Why books? Fahrenheit 451
In this project we read and discussed the book "Fahrenheit 451", made an art piece in response to the book, and wrote either a historical/literary analysis or a fiction piece based off of the book.
We exhibited our art pieces on March 11th at the Powerhouse Science Center.
We exhibited our art pieces on March 11th at the Powerhouse Science Center.
Dystopian short story project
For this project our assignment was to write a short story about a Dystopian society. Here was mine:
Mask Project
Socialization In Social Media
According to a news story about the effects of social media featured on storify.com, “Everyone is a product of their environment and in today’s world, everyone, at some point in their day, gets impacted by media because media is everywhere.” Social media has a large and profound influence on the socialization of today's youth.
Socialization is a noun that means the adoption of the behavior of the surrounding culture. The act of adapting behavioral norms of a culture or society is called socialization. Socialization can also mean going out and meeting or hanging out with friends. Manifest/Latent functions are functions that are intended or recognized (manifest), and may have a positive effect on society, dysfunctions are unintended or unrecognized (latent) and have a negative effect on society.”
Social media has made it easier to keep in touch with old friends, find information, meet people with common interests, and contact people worldwide. “Our time is being stretched thinner and thinner by work and family commitments, but social networking sites offer a chance to communicate in a speedy and efficient manner. Writing an update for Twitter takes all of 20 seconds, and with cross-posting over other social networks switched on, that update reaches everyone you want it to reach (and probably more besides) in an instant,”wrote Dave Parrack in an article on the positive effects of social media. I believe that social media has made us more globally connected, as well as more connected in our own communities. Faster connection and contact being an obvious positive manifest function of social media.
However, there are unfortunate latent side effects of social media. For example, how the trend of using social media has begun to affect our behaviors. According to an article I read, “Researchers have found that our obsession with social media is becoming less about connecting with others and more about vanity, egocentricity and self-promotion.” As more and more people are exposed to social media it is becoming more about followers and likes, than it is connecting with others. Social media, such as instagram, is beginning to cause egocentric and narcissistic behavior.
The constant allure of having social media at the tip of your fingers can become addictive. As shape.com puts it, “The siren call of social media can be hard to resist, especially when you're working on a difficult project, folding laundry, or doing, oh, anything less interesting than seeing what all your friends did over the weekend.” These types of social media eventually become part of our everyday lives. We slowly become dependent on our online interactions. For instance, when I broke my phone I felt temporarily disconnected. I felt that when I had the ability to browse the internet and communicate with friends and family 24/7 it became a social role and without it, I felt left out.
Social media's grip on us comes with a price. Those who don’t conform to social roles or norms on various social media, such as instagram, may be discriminated against.
If you post a picture that isn’t considered cool or normal you may fall victim to cyberbullying. Shockingly the statistics from PEW Internet Research Center, FOSI, Cable in the Classroom, 2011 show just how exposed teens can be to cyber bullying, “95% of social media-using teens who have witnessed cruel behavior on social networking sites say they have seen others ignoring the mean behavior; 55% witness this frequently, 84% have seen people defend the person being harassed, 27% report seeing this frequently, 84% have seen the people tell cyber bullies to stop bullying, 20% report seeing this frequently. 66% of teens who have witnessed online cruelty have also witnessed others joining; 21% say they have also joined in the harassment. 90% of social media-using teens who have witnessed online cruelty say they have ignored mean behavior on social media; 35% have done this frequently. 80% say they have defended the victim; 25% have done so frequently. 79% have told the cyberbully to stop being mean and cruel; 20% have done frequently.” These statistics show just how seriously teens are affected by cyberbullying.
In conclusion there are many negative and positive ways that social media has socialized us. Social media leads to a more connected world, a world where it’s easy and efficient to form new relationships, meet new people, and discover new information. However, it also leads to narcissistic tendencies, possible media addiction, and cyber-bullying. There are obvious negative and positive effects of social media. All in all I believe that social media has socialized us with many obvious (manifest) and harder to understand (latent) functions.
The mask project was a humanities project about socialization. For this we were to write about a form of socialization that we think has affected us and how. I chose to do socialization in the media. For my mask I plastered it into a Computer screen to convey the feeling of being "trapped or attached to technology." I then set up a projector to project my image onto the mask. The image made up the face but it was made out of app icons for popular social medias. Below is a picture of my mask (no projection.)