How Social Media Affected the Attention Span.
It was found in a study that the students who had used mobile phones during the entire time of studying has less grade when compared to their counterparts who didn’t take as much of the technology breaks. Those who preferred switching task tend to have less grade points from people who didn’t prefer to change the task. It is deeply unraveling that we, as a global population, is now starting to notice that. There are numerous studies showing us that the attention span of the normal average teenager is messed up in a number of ways.
Take Youtube for example, the number of views for a short video is more than that of the long video. It is almost as if the Youtube algorithm is asking us only to respond to short videos. The algorithm, man. I just finished watching social dilemma on Netlfix. Very ironic, but how else would it reach out to other people other than the most available and engaging platform?
The algorithm is specifically tailored for every person individually. That is what machine learning is and as the days goes by more and more data would be put in the machine and then the machine would start ‘learning’ a lot about the person and so the newsfeeds are full of what you like.
One huge example is even when someone is not on your friendlist but they kept popping up becuase that person was in town yesterday and was searching for similar interests.You naturally get curious and clicked that person and it caught onto what you were clicking and it immediately recommended same type of people to your friendslist and the list got bigger and bigger the more time you spend on Facebook. It sounds like a heroin addiction right?! It got me thinking is ther any similaritires between psychoactive substance and social media addiction.
The common symptoms for the psychoactive substance is that the substance leaves the person wanting for more and more, increasing the tolerance level for the substance(it shows how much of the substance is consumed to make the person high). And that is what is happening right in social media addiction too. It leaves the person craving for more usage of social media and make the person crave for more likes, comments, shares. It thrives because it embrace the concept of how every human crave for acceptance and love and support in things that we beleive in.