This week was our final week of blog post and news articles. Its amazing how fast this semester really went and that we will all be home for Thanksgiving within the next couple days. This week my group gave our presentation and were the final group to do so. My group had the book “Information Wars” which talks about disinformation and how it has been used of the last couple of years or so. Disinformation has been used all over the world by ISIS and Putin and is not something that just happens in the United States. It has been used to pull in public support by using subjects that a good number of people are upset by and then turning them to make you look like the answer to your problems. Putin would even use it to cover his track when he was breaking treaties and had military presence in places that he shouldn’t of had. The books cover more of these cases of disinformation and gives you the real facts. These were topics we have sort of already covered and brought up the question of is their any real way to stop it from happening. I think the answer to this is no and it will always be their but we can limit its effectiveness by being vigilant about what is the truth and what isn’t.

We also had to watch a short video on the Social Media Therapy which is being used to help people limit their time spent on social media. Social media has become such a huge part of our lives and a good amount of our spare time is spent on social media. This has brought about many problems with more depression, negative body images, eating disorders, and anxiety. While these were around before social media they have become even more common for people to suffer from these and a lot of that comes from increased social media use. The problem comes from what people put on social media is only the things they want you to know or see about them and it never the pull truth about the person. There are then standards set in our minds of how to act, how to dress, what we should like, the right number of likes and so which then lead to people having all of these issues that can only be fixed by fixing your social media activity. We also read an article titled “Addicted to Distraction” which talks about how the internet has led to use being easily distracted. The author talks about how he struggled to read books any more and get easily distracted by the dumbest things that don’t even really matter. So he decides he going to starting limiting things in his life like sugar, alcohol, diet pop and the internet. He did fairly well with them all but the internet as the internet is just about everywhere you look. The only way he was really able to was to take a vacation and limit himself to only being able to sent text. This freedom from the internet allowed for his focus to return and he was able to start reading books again. I think this is something that would be great for everyone to do even just for a couple of days of having no internet to help reset your mind in a way.

We also talked about generations and the names they are given and how they are all shaped by what happens to them in their younger years. We were then tasked to come up with 5 things we like and dislike about our generation. My generation would be Generation Y or Generation Z depending on where you look and who you talk too with me being born in the year 1999. 5 things I like are that we tend to be more open/ accepting of others, open/adaptive to change, doing the task tends to be more important then the time spent on it, more willing to listen to others, and like to speak up for what we believe in. 5 things I dislike are we are too dependent on our phone/technology, let social media control us, we look up to celebrities’ too much, share too much personal information on social media, and we tend to worry too much about what others think about us.

News Article

This article talks about ways to help yourself in controlling your time spent on social media.

https://www.lifehack.org/594793/how-to-declutter-your-social-media-life-for-better-productivity