Bandwagon Effect Dangers of Social Media

[Music]

if we were to take a time machine

and travel back in time what would we

see

in my opinion the world of 100 years ago

is vastly different

than the world of today thanks to the

innovations of our forefathers

modern humans live a very technocentric

lifestyle

and the benefits of technology can be

seen all around us

through the phones in our pockets to the

display powering our presentations today

while the benefits of technology

couldn’t be more transparent

there are also downsides to this problem

as we can see teenagers are spending

more and more time

up to seven hours of their day on this

on social media platforms such as

facebook

twitter instagram video entertainment

applications

tick tock youtube with this new asia

technology also comes the rise of more

internet dependent jobs

for example the role of the influencers

there are people who rely on

sponsorships and advertisement

as ad revenue to make money and a common

characteristic that they share

are the large followings on social media

platforms

that is not my primary concern what i’m

more concerned about

are there are young children due to the

internet accessibility

traversing these sites daily while

they’re already exposed

to the pre-existing dangers such as

paedophilia

and harassment i also want to address

the more hidden dangers

such as influencers and social media

and also companies trying to exploit

them

for the under the disguise of raising

awareness but actually

for profit then how do we plan to solve

these problems

actually as a matter of fact i don’t

think it is possible to completely

detach yourself from society from

technology

social media and technology has deeply

rooted itself onto our

culture and onto our livelihoods

so i don’t really recommend you to try

but

you are very well welcomed as a member

of the gen z

i fully understand the need to

keep updated with the trends as i too

have perfected my wap dance

but that is besides the point because

really we need to understand how these

trends

can impact us physically and mentally

we need to understand how our trends can

be

can hurt us and through the use of

thorough researching

and also fact checking we need to

understand how these

trends are often

police trends often affect the cultural

and religious backgrounds

and how it offends them an example of

this would be the fox eye trend

where it shows people of non-asian

descent stretching out their eyes

but actually this is racist towards

asian people who have received harsh

treatments due to the

nature of their eyes forcing some into

double eyelid surgery for example

now i’m sure that all of you have

experienced your own fair share of

internet embarrassment

myself included but the story that i

am going to present to you is more

deeply rooted into who i am as a person

it is something that took me a lot of

courage and a lot of power

to go up here and share it to you so

flashing back to 2014. uh

i just got over my first ever instagram

account

i was planning to run a photography

account because through the eyes

of a 14 year old anything can be

any anyone can be a photographer if you

have a camera

am i right well

i’ve quickly uploaded my first ever

photo with like 30 hashtags and

a beautiful deep instagram caption

like every other 12 year old kid but the

matter of fact is only got 40 likes

only 40. but i was happy

it was my first ever instagram post 40

likes is a lot

but then as i kept uploading i kept

getting smaller

and smaller amount of likes 30

20 15. and before i realized it

i developed social media addiction i

became obsessed

with numbers more more specifically

how to gain more of them

this i let then then i would came into a

cycle of self-depravity

and self-hatred why can’t i replicate

the same success

why can’t i be as good as the other

people

and agree to hate myself i my

self-esteem was killed

but luckily with the help of my friends

and my family i was able to pull myself

out of this dark time

a privilege that i believe that a lot of

teenagers often

do not get now we need to

understand how much social media has

impacted

our our lives then we need to understand

the people that play a role in it the

social media influencers

i have selected three for us to analyze

and compare and contrast here we have

with the first one

case study number one here we have

uh influencers uh they are tick talkers

they are charlie and

dixie and emilio they are known for

their tick tock dance covers

and they have a combined following of

135

million people that is a lot

now look if you take a look at what they

do

they’re often doing dance covers and

also a lot of like

uh collaborations with other big brands

like prada

and chanel but the most important thing

is that

they also use their platform for good

purposes

like when charlie like when charlie

talked about the black lives matter

movement

or when they did adverts on body

positivity campaigns

i think that is an incredibly good thing

that they are raising awareness

and promoting a good cause now

moving on to the next case study number

two

mr beast now he is somewhat

a personal hero of mine mr beast

known for his youtube channel youtube

channel and more specifically his

challenges online

where users where his participants can

get a large sum of cash

if they succeed the challenge of course

but the thing is

the thing that earned my respect for him

the most is this team trees initiative

launched in 2019 team trees is an

initiative

where people can donate money to plant

trees

evidently but the more important thing

is that team trees has raised 22 million

trees

as of 2020. the

amount of impact that this initiative

had on the environment

is huge and i would like to thank mr

beast

for using his platform in such a good

manner something that a lot of

influencers do not do which is why we

should move on to our next

and final case study okay study number

three

jstation now this guy is absolutely

deplorable

someone that you should not follow in

any form manner

so if we take a look at his content he

basically does a lot of click-baiting

videos

where he exploits the deaths of recently

passed celebrities

for money imagine being a relative

of those people who recently passed and

see that another person

has used their death as a monetary gain

i believe that everyone should not

follow this guy

because he’s an example of what a bad

influencer is

now i don’t believe that every

influencer are bad

they’re actually really good but we also

need to understand that they are at the

end of the day

they need to make money and so does the

companies

and so a lot of the companies and

influencers

they create these trends

not basically to generate revenue

not all of them but most of them do i’m

going to pick the harmless example

is the black pink awesome scream awesome

grammar strong battery life dance trend

as an example of this on the surface it

might seem to be a harmless dance trend

on tick tock

but if we dive deeper into it it’s

actually an advert

for the next coming samsung phone now

for all my life i’ve hold up to this one

value

is that if you do something nice and you

stick a camera up to it

then it’s just for money and i believe

that a lot of these

modern modern time trends are doing

something like that

they’re doing a good pro they’re doing

raising good awareness

but if the pr if the goal of the

product is not from here but from your

pockets

then it is something else it is

advertisement

not awareness and thank you for

listening to my tedx speech

you