PODCAST

Mikayla O'Brien, a junior at the University of Missouri, reflects on how her thinking about social media and the internet has changed after taking a course on media literacy. She discusses the impact of social media on society, including social comparison and its effects on mental health. She interviews Josh Lieftenmaier, who shares his perspective on social media and its importance. They both agree that social media is becoming increasingly significant in today's generation, despite their personal reservations about it. Mikayla concludes that social media has both advantages and disadvantages, and it is important to understand its impact on society as a whole. She has learned a lot about social media through her course and now has a clearer understanding of its effects. Hi, I'm Mikayla O'Brien and I am a junior at the University of Missouri. Today I'm going to revisit my media assessment inventory and talk about how my thinking on social media and the internet has changed. I am also going to speak with Josh Lieftenmaier about his knowledge on social media and the internet and talk about how I may or may not agree with their opinions about the material following my enrollment in Commune 2100. I am now going to revisit a little clip at the beginning of the semester about media literacy and my knowledge before this course. I'm going to explain how my media literacy knowledge has changed over the course of the semester from being enrolled in Commune 2100, so here's a little clip of the beginning of the semester about my knowledge on media literacy. I would say social media again because it's, so many people I feel like use social media and there's so many platforms that you can use to get information or yeah, just information and like news about something or advertisements, pretty much everything like that. Can you give an example? I guess an example would be like Instagram, like advertising some kind of clothing or making you want to buy something, yeah. After viewing my clip from the beginning of the semester, I can definitely say confidently that I have learned a lot more about social media and the internet than I kind of knew coming into this course. I would say that my understanding is very more clear. Now, we talked a lot about, you know, social comparison, depression, you know, how social media can affect society as a whole and I feel like at the beginning of the semester, I didn't really know what to say. I knew about social media, but I didn't know like, you know, the huge effects of it and like how it actually does affect society and we are constantly, you know, comparing ourselves to one another and that's like a huge disadvantage. Like social media is great, but also, you know, in this day and age, like we rely on social media so much that it almost can hurt us in society. I'm going to reflect over the most memorable topics in the unit, social media, internet, you know, and discuss why I think it's important. I think it was very memorable to me because I like learning about social media. I think social media is important and I think everyone should know the disadvantages of it, but also the many advantages of social media since it's such a norm in this generation. I find it surprising and it has challenged me the way I think about media like, you know, with social comparison, you know, we have two comparing sides here. We have upward comparison, which is where we compare ourselves to someone being superior over us, whereas downward, we compare as someone being inferior to us. And we constantly do this while scrolling on content and I just thought it was cool because, you know, I can't really say that I've caught myself doing that, but I probably have, but we just don't really think about it when it's happening. And like an example is like, you know, going on Instagram, you know, scrolling on content, seeing like, you know, a man or woman and just like kind of comparing yourself to them, like I wish I was at the beach like they are, you know, just kind of that like comparison in your head and that would be like a real life example, like just scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, you know, all those social media platforms and just kind of doing that comparison, but you don't even realize that you are doing it. I am now here with Josh Lichtenmeier and we are going to discuss his knowledge on the internet and social media. Josh, what is your knowledge about the internet and social media? Thanks for asking me that, Michaela. I'll start off by saying that in today's generation, basically everyone has at least some knowledge of social media, while some people have more than others. Personally, I've used social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram for years. However, I'm not as active as the average person due to the way I was raised. Growing up, I wasn't allowed to have my own phone until I graduated from eighth grade. Therefore, I spent most of my time playing sports, fishing, or doing other outdoor activities. Many of my friends did not have the same restrictions as me growing up and therefore spent way more time on social media than me and downloaded other platforms like TikTok and Twitter, in which I've never had. Why do you think that this topic is important and if it is, why? I believe social media is important, especially since technology is constantly advancing every day. Social media is becoming a crucial part of this generation's lives, with some people spending hours per day on it. I believe that social media will continue to advance and become a bigger part of our lives. Technology is the future and we all have to adapt to it, whether we want to or not. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of social media, but still understand the importance of it. Social media is too big and too widely used around the world to ignore. And why do you think it affects society as a whole? I believe social media affects society as a whole due to the popularity of it. When one person sees their friend or someone they look up to using social media platforms, they will want to do the same. Also, people are judged constantly on if they have social media and how their social media platforms look because it's a way to portray our everyday lives. However, you typically only see what the person of the own media wants you to see. For example, you may see a picture of a friend having a great time on the beach. However, it doesn't show how they actually feel like connections in person do. People do this to make it seem like their lives are so great and have no worries when in reality everybody struggles with something. As I mentioned earlier, the biggest reason people post on social media is because they want to portray their lives as something great so they don't get judged by others. Great, thank you for coming and talking about your knowledge about social media and the internet. I agree with Josh, I think he brought up some really good points about social media and the internet. He had brought up that social media is constantly expanding and that people can spend countless hours on social media platforms and I completely agree with that. I think that that's the norm in this generation and people rely on social media constantly. It is a way for people to engage in content and share content with each other and communicate with others from far away. I think that nowadays you just see people constantly on their phone, on Instagram, Snapchat, you know, all these social media platforms. Another good point that Josh had brought up is that people can compare themselves on social media like posting content and kind of that comparison and that leads me to what we had talked about in class actually and touched base on was social comparison. So you have the upward and downward social comparison and it's pretty much, you know, where you compare yourself to somebody else that you see on the media. Like, you know, they're better than me or I'm not going to be like them or I want to be like them. You know, kind of that comparison, like either good or bad. Like you're superior or inferior to them, to yourself. So I think that's really good points that Josh had brought up and also things that we actually have discussed in the class this semester. So really good points that Josh had brought up and I totally agree. In conclusion, I think that social media and the internet are constantly used on many platforms and become addictive. I believe that it is a norm nowadays and people rely on social media for pretty much everything. Social media has advantages as well as some disadvantages. Advantages such as communicating with others around the world and engaging in content and sharing content with others. With the disadvantages, like comparing themselves to others when scrolling through a social media platform, this can make people feel depression, have low confidence, self-esteem and make a poor body image of themselves. Users spend countless hours on social media platforms and we're consistently comparing ourselves to others. Overall, with what I've said, I've definitely learned a lot of new things about social media that I didn't before coming in this course. And after we had talked about important topics about social media and the internet, I feel like now I can clearly understand the problems of social media with advantages and the disadvantages and how this affects society as a whole.