Previous to this assignment I have thought about my social media usage on many occasions. When I wake up in the morning to get my mind up and running, I turn my brightness up and scroll through new posts on Instagram which is usually only about 4 total. Then I scroll through all the new posts of people’s stories on Snapchat and when I have seen all of those (I only follow roughly 12 people and only 5 ever post) then I look through the Snapchat explore page. Today I watched “Born Different” which is a common click for me. I like to watch people with tough journeys find happiness and different ways of living life.
I then get out of bed and as I get ready for work I like to have Youtube videos on. Today I watched “I let my Instagram pick my hair transformation” by Gabbie Hanna while doing my makeup. I feel Youtube is my reality tv, except the people I watch are completely unscripted. I then go to work and on my lunch, scroll for new posts again on Instagram for 5 minutes then grow tiresome over the lack of excitement. I continue working then later at home do the same routine again with Instagram and Snapchat again. Nothing too exciting happened throughout the day today until nighttime when I saw two different types of interesting posts.
The first being that Instagram is going to be (as if they haven’t already) totally violating our privacy by being able to use our photos and messages against us in the court of law starting August 21st. I rate the reliability of this at a 2 since it was a reposted message that someone could have wrote being completely false just for attention.
The second interesting post I saw was that the Amazon forest has been on fire for the last sixteen days with zero media coverage. Truly, I am unbothered by Instagram policies changing, we all sold our souls when we got smart phones, end of story. BUT the Amazon forest being on fire with most of the world not knowing, MAJORLY upset me. How could we not know! With global warming at an all-time high and the drastic weather changes occurring around the world, I think it would be important to know that one of our largest ecosystems for the absorption of carbon dioxide is currently burning down. I don’t trust random posts so with that information I sought out what Google could bring me. On Google I selected an article on the topic from the New York Times which I find to be a reliable source with a rating of 8. I decided on 8 because they can still be pretty bias but the facts were all there in the article provided with sources and links to them.
In this I learned more than the impression the posts on Instagram gave off, that these fires are PLANNED illegally by farmers for logging material to be sold. This is no accident, these are man-made. Go figure right, us humans couldn’t save the earth even to save ourselves. I believe that social media twists stories and facts A LOT. So social media itself, doesn’t really benefit me. Except, when It brings worldly changes to my attention that I wouldn’t have otherwise known to look for.
