Social media has had an enormous impact on society that many people need to have brought to their attention. Certain habits of our mind have been altered in such way that we are starting to slip into a toxic hole that we won’t be able to get ourselves out of. People have conditioned themselves in such a way that they accept the opinions and attitudes of the media. It boggles my mind to think about the fact that society has altered each and everyone of us in such a way that we keep our own opinions to ourselves because we fear to be outnumbered. Searching through the overload of articles that I found on the internet this one in specific was beneficial and expresses a lot of the same ideas I included in the statements composed throughout my post. (Harris)

In this day and age a lot of people revolve their lives around the instant gratification that the internet gives them.(Alsop) The desire to constantly be checking your phone reflects the instant gratification that everyone in the world is getting through online connections. Alsop states “Millennials tend to expect immediate responses to emails and texts and find it unbearable to lose access to the internet’s rich trove of information.(Alsop) I struggle with this personally because I have relied on these immediate responses to satisfy and give me the gratification and desire my mind needs to just simply feel included and connected in every way that is possible.

I find myself aimlessly gazing at my phone while scrolling through all my social media accounts with these same reoccurring thoughts popping into my head, “I want to be like her”, “I wish I had all that”, “Why are they so lucky”. I ask myself now while I am writing this post, “Why do I even waste my time doing that”. I came up with this very arguable idea that my mind is being altered. I know that I am not the kind of person to feel the need to compare myself to others but, I do believe that the amount of time I spend consuming all these posts modifies my mind to start verging off in that direction because all that you seem to see on a regular basis is “perfection” and not the real side of people’s lives. I included this astounding article to help better understand how crucial it is to be aware that “perfection” is not always a good thing. Do not lose yourself trying to be this harmful and unattainable thing. (Walsh) This creates the individuality of one’s self to start diminishing. As I stated in this paragraph I battle this exact negative mind set and I hope that by reading the article linked you too can help yourself dig out of it.

In the article that we were assigned to read “The Mechanical Bride”(McLuhan) which was published in 1951, presented these habits that I addressed above but existed in a little bit of a different way. In the text it discusses the point of view about the man who would rather eat the turtle than admire that design of its back. This statement really twisted my mind but, I shortly began to realize that this translated into the concept that whether you use the newspaper or social media to accumulate your information/stories you are either a consumer or someone that likes to grapple and understand the material that is being presented. There are dozens of ways that we discover our information that we use and share on a daily basis but, have you ever thought about what you are? If I had to chose, I would consider myself an analyzer. As I mentioned above, I grapple with conflicting thoughts and I am always wondering why I immerse myself into other peoples lives.

To conclude my thoughts, I’d like to throw out the idea that if we were to think about how our habits of the mind were 5 or even 10 years ago we would see such a compelling difference between now and then. When I personally think about this idea I can undoubtedly say that my mind is almost completely changed to a new habit of thinking. When I was first introduced to various types of social media it seemed harmless and super cool, but now, a few years later, I do not think this way anymore. The way that the media reaches out to it’s viewers creates such an overwhelming doom in obvious and unambiguous ways. Whether we want to admit it or not, the way that we consume our information is completely bias and altering our individuality causing us to hop on board with what we see instead of analyzing it and understanding what the intent is.