Are our smartphones listening to us?

You’re thinking it, I'm thinking it, we're all thinking it, and you are not alone. Are our smartphones listening to us to create targeted ads? In today's day and age social media whether you want to believe it or not plays a large role in our everyday lives and is only getting larger in our growing society and it is not going anywhere. In Fact, it is sadly becoming all that we know. So how do we keep our privacy at such a public time in our lives and what is really going on behind closed doors on these social media platforms in which we give away so much valuable information to about ourselves too?

From time to time social media users feel like there is someone is listening in on their conversations to generate these targeted ads especially if they have not even googled the product or texted/messaged someone about it. In the article that I will be discussing today, the writer talks about if and how Instagram is listening in on your conversations to create targeted advertisements. His main aim in this article in my eyes is to show Instagram and Facebook users what is going on behind closed doors and why exactly you are seeing those targeted advertisements while scrolling through your feed. With that being said, he provides us with useful background information on dynamic ads and its definition and also user conversations and how they are being leaked to businesses. He goes on to say how with Instagrams 500 million active monthly users, they are permitting marketers worldwide an exclusive opportunity to reach target audiences. Its users come to the platform to tune into their interests, from fashion and entertainment to health and parenting.

So how do they know? They use something called dynamic ads. So example: you’re scrolling through your favorite clothing site for a new shirt or maybe a new pair of shoes and you click on an item that catches your eye but you cancel out of the browser and think “hmm not right now” and go about your day. A few hours later you're on Instagram and BOOM there it is basically taunting you to buy it. But these ads just don't follow you to Instagram they follow you to your facebook too. This means that as long as you’re logged into Instagram, the items you click on will have a say in the ads that pop up in your feed. And this my friend is what dynamic ads are. There is a lot more to this topic but this is just a peek into what these platforms are doing behind closed doors.

Government Surveillance: Protection or Invasion of Privacy?

This post may be too political for some, but I am interested to see what over people have to say.  With this week’s topic being about privacy, I thought I’d talk about a controversial issue that has been going on for years:  Government Surveillance.

This really all started after 9/11, when the Bush administration signed the Patriot Act into law.  This allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to gather and collect data on U.S. citizens without their consent and without a warrant.  In 2005 and 2006, for example, a report show that the NSA was working with major telecommunications carriers, like AT&T, to carry out surveillance on its customers.  The report also confirmed that the government was/is mass collecting metadata from US citizens’ phones under the guise of the Patriot Act, as well as “collecting and analyzing the content of communications of foreigners talking to persons inside the United States, as well as collecting much more, without a probable cause warrant.” Many people have tried to even go to court over this, claiming that this violates their fourth amendment right.  Many also believe that the increase in surveillance is a sign that “Big Brother” is now becoming more of a reality, alluding to George Orwell’s 1984 (Great book by the way).   On the other hand, while many people criticize the government surveillance for a violation of their rights, others argue that the government is trying to protect them from foreign threats.  I have heard all to often “You have nothing to fear if you don’t have anything to hid” by proponents of government surveillance as well.

I personally believe that it is wrong for a government to spy on its own people as we should all have a right to privacy.  But I am curious to see where other people stand on this issue.  Is NSA spying unconstitutional?  Why or why not?  If you agree that NSA spying is wrong, what are other alternatives could we use that doesn’t infringe on our privacy?

Four Years and Many Messages Ago

How doth this week’s subject relate to my real life? Let me count the ways…

My husband and I did not meet online. We met at a mutual friend’s Pennsylvania wedding in the summer of 2014. Our exchanges were brief, we had once dance together, and that was it. After the wedding week, he went back to his life and I drove home to Illinois to resume mine. It was radio silence. An entire year of radio silence.

Fast forward roughly thirteen months of that, and a Facebook comment on one of my photos appeared in my notifications. It was from a vaguely familiar-looking curly haired boy. A few days later, a friend request followed. Within a week, we were staying up until dawn instant messaging each other. I reveled in every message, every paragraph, and eventually every essay sent back and forth about topics ranging from philosophy and religion to science and music. I was smitten. I thought it was magic. 

