I’m continuing to take pictures with my disposable camera of people using social media in various environments and situations, I’m gaining a good collection that I can see coming together to represent my vision. I’ve started to do more planning in how I want the final piece to be set out more specifically (the placement of the photos and statuses) and how they will all link to one another. It’s been interesting to hear my family members and friends opinions on the project as I take the pictures, each of them have agreed that they find themselves addicted to social media in some form. They tell me about their bad habits and how they try to combat staying away from social media (usually their phones), as it is extremely distracting when doing work or in a social setting. It’s given me more to think about and research with various experiences coming directly from people I know.

As I’ve been taking the pictures I find myself concentrating more on the composition of the piece in that moment because I only have limited film and can’t look back on the picture to perfect any faults I see. It also means that after the picture is taken I go straight back to what I was doing, not worrying about perfecting the picture or posting it online. I’m thinking more strategically of how everything will tie together on the pin-board in my final presentation.

In my research I’ve been focusing more on the mental health issues that come from social media addiction, many university studies have shown that even through people are connected online and are sharing their experiences, they start to feel isolated with a disconnect to the real word and face to face social interaction. People will compare their achievements to others they follow online, only seeing the positives of another’s life can warp the reality of dealing with your own struggles.

This has made me plan to take more pictures of people using social media alone to empathise the loneliness that we can get caught up in while spending hours staring at a glowing screen of images and words, instead of being more productive in our daily lives.

People don’t realise the main aim of social media platforms is to profit off the users. The creators draw you in material and benefits to stay online longer to create revenue. Attention engineers are hired by businesses such as twitter, Instagram and Facebook who borrow principles from Las Vegas casinos to make social media as addictive as possible. Ted Talk speaker Dr. Cal Newport compared social media to a casino slot machine, saying that it’s one thing to sped a couple hours pushing the buttons and staring at numbers, but to be able to then take that slot machine home with you creates a entirety bigger issue.

Rough Layout plan:

(Sorry my second reflection is so late! I completely forgot to post it earlier this week)