In this essay I would like to discuss why the development in
production and distribution has lead to a social media boom and also what
negative effects social media can have on its users. The whole process of
photography has changed from being a ‘painful and uncomfortable experience for
the subjects’ (Cruz. 2017. P 208) to a click of a button on a light portable
device. Users don’t have to ‘rely on labs to develop and print their
rolls of film and photographs, photographers now take, process, and distribute
images once they have the proper equipment.’ (Cruz. 2017. P212). In short any
amateur user can be their own producer and distributer. This is down to the
development of technology and the decrease of price.
Now
once you distribute a photo it doesn’t ‘limit the possibility of using the same
photo for other purposes… copy them… print them... upload those photos to
social networking sites’ (Cruz. 2017. P213). This has meant that distributing
your photos is no longer a ‘subtractive process but an addictive one’ (Cruz.
2017. P213). These platforms for sharing our photos mean that we produce more
because we have a larger place to showcase them.
In
the production of photographs the change to digital photography has also brought
about the option of carrying less equipment, and spending less time on taking
the photo’s. In the post-production of photographs the skill has become easier
and more accessible with relatively straight-forward applications such as
Photoshop and retouching features built into social media.
When
photography first became popular people used it as an opportunity to create
idealized images of themselves. You were seen as a person of status if you were
able to commission photographs. This was particularly popular amongst aspiring
middle classes and in the upper echelons of society when expensive clothing,
rich and exotic backgrounds were seen to give the subject rank and status. This
hierarchical game relied on showing your peers these photographs and with the
dawn of social media this act of showcasing has become easier, more important
and very popular.
Figure 1. ‘Lady Mary in the Dubar dress
In modern social media use the
showcasing of ourselves extends to showing the world who you are with, what
parties you are at, what fancy cocktail bar you are in or what celebrity you
have just met on the street. Many users will even do this to create jealousy
amongst their peers. This can have a negative effect if the viewer is
depressed. Scrolling through Facebook he will see others going to nice places,
spending time with friends or generally having a good time.
Photography
has always been considered as mediating presence ‘relating to the
‘‘that-has-been’’ (Villi. P.6). The theorist Roland Barthes considered
photography not as a consciousness of being there at that moment in time but of
having been there (1977. P.44). However with the advent of camera phones and
social media the presence of us in relation to the place in the photos has become
more of a current, immediate presence due to the ‘real-time nature of visual
mobile communications’ (Villi. P.8). This is emphasised by features that limit
the length of the posts you make in applications such as Snapchat (2011). With
this in mind the depressed teenager sitting at home mulling over his friends
activity is not only thinking ‘look at what they did’ but he is also thinking
‘look at what they’re doing right now’.
They compare to the so-called truthful
representations of other people’s lives with their own and get depressed about
the prospect of missing out. In an interview with young adult women, Michelle
Linker 24 said: ‘I
get serious Fomo (fear of missing out) with Instagram, and with all social
media. People are publicizing usually something really cool or fun that they’re
doing, or at least they make it appear that way. I absolutely feel insecure.’
(Ghajanan. 2015).
The
whole fear of missing out powers an almost sadistic game; where the intention
is to make people jealous. Often the deciding factor between a person belonging
to the jealous or depressed group or the Facebook famous one is whether they
are introvert or extravert. Tosun expresses how introversion causes social
networking to be a substitute for real interaction whereas extraversion causes
social networking to be an extension (Tosun. 2010. P165).
On
a positive note social media has been said to offer teenagers a strangely in
depth glimpse at marketing. NPR’s ‘This American Life’ interviewed some young
females about their social media habits. The host Ira Glass noted their
‘intricate language’ and ‘unspoken rules’ that contributed to dynamics of a
team in a workplace scenario (Ghajanan. 2015). It
becomes part of the job marketing yourself in certain way and reciprocating
rapidly to your peers to show gratification. Goffman proposes that teams
assemble with reciprocal dependency, this means how each person understands responsibility
for their content with the fear of imperilling the content of others. (Goffman
1959.84)
Young
girls will comment positively on very specific aspects of their friends
photo’s, much like how brands might team together to elevate their success,
groups of girls will do the same to elevate their social circle. I feel that in
a strange way social media is teaching teenagers the codes of the professional
world. I definitely have become a lot quicker and wittier in my self-promotion
and have realised that this skill is very transferable to the professional
world. This leads me onto how social media users create their idealized online
identity. This online production of identity can be a good thing. RadiumOne
conducted a study and noted how “Every time we
post, share, ‘like,’ comment or send an invitation online, we are creating an
expectation… We feel a sense of belonging and advance our concept of self
through sharing” (Soat. 2015)
With photography based social media the
aim for many is to create the perfect idealized image of your self. Social
media can become a tool for self-promotion in how we market ourselves in a
specific way to forge our identities. Kerry Donelly says: ‘I wouldn’t post a picture
where I don’t feel good about myself.’ (Ghajanan. 2015). We can scroll through our
Facebook (2004) or Instagram (2010) ‘wall’ and take out all the bad photo’s of
us, upload highly edited photo’s and even give certain photos priority on our
‘wall’ such as our Profile Picture, Cover Photo and Picture library covers.
