Does Social Media distance or connect us - A short Blog and vid on how to be Social Media healthy

This was my first attempt in creating bigger production about more thought provoking things in life. Something I want to push myself to do more of on my YT channel.

So, what am i talking about, well It all started with a comment that hit me by a twitter user "why is youtube full of photography vlogs, give it a rest, thats all I see" . It made me think.......... YT is not full of this content, you could easily show stats that bring gaming, make up, music, football you name it, way, way above this small topic. However, it brought a thought to my mind. Something that bugs me with our knowledge, or lack off knowledge with #SocialMedia​, and its only one small point about a much bigger issue, but I thought id share my learning.

When I was a child I had a fantastic History teacher, she taught us so much more than history. First off, it shows how important teachers are, or can be. Thats another story for another day. She taught me that you should always, without exception consider the source. Now, this was in regards to WW2 propaganda, however, she brilliantly and somewhat predicting the future applied this to life. This has always stuck with me and brought about my love of challenging the norm, exploring the differences in stories and arguments and today it highlights the issue with Social Media.

This lesson has led me to always look at who is writing what, and in some cases actually look at the facts behind it. In regards to this vid, its mainly about our social evolution and how, by not understanding how Social Media works, can easily create a world in which you and you new 'friends' from around the world feed one another the same versions of events that are unquestioned. I use a light hearted example in this vid, whereby someone moans about only every seeming Photography vlogs on YT. However my theory is the same, the only reason this person sees Photography vlogs only on YT is because he/she only watches them. YT is much smarter than we are at knowing what keeps you on its platform, and believe me it wants to share everything with you if it meant you watch 24 hours a day. Its important to remember that every single time you watch a vid, like a insta, retweet a tweet, it logs, how long you watched, if you interacted with it, and if you went on to watch more and so on and so on.

So in the case of our example, over time they will have been shown the viral cat vid, the BBC news, the comedy sketch, the gaming vid, you name it. However, they will not have watched them, not engaged and thus, in risk of losing this person to the other platforms (Facebook, instagram, twitter) it will revert back to what works. Once this person actually searches out new content types and watches or likes, retweets etc it will continue to show you what keeps you hooked. Simple outcome for vasts amount of data it keeps on you to understand your habits.

Now, put this across to someone on twitter who may be, lets say, a racist, they do the same, they like horrible (and illegal) tweets , they follow these people who are doing the same. All the algorithm is doing is then noted that this person liked, retweeted, watched etc this content type and stayed on the platform for a long period of time (at which is can show them adverts ).

The next time they come on, they will show them the same type of content. Now fast-forward 6 months, this person has 1000 people (from 4 billion on SM) that agree with this way of thinking, but because all they do is look at this type of content, that's all they see. Now, granted every now and then another viral post gets shown to them, but all they see on the comments of this viral post (that is calling out these racists) is there 'friends' who are? you guessed it, more racist, which gives them the impression 1 million people think like them, when in fact its just a tiny fraction of people, but because they like this content and it keeps them on the platform it shows it them first, not wanting to risk showing them something different and thus, losing there business.

So, I tried to break all this down in to a silly example in the vid so that you can learn to understand that with great knowledge comes great power, and its up to us to use it wisely! Thanks for watching or reading and help support my channel by subscribing or having a look at my more casual creative vids, I mainly do photography based vids, but in truth I just love telling stories so I have lots of vlogs too.

Thanks so much for reading this, I am taking a big risk writing blobs as well as my vids, as my regular supporters of the channel know, I do have dyslexia so writing down things is much more time consuming. Therefore, I decided to take this risk and write as I talk, do a check to make sure it is sort of correct. However, I don't have time to do my usual amounts of checks it takes to proof my day job work, so im sorry if any of the above is hard to read.

Anyways, Have fun

Scott