Psychology of Social Media Class Week 5 Reflection May 29

In this week, we discussed about several controversial concerns of the social media. In the video the “Lost Memory”, there is a quote from Eric Fischer: “Paper can last for centuries, even if you neglect it, but if you’re not constantly vigilant about keeping data, it’s just gone.” This reveals the risk of losing the data forever if the Internet is gone. Personally, I do not share the concern that digital data will be more vulnerable than the physical records. According to the book Everything is Miscellaneous, the author points out that by using the digital order of order, it is a lot more efficient to organize the data since it will not be restricted by its physical limitation. It would be a lot easier to lose a physical copy of a photo than the digital copy of it which can be access anywhere online. From the Ted speech “A cause of concern,” the speaker indicates that the reason we want digital stuff is because we do not want to miss everything. Nevertheless, in the way we trying to capture everything by our digital devices, we missed all the precious moment that we could have participated. According to the class, for the previous generation, this phenomenon seems especially obvious since they have their one foot in, and one foot out of the situation. Moreover, the professor shared a video “The digital now” to reveal the idea that by archiving everything we think that we can store it, but time is not like data—it cannot be stored. According to the video, the present encapsulates the past and the promise for the future. The price of missing the present moment might be higher than we think. Furthermore, Dr. Kinghorn showed us a speech from General Conference which indicates that: The digital world cannibalizes time, but we don’t need to let it. The free agency is always ours to control the tools around us.

The difference between the slacktivism and the activism is another topic we discussed during the class this week. The slacktivism is the product of social media. It works by sharing or posting about a specific topic that promote social change. However, the concern is that by participating slacktivism, which takes as short as few seconds, people might feel satisfied about their contribution and thus not participating on the activism that can bring real change to the society. According to the professor, the major purpose of the slacktivism is to raise awareness of different social issues. Although there are many arguments stand against slacktivism, several research and interviews reveal that slacktivism might be more useful than people thought it was. According to the research, people who took action online are actually 5 times more possible to take actual actions than people who was offline. Moreover, raising awareness is the prerequisite of social reform. With the help of slacktivism on social media, it is a lot easier for people to attract awareness to social issues. In the end, the cyber-slacktivism might be more close to the real-road action than we thought. To add on, the professor revealed that the “Arab Spring” was originally started from the cyber-slacktivism.