Summer Andrews says: ‘if it doesn’t get enough
likes, I will take it down.’ (Ghajanan. 2015), again the brand
comparison is relevant. If a brand makes an advert that is controversial for
whatever reason and receives bad press then they will take the advert down and
remove it from everywhere as much as they can and this is paralleled in social
media use.
In Goffmans ‘The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life’ he focuses on how when people interact with others they are
attempting to create a certain image alongside a guide that directs others to
attain specific knowledge from their performance. He also proposes that this
performance part of the interaction is only the front level to them and that
there is a back level: a private area where they can retreat and not perform
allowing them to be their true self (Goffman. 1959. P129). This fits elements
of the Freudian ideas on ego, super ego and id. This idealized image of a
person that fits in with what they wish to showcase to society is what we create
when we’re using social media and what Freud talks about when he’s referring to
the ego.
A study by Madison Ganda of Portland
State University (2014) explores how much the feedbacks of
comments on social media pertain to the internalisation of these comments into
their concept of self outside of social media. This is when our investment in
our online self can bring about very negative consequences because the
emotional investment that we put into our online self is so strong that when we
receive criticism it hurts us internally.
This
construction of our perfect self extends to our use of filters and editing in
photographs. Social media developers realise this to the point of including
filter services within their applications such as in ‘Instagram’ and ‘Snapchat’.
Social media use has become like a game, whoever gets the most likes or the
most shares wins. It becomes a competition of where you’ve been, whom you’ve
seen, how good you look and how witty you are. The amount of likes you get is
almost akin to a level up in a video game and I can see obvious comparisons in the
use of the reward system between playing video games and using social media.
The reward system is responsible for
gifting the brain dopamine whenever we complete something advantageous to our
human survival such as exercise, sex or eating. It also rewards us with
pleasure after other rewarding experiences such as completing puzzles and
games. Of natural dopamine highs (non-chemically induced) food and sex are the
highest yet according to research video games and social media create the same
levels of ventral striatal signal activity (Lindhen. 2011). According to a
study headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University’s Booth Business School ‘while sleep and sex may be stronger urges, people are
more likely to give in to longings or cravings to use social and other media.’
(Meikle. 2017)
Social media researchers know how this works
and implement game-like elements so that users become engaged and even addicted
to their sites. By attaching ludic structures to the sites and even mini-games users
experience the dynamics of challenge beating and competition. Evidence of high
levels of dopamine in video games and social networking has made researchers
consider the addictive properties of their use. Wilhelm Hofmanns research also
goes on to say that social media can be more addictive than ciggaretts and
alcohol (Meikle. 2017). Dr. Peter Whybrow,
director of neuroscience at UCLA even goes so far to call it ‘electronic
cocaine’ and says ‘I have found it easier to treat heroin and crystal meth
addicts than lost-in-the-matrix video gamers or Facebook-dependent social media
addicts.’ (Kardaras. 2016)
I want to discuss the relationship between anxiety and attention
deficit disorder. They are two coinciding symptoms of teenagers in our modern
society co-existing because they cause each other. Anxiety and rumination of
thought causes a distraction. Distraction prevents a person from applying
themselves to work, relationships and the moment that they exist in. These
products of distraction may cause a lower standard of wellbeing and thus a higher
level of anxiety. The cyclic nature of the relationship between distraction and
anxiety becomes apparent.
Social media content especially that of a photographic nature with the
‘likes’, ‘comments’ and ‘shares’ becomes a heavy distraction amongst its users.
From personal experience the constant notifications only add to the presence of
applications such as Facebook that are just a reach to the pocket away. I also
believe the sheer wealth of instant entertainment that only needs a short
viewing time such as a photo’s or a 30 second video trains our brain to have a
short attention span.
