blog but offers more, not only in terms of things to do, but to the human eye. Most teenagers dream of creating their own blog and Tumblr makes it easy to do. You can choose the types of blogs you want to follow from those who post pictures of all kinds such as foods, animals, memes, funny gifs, nature pictures, quotes, poetry, etc. By following let’s say one-hundred people, this is how you build your dashboard where your feed comes up. Reblogging any picture you want onto your own profile creates your blog and it is up to you to make it as aesthetically pleasing as you wish. In comparison with Instagram, Tumblr allows pictures to be uploaded, liked, and commented on. The user scrolls continuously down the screen as it fills with never ending pictures. Followers are also a huge component for both apps as the more people you follow, the more you are introduced to new picture feed. There are basically only two types of bloggers; those who create original content for users to reblog and those who just simply re-blog the posts for fun. Tumblr is seen as the holy trinity of social media because it has all the components of other social media sites plus more.

Television and internet news programs have began to stray away from a strictly informative report of current happenings to vague, non-factually based entertainment stories. This is a direct result of society’s desire to worry about everyone’s feelings. In the past, viewers passionately desired accurate information and statistics on the nation’s current events. As of now, a different generation of viewers and new’s providers bestow the supply and demand of news stories based on emotions, rather than fact. With extremist groups becoming increasingly popular the demand for highly biased news is snowballing. New’s corporations like FOX capitalize on this by providing news that is consistently biased to one point of view. Having a one-sided production such as FOX creates a type of animosity between them and their competition. This seems rather childish, making these top tier new companies look like a joke. In result, a viewer will struggle to find a new’s broadcast that provides more than a couple of relevant stories based on factual information. Instead, the bulk of content is displayed in a look at me, feel bad for me, or look at them format. From this, the broadcasters work at the heart-strings of their viewers. They get the viewer to invest emotion into a story, creating a reaction and desire to hear, see, and feel more. Given the response, broadcasters see interest in emotionally based stories skyrocket and interest in factually based stories