1. Summary
The article talks about social media addiction and how people don’t even realize how much time they’re spending on social media. The author of the article points out how the social media companies tricks us to keep checking our social media accounts several times a day, one of the tools they use to do this is the red notifications – making it hard to resist checking to see who liked your post or who commented on your status. Quitting social media is hard, the article mentions the site 99 Days of Freedom that encouraged people to quit Facebook for 99 days, most people only lasted a few days. According to the article, you’re addicted because of FOMO (fear of missing out).

The author suggests to only check your account once a day.

2. Communication Problem
The images should communicate addiction, information overload, multi-tasking, and how this overload of social media interferes with your day and affects your ability to concentrate and to keep your attention on one thing at a time. It should also reflect how the social media addiction affects communication between people, and how people’s phone has become something like an extension of their body – like when you see a bunch of people walking down the street, all staring at their phones like zombies.

3. Image Ideas
The image could be someone with Facebook open on their laptop, Instagram open on their phone. It could also show several people being on their phones, like zombies. Another idea is going away from showing people and showing just a phone with social media icons, using the phone as a metaphor for a drug, so there could for example be a needle coming out of the phone – as if you’re injecting social media into your body. I think it could also be cool to make the Facebook icon and/or other social media icons out of pills.

4. Results
I had an opportunity to try out my idea of doing still life and using pills to create some kind of social media icon. I tried the Facebook logo and the Twitter bird without much luck at getting a good composition, and in the end I ended up coming up with using the like button which I think represents the topic very well – the addiction to likes are at the root of social media addiction. I think the photo came out well, the red poster board as a background gives a strong contrast – it’s very vibrant and gives a clear message with a simple design.