He, on the other hand, thought it was simply a fun use of his overabundance of time and wifi access. 

It was less than a week before I found out about his seven-year crush on a girl he grew up with. He took care of her rabbit and built it a hutch. He planned on marrying her. She never felt the same way, but he didn’t seem to mind. For seven years, he carried that torch despite her relentless downpour on his parade. 

In time, I let my feelings fade and we became friends. We’d text back and forth every few months, keeping in touch about the biggest details of our lives and where we’d moved to. He’d send me a picture of a mountain he hiked, and I’d tell him about a new band I discovered. We were long-distance friends who had only really met in real life twice. Until we weren’t. In the winter of 2017, we reconnected more deeply. The all-nighter talks happened again, only this time we were receiving and sending the exact same message. Our lives were panning out similarly. We began to feel the same. We saw each other for the third time February 7th. Our wedding was on the 28th. Happily ever beginning. 

We got married on a Wednesday afternoon at the Craftsbury Public Library in VT

This story, while being completely true and more than a little ridiculous, reflects a handful of points brought up this week about online dating. The obvious one that stood out to me - rather glaringly that one week in 2015 - was the room for miscommunication and missed cued among online communication. In that first week of intense, vulnerable conversation, I was receiving a lot of signals that he wasn’t actually sending. This had everything to do with our differing media ideologies: I placed high value and intimacy on late-night, hours-long conversations over instant messaging, while he saw it as an everyday activity among friends. We were reading different messages from the same texts. 

Another point brought up in Baym’s chapter was the fact that social networking sites often potentiates opposite-gender friendships that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Before Matt and I decided (perhaps a bit spontaneously) to get married, we were friends for over two years. Without SNS’s, we would not have gotten to know each other as we had. Our lives would not have been shared, our common interests left uncovered, and our eventual partnership impossible. For most of that time, he was one of the only male friends I consistently had. Offline, opposite sex friendships were complicated and difficult. Online, it was different. 

The last thing worth pointing out about this story is the intimacy that SNS’s allow for. While getting to know each other over instant messaging and then eventually texting, we began to share more and more vulnerable information. By the time we reconnected the second time, it took less than a week for us to disclose our romantic feelings and intentions. 

The reliance on text, despite all its missing cues, allowed each of us a safe enough distance to become as close as possible. 

If you think I’m absolutely crazy for doing what we did and marrying so quickly, don’t think I’m alone. Plenty of people have more insane stories than mine. Studies are showing that cultivating relationships online and through SNS's really do have a chance at success. 

Have you ever experienced these aspects of online relationships or dating? How do your same-sex and opposite-sex friendships stack up offline vs online? Have you ever caught yourself being more intimate with an online friend than you expected?

Tinder: Two Perspectives

Watching the documentary in class on Wednesday left me physically sick and I felt such a pain in my stomach to the ways that people date. It made me grateful for the info I’m learning now about God’s intentions for my dating life. (Check out Levi Lusko’s Book “Swipe Right” for more awesome info I wish I had in middle school.)

I made it known that me and my boyfriend met on Tinder and we have been dating for two years. I shared with him about the documentary and I thought I would share his prospective. He’s 23 and has never been to college. Out of the 60 people he matched with on Tinder, I was one of 3 people who agreed to meet him and I was the only one who actually followed through with that agreement. To compare I had matched with over 400 people for the two years (on and off) I was using the app. He used the app for maybe 6 months. I shared that some of the tweets in our conversation had to do with women being too picky and how it wasn’t that bad to be a woman on an online dating app. My boyfriend had this to say about it:

