Welcome back to part two of this investigation, so get your detective hat on! If you haven’t seen part one, don’t fret; the first part was about the dark side of social media. You, dear reader, probably have some form of social media at your disposal. You may have found new hobbies to do or a small business you buy from because of social media. Yes, there are more negatives than positives at times when utilizing social media, but your “For You Page” tells a story about what you are into. This can help you create, connect, and find people and interests online.
The best thing about social media is that you have a constant connection to other people around the world. This can create a “web” of people who can share and inspire others. By doing this, it can create a more positive community among people. Positive or inspiring social media posts give us a small dopamine hit. Dopamine is considered one of the “Happy Hormones” since it controls part of our mood. Scrolling through positive videos or pictures on social media helps create new reward pathways that positively affect the brain.
It also can create the ability for people to get their work out there for others to see. Many people who are very creative now can share and collaborate with others. It not only helps increase the support of artists or writers but also helps them make a living off what they are passionate about. This can help a writer or artist build a proper brand and sell their work.
Many businesses thrive off of social media. It gives them the platform to market more, advertise their events, and create a community. One of our local businesses around here, Magic Mugs, has shared a little on how they use social media to grow their business. One of the Co-Owners, Samantha Hanenkrat, stated this about using social media for marketing and community building: “We primarily use Instagram and Facebook for our marketing and customer engagement. We use these platforms to relay important info, new products, and special events to our customers.” This shows how a small business like Magic Mugs can create a web of people who are a community. By the way, Magic Mugs has some very good treats. If you have the chance, go try them out!
Willie Nelson is a famous country singer who once said, “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” This still stands true. Think about this: you take medicine to get better, and it positively affects you. Well, the same thing happens when you replace negative media with positive media. Instead of watching videos or seeing posts about trends, try to make your “For You Page” educational or full of cute videos of dogs and hobbies you have. This eliminates the risk of creating a negative social media space. Be mindful of what you post, too! Some questions you can ask yourself to keep what you post positive are:
- Is this post negative?
- Does this post benefit anyone?
- Do I gain anything from this post besides likes or comments?
- Am I being mindful of others?
This also helps create a safe environment and positive web of social media for others to enjoy and boost their mood! If we want social media to change positively, then we have to stop giving the people who post negative things attention. It’s like when a toddler throws a tantrum, and people give them what they want to stop it. Yes, people have genuinely negative moods sometimes, but that does not mean that they should be spreading their bad mood to the next three million people seeing that post or video. It isn’t always necessary to post negatively; that’s why we have friends or partners. They are supposed to help you and listen to you. And if you do not have that, find a hobby to express yourself.
We also need these apps to create stricter guidelines for their platforms. Politics, sexual content, hate speech, dehumanizing material, and bullying all need better monitoring and guidelines. We have AI that we could train to spot these issues and clean up social media pages to protect people from pornographic materials as well as self-harm and suicide posts. Anything that can disrupt a positive social media flow should be deleted. We also need a stronger understanding of how the algorithm works and why negative posts are not okay.
Our time together is now over. Parts one and two have finished this debate, and there will not be a part three. Thank you, dear reader, for being a tremendous co-detective and partner in this mind-boggling investigation. I hope some of it was informative and helped you learn something new. Dear reader, please visit me in the next article. I would love to share more with you!