Figure 3. Facebook like
The flip side to shortening our attention span on one source of
information is that social media usage is training us to multi-task. Not only
do we react to stimuli from both the external world and from our social media
but we are also reacting to multiple stimuli just within the social media interface.
Facebook for example has a layout where users are looking at multiple screen
activity simultaneously such as live-chat, constantly updating news feeds and activity
logs and this is just from one application. Many teenagers juggle 4 or 5 social
media applications at the same time constantly riffling through them at the
same time.
Some may see this as a positive especially in our modern world where we
have to take on more stimuli and tasks at the same time. I can see how many
would regard social media use as useful in developing their multi-tasking
skills. In a study Claudia Wallis writes how 97% of participants regarded their
ability to multitask as having a positive effect in their day-to-day lives. According
to a different study, media multitasker’s were more distractible to
interference from irrelevant stimuli (Ophir , 2009) I believe multitasking
makes people focus on more things at once yet with less attention on the
individual task at hand: “decades of research
indicate the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one
attends to ever more tasks” (Wallis, 2007, p. 34)
I have discussed what role dopamine plays on our reward system and why
the influx of it through social media use might become addictive. Both social
media addiction and the wealth of short instant hits of entertainment that
social media consists of physiologically remoulds the brain.
People who are diagnosed with ADD and those who are experiencing
anxiety are shown to have a decrease in neurotransmitter activity involving dopamine
(Blum, 2008). This may lead them to appease this lack of dopamine by looking on
social media that is finely tuned to stimulate dopamine flow. However social
media is often the route to the problem. The link here between social media,
addiction, attention deficit and anxiety is blatant and it is no wonder there
is a higher depression rate amongst teenagers now than ever before. (Bedell.
2016)
Social media leads us to not live
in the moment, instead we live in our heads thinking jealous thoughts about
what other people are doing or looking at our friends funny photos of cats that
distract us from what is in front of us. Not only is this detrimental to our
workflow but it is the opposite of how we should be treating anxiety. It is
common practise amongst physiotherapists to teach patients experiencing anxiety
to live in the present by engaging in activities such as meditation.
Photography themed social media
trains us not to experience the world around us which is preventing us from
living in the present. Even when we are taking photo’s to post on our social
media we are not thinking about how brilliant the subject of the photo is we
are thinking about how well it will be received by others. The
photos on social media of users having fun are often picked and tailored highly
to create this image. The people that are actually having the most fun are the
ones that are not fussing over their self-image and instead just living life in
the moment.
On many occasions at DJ events I have observed people not actually
experiencing the music, but filming it instead to put on their social media. ‘We should have been less concerned about getting a good
picture and more concerned with enjoying the moment.’ (Frengal. 2015) In
other words we need to learn to view the world through our eyes not our
camera-phone.
Figure 4. Phones at a concert
The prospect of having our phone in our pocket is enough to distract us
from our day-to-day conversations. ‘If I leave my phone in my pocket and its on
vibrate mode unconsciously I’ll flinch when it vibrates, I even flinch when it
doesn’t vibrate thinking it vibrates and that kills that little discussion like
those Nano seconds of distraction I think have a hugely detrimental effect,
everywhere I look its like constant high frequency flinches.’ (Minimilism: a documentary about the
important things. 2015). This can have a negative effect on relationships too,
a lady might think that their partner is talking to someone else if they are
constantly on their phone and this can lead to trust issues.
In conclusion, the only element of photographically themed social media
use that I can identify as a positive is how it might train us in the field of
marketing. The cons of are anxiety, concentration difficulties, addictiveness
and all the effects that these problems have on our lives such as relationship
problems and decreased workflow. These far out weigh the pros of social media
use. After writing this essay I am aiming to embark on a social media hiatus.
Bibliography
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Pictures
Figure 1. Pintrest [Accessed Online] 3rd April 2017. Available at https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/410672059744648007/
Figure 2. Instagram [Accessed Online] 1st April 2017. Available at https://www.instagram.com/p/BQn8LGzlTlX/?taken-by=kimkardashian
Figure 3. Cleaner and Launder [Accessed Online] 2nd 2017. Available at http://cleaner-and-launderer.com/facebook-likes/
Figure 4. Witty and Preety [Accessed Online] 1st 2017. Available at http://wittyandpretty.com/2014/10/06/5-reasons-you-need-to-put-your-phone-down-at-concerts/
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