“Well that’s really too bad. I’ve only seen or heard about a few couples that met like we did and had long term success. The dating world does suck for women. They’re two types of guys on dating sites; the disturbing, disgusting, and degrading men you’re seeing in class [in the documentary] is one. The other type is the caring, kind, and genuine guys that are constantly overshadowed by the other dickheads out there. I know your tinder experiences sucked, and mine did too. I had over 60 matches in the 6 months I used it. Around 30 actually responded to me, but the conversation died quickly. Only 3 people actually said they’d meet me in person. 1 backed out when I asked for a time/place, 1 rescheduled multiple times and I never even met her. You were the only 1 out of 60+ that even met with me, and we still almost didn’t make it in the beginning. So I can understand why the guys in your class think women are too picky, because they are. But they should be and I’m glad they are. I just think some of those women are terrible at deciphering at which men to be picky for. There seems to be two types of women on dating sites. One type is those looking for hookups and are attracted to those “bad boys” that have always given my type of guy problems since the world has existed. The other type is the kind, caring, and genuine people like you! Online dating is just frustrating, disturbing, and scary in general for everyone. It’s all different kinds of people all looking for something different, but all of them looking for what they call love, which has a different meaning for everyone lol. If we really look at it, online dating is set up for its users to fail way more often that it is for success. All the more reason for those of us that found our significant other to praise and thank God for blessing us with something so unlikely. Plus a reason to look back on how stupid we were to even try online dating, especially Tinder, in the first place 😂”

He has a great point, we all go online to find “love” but it means different things to everyone. Love for me was finding a man who loves Jesus and wanted a real relationship of growing closer to God together. Ultimately I found what I was looking for, but I chose to go on awful dates, swipe through a million profiles, hoping that someone was a Christian even though they didn’t put it in their profile. I received SO many unwanted pictures, awful, harassing messages. But I found what I wanted in the end. Doesn’t mean it was the right tool, but it does mean that God can use circumstances that you were never meant to see for His glory, and THAT is what makes our story awesome. Oh, and also, his first message to me 😂

Enjoy some other photos from our relationship, he’s pretty cool.

Have You Heard of ASMR?

What is ASMR? According to this article, it stands for ‘Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response’ and can be described as, “..a relaxing, often sedative sensation that begins on the scalp and moves down the body. Also known as brain massage, it's triggered by placid sights and sounds such as whispers, accents, and crackles.” In YouTube context, it’s people whispering and tapping on their microphones, sometimes for an hour or more, in an effort to create a relaxing environment conducive to sleeping/meditation.

Think warm and fuzzy, like this chipmunk gif I found.

Yet, most of the videos on YouTube are just women making uncomfortable smacking noises as they whisper too close to microphones, or loudly eat things like pickles.

Obviously I’m not an expert on ASMR—maybe this is a case of the most popular videos just being the most sexualized—but a significant portion of the movement just seems like a fetish. I’d love to be proven wrong. Unfortunately, I came across this video just a few days ago, about a preteen who does ‘ASMR’ and has over 1.1 million subscribers. (Just a warning, the video is super uncomfortable to watch.)

Does anyone know more about this movement? Am I the only one that thinks the goal of these videos isn’t meditation at all? Isn’t that chipmunk gif adorable? That’s it.

Video Game time for adults

For my posting this week I wanted to bring up video gaming for adults. As I've gone through my teens years into my adult years, I've realized that more and more adult are "hip" to the video game realm. The more often I speak with my friends and to those who are older than me, I see people playing video games after work or when they have nothing else to do. I believe that because of the big rise of video games it is effecting everyone. I can remember growing up and my teachers would tell me in class that video games are so bad for me. I remember there being a huge issue surrounding the game GTA (Grand Theft Auto). They said this game led to tons of violence in the real world. They said because of the games use of guns, in which you can kill people, going to strip clubs, committing various crimes, that it was negatively effecting the youth. So for me to see more and more adults actually play video games is interesting. I wonder if the boom or having argument over video games with the current young adults who use to be those teenagers, caused the rise. Although myself I don't play video games anymore. I do remember spending countless hours on my Xbox growing up and I've played all of shooter games such as (Tom Clancy, Call of Duty, Halo) to name a few. As well as playing (GTA, Saints Row and sims). I believe I have turned out to be normal adult. I don't believe that I have been effected. I'm happy that adults nowadays are utilizing the platform as a way to relax and forget about the daily struggled people go through. What's great about video games, is that you can pick up right where you left off. In the Baym book it talks about storage. The idea of storing on hard drives or servers. Even if you sell your device it is stored right on your cloud and when you buy a new device connected to the same company, your profile will be downloaded for you. I think that everyone should play video games. I believe it helps stimulate the mind and relieve stress. Although I do think you shouldn't be stuck in the bat cave all day. I believe that a max of 2 hours is well enough of playing time. I do feel those who play too much, tend to not be a as social as others who don't.

