The two articles on social media are almost polar opposites of each other. The first article mentions how social media can be an addiction. It shows based on research on how people’s brains work as to why social media is addicting. A study used data from a site called 99DaysofFreedom.com, which encourages people to stop using Facebook for 99 days. The site and study are interesting because they revealed the difficulty people have quitting Facebook because of addiction.

Social media is addicting in various ways. The addictive aspect of social networking is associated with FOMO — fear of missing out. Everyone is on Facebook. They’re posting things, sharing news and content and talking to each other 24/7. The network effect itself is addicting, A network effect is the idea that any network becomes more valuable as more people connect to that network. The apps themselves are also designed to be addictive as well.

At the other end of the spectrum, social media can be seen as a powerful tool to do good in the world. Users can make sure there is awareness brought to important subjects much faster than conventional methods. Due to social media’s social network aspect there’s more people engaging on topics with hashtags and sharing.

Gabriel and I have a few ideas to convey socially aware concepts of addiction mixed with social media to subtly get the point across. we’ve agreed to communicate further to narrow down some ideas during the week.