Technology's Role in Today's Relationships

No matter how you choose to use technology and the internet, it's a tool that's being implemented in most of today's relationships. With the invention of dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble, it's now easier than ever to connect with other people online. This changes the whole playing field to how relationships can play out. Most of these changes are reflected throughout different generations. 

Technology affects all sorts of relationships; new relationships, long-term relationships, and relationships within people of all ages. Technology affects different relationships in different ways, for example, according to Amanda Lenhart and Maeve Duggan, in their article Couples, the Internet, and Social Media, they go on to explain how "long-term couples tend to view and utilize technology quite differently compared with those who have been together for a shorter period of time." This is primarily due to generational differences, but at any age, technology plays a role in today's relationships.

In terms of serious relationships, it's reported that 45% of internet users aged 18-29 say that the internet has had an impact on their relationship, but only one out of ten internet users 65 and older agree. It's reported that younger adults tend to run into more issues with technology within their relationships in dealing with trust issues or stress about what their partner is doing online. In reported marriages of internet users, only 74% felt that the internet had an impact on their marriage, and that impact was still positive. 

Is it okay to break up online?

Is it okay for someone to break-up with their girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, or husband over the internet?  I started to really ponder this question while doing this week’s reading, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.  There are a few examples that the author uses to illustrates how people have broken things off over text or email and how it made certain users feel.  The example that stood out to me was the exchange between Halle and Doug.  To summarize, Doug broke up with Halle over text because he was in love with another girl, Rianna, whom they've both joked around about over text prior to their break-up.  Because of the nature of their texts, it took awhile for Halle to actually realize that Doug wasn’t kidding.  It seems as though breaking up over text can lead to confusion.

This is something I usually criticize.  I don’t like it (personally) when people break things off over text if they were in a serious relationship.  From what I’ve seen, it leads to closure issues, or people not getting why or how.  The message isn’t clear.  This leads to the idea of media ideology that the author talks about.  Media ideology is how we label certain media in terms of informal or formal.  For instance, I consider texting or using social media to communicate with friends, like Snapchat, examples of informal media.  Whereas, face-to-face communicate, video chat, or in some cases, over the phone, I would consider more formal.  Therefore, when I text my girlfriend, it's usually exchanging jokes or idle talk, per say.  But if one of us ever decided to end things, I would want in to be face-to-face, or, at the very least, over video chat, but even that would be pushing it for me. 

But how about others out there?  Which type of media do you consider to be more formal and more informal?  And is there any media formal enough that breaking up would be considered okay, or, does a person have a responsibility to end things face-to-face, assuming that they have the ability to do so?

Not All Bad

It seems as though when people are discussing social media, it is for the most part in a negative light. There are of course negatives to social media like there are to most things, but I think the recent reading, ‘The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World’pointed out the importance of how medias have created new ways for us to express ourselves. I found the contentment aspect of benefits of digital life to explain this idea the best, “The vast majority of human ambition and objectives are far more noble: people desire to educate themselves, people desire to communicate with others, people desire to share their experience, people desire to create networks of enterprise, commerce, and culture.” It seems that some people look to media as not simply a way to express yourself but also to improve yourself and explore new ideas. Now more than ever I see people reading the news as it appears on their timeline and finding groups online that they share common interests with. 

While researching other positive effects of social media I came across a video posted by BBC Future called ‘Social Media: How Life Online Makes Us Smarter’ where Clive Thompson discusses the vast opportunities that have come from social media. Thompson discusses how social media has created a place for people to expand their knowledge and their thinking by working together. He also describes a time where he himself feared new technologies as they came out. 

I think that most of the time the negative cloud sometimes thrown over social media just comes from how quickly it became prominent in our lives, but that is not always a bad thing. We now have almost any piece of knowledge we desire at our fingertips, and we have the ability to share that knowledge with others and express our thoughts and ideas. 

Social Media and Identity

Social media has always been a way for me to meet and connect with different types of people. And I can say I have been able to do that across different platforms, often presenting myself in different ways. For instance, there's Facebook where I present myself as I like to each and every day, making new friends along the way, whether they come from school, work, or hobbies such as gaming. Then, there's LinkedIn where I present myself professionally and communicate with fellow professionals/business students to grow my professional network and get my name out there for potential jobs. Then, there are smaller, more specific networks on websites such as Discord, Twitter, and discussion boards where I speak to more specific hobbies I have such as games, art, music, movies, and sports. It makes me portray a different persona in a way since I want to connect to those other users in a way we all can empathize with each other and become friends. This persona can be called my disembodied identity since it relates to my digital self and it is more flexible than my physical self since I am discussing things I wouldn't normally discuss in-person.

Recently, we had the exercise in class where we split into three groups and went over the Pew Research Center article. My group went over the benefits of being in a tech-saturated world and one of the big takeaways we made was the idea that the internet is an "Ultimate Connection Machine" and we mentioned that "human beings want and need connection." I feel that without this connection machine, users would be unable to find and connect with others. When speaking to other specific audiences, I find myself being able to express opinions I thought would never matter to others. With games, I'm able to discuss the types of games I enjoy and connect with those who share my interests. In art, I sometimes create digital art and can share it with artists of similar style and give feedback to one another and how we can improve it; alongside what we think is some of the best art in the community we're a part of. With sports, we have a lot of different opinions, but talking about what we think will happen and why is always interesting to me. This summer, I was in a voice call on Discord with a lot of pro wrestling fans from around the world as we talked about our predictions for an upcoming pay-per-view and discussed why, alongside some future reasonings to why it happened (i.e., beyond the show we were talking about).

Not only can this type of activity grow my social network, but it can also expose my thoughts to the disembodied audiences. You never know who you will meet on the internet and it can surprise you! I can say that after talking with other users on a server, it can catch the attention of other users who come on later in the day and bring up the topics I discussed earlier with a different group of people, sparking a whole new conversation! Sometimes, they can be positive audiences, sometimes they can be negative (some may call the more negative ones, "trolls").

What is your experience with identity online? What is your disembodied identity like? Have you ever thought about your own disembodied audience? Feel free to discuss it in the comments!

Middle School and Social Media

Last weekend I had the opportunity to watch Bo Burnham’s Eighth grade. It wasn’t advertised a lot (I only heard about it through Reddit) and it wasn’t released in many theatres (which is why I had to ‘find’ a copy online), but I definitely recommend it—if, that is, you have a high tolerance for awkwardness and discomfort. The movie is a glimpse into a middle school girl’s life

So what’s this movie about middle school have to do with Social Media?

I thought about this class more than once as I watched it. The first thing you notice about the protagonist is the hold social media has on her life. It’s found its way into every stage of her day. She wakes before dawn, does her make-up, and gets back into bed to take a selfie (“Just woke up this way!”). In school she stalks the Instagrams of the kid she likes and the kid that she wants to be like. At home, we see her scrolling through images and stories, only to hear her father trying to ask about her day—over dinner, no less!

It reminded me of my younger siblings.

I’m not trying to bash kids using social media, here. It’s not all bad. The girl finds two good friends through her phone (no more spoilers), and uses youtube as a creative outlet for her advice videos. There are positive uses for it.

I guess what I really want to convey is: the ubiquity of Social Media in our lives is staggering. It’s there at a young age—as soon as we get our first phone or computer. Should we help kids learn to cope with the addiction? Or is this just another trial (like most of Middle School) that they need to figure out on their own?

Out of Control?

Growing up, I was always taught that life is what you make of it. Everything in life is a choice. Our choices define who we are, how others see us and, essentially, how we experience the world. This thinking implies that we as individuals possess an agency that only we are in control of. If everything’s good, it’s because we choose to make it that way. If things aren’t so good, it’s also our fault. Nobody imposes anything on us that we don’t allow them to. 

But what if that isn’t really the case?

The article from this week on Pew Research regarding how people view online activity as helpful, harmful or solution bearing made me think a little more about agency and personal choice. During the group activity, I was assigned the harmful viewpoint. I took time to carefully read over the different ways that online activity is believed to impact how we think about ourselves, how we think about ourselves, and how the world around us works. My first reaction was skepticism. I grew up watching my mom use MSN Messenger. I had a Yahoo Chat before I reached middle school. Social networking and online activity has been a nearly permanent fixture in my life. However, after reading the different responses for how harmful online activity can be… I found myself not disbelieving any of them. 

Were some of them a little overreaching? I think so. But none of the points were completely baseless. The truth is that, in my experience, the online experience has just as much potential for bad as it does for good. The way I see myself has certainly been shaped by what I see on Facebook and Instagram. Social networking impacts the personal, professional and consumer decisions I make. 

And as far as the world I live in? The most haunting point brought up by the harmful viewpoints was that online activity will potentially “invite ever-evolving threats to human interaction, security, democracy, jobs, privacy and more.” This feels big. This is about more than just what shirt I buy from American Eagle. This is about the world. And I can’t help but feeling that, if this is true, then things might be a little out of my control. Yes, I choose to read Buzzfeed and follow Twitter. But threatening democracy? This isn’t a choice I wanted to make. 

Take a minute to check out this video by Vlogbrothers about Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica breach. It might make you think a little more about the control you give away when you choose to be online. 

Tell me more about how you feel online life and social networking affect your sense of control over yourself and the world around you in the comments. 

Collaborative Blogging Activity: The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World

Today in class we engaged in a media literacy and critical thinking challenge: Create an informative one-sheet to explain the course concepts to new learners. Our task was to harness our collective knowledge stemming from course reading, discussion, and viewing, and translate the article The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World published by the Pew Research Center into a one-sheet using layperson's language appropriate for high school students.

"A plurality of experts say digital life will continue to expand people’s boundaries and opportunities in the coming decade and that the world to come will produce more help than harm in people’s lives. Still, nearly a third think that digital life will be mostly harmful to people’s health, mental fitness, and happiness. Most say there are solutions"

Students were divided into three teams that tackled the three overarching sections of the piece: Technology as more helpful, technology as more harmful, and potential future remedies related technology and digital innovation.

The Steps:

1. Explore assigned sections alone and identify key takeaways. In small assigned groups, come to a consensus on key takeaways, refine them into the most accessible language for the intended audience
2. Clarify the desired impact of the one-sheet.
3. Identify relevant quotes and/or data to incorporate into the one-sheet.
4. Create a catchy headline for the one-sheet
5. Choose one of the info-graphic templates posted on Moodle -- Use your chosen template to pull everything together for public presentation.

The Results:

What resonated with you most in this article, CM3940? Chime in the comments...

Has Social Media ruined the way we communicate, and has it affected romantic relationships??

So of course we all know how involved everyone is today with social media, but what I looked into was have we all forgotten that we use to have to introduce ourselves face to face in order to get to know someone? And not only that but when you wanted to go out on a date with someone you would have to ask them in person, and fear the rejection. Well now we have it a lot easier, we can scroll through our social media and find someone that we think is attractive and either add them and get to know them, or ask them out on a date with a text message, and if they say no it’s not as hard or embarrassing because it is not face to face. 

 In today’s world most all people communicate with their friends, or significant others through some sort social media, or texting, rather than calling, or seeing them face to face and I believe that this has taken away from our communication skills. We no longer have to go out and make new friends if we don’t want to, we can just message someone online and start to get to know one another, and then meet up after a while of talking online and it will be like you have been friends for a while. The same goes with romantic relationships, you can talk online for months, and tell each other everything about one another, and when they finally meet it won’t be like they are a stranger, it will be like you have known them a while. Therefore, we don’t have to put ourselves out there anymore, we don’t have to feel uncomfortable and adapt to meeting new people, and going through the awkward fazes, therefore weakening our communication skills. What do you think? Have your communication skills been weakening with the use of social media and texting? Well this connects back to one of the first readings that we did in class, Ten Tips for a Good Digital Life, tips number 5 don't over do it, you should go out and meet new people face to face, hang out with your friends and talk face to face. Meet new people and ask them out face to face. You don't always have to hide behind your phone, strengthen your communication skills by using them as often as you can.