blog 5 "The Twisted Truth”

I think we all can agree that after watching, “The Twisted Truth” the overall message here, points to how social media is being use in a addictive faction, always taking our attention span. First I’m going to start off with Cal Newport, who broke down how these companies operate; giving the audience the upper hand of how these companies are tricking them, He says “We now know that many of these major social media companies hire individuals called ‘attention engineers’ who borrow principals from Las Vegas casino gambling methods, among other places to try to make these products as addictive as possible that is the desired use case of these products is that you use it in an addictive fashion because that maximizes the profit that can be extracted from your attention…” This shows more evidence to the overall message by Cal Newport explaining how companies operate, and points to the overall message here.

Next is Steven Kolter, who continues on why social media is being used as in an addictive way, by quoting a man and his research. “Robert Sapolshy, the foundational research on this calls it the ‘magic of maybe’ when you look at your phone and maybe there’s a text and maybe there’s not, something you don’t know is that when it shows up that high you get that’s dopamine it’s the magic maybe it’ll be there maybe it won’t when it shows up there's a four hundred percent spike in dopamine that is roughly the same amount of dopamine as your getting from cocaine slightly less than an extremely addictive drug like cocaine...” I thought that was pretty amazing because everyone has a moment when your texting someone you care about and your waiting for that person to text back, when they finally do text back you get this burst of energy of excitement going on. The way Steven Kolter explains this is so mind blowing because I never really thought of it that way.

Finally In the video, another man by the name Chamath Palihapitiya speaks on the topic and he says, " We’re literally at the point now, where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works..." I honestly believe what he is saying, because I found it surprising that we share the same idea, social media has became a big part of our lives and the way people abusive this is unreal Chamath really trying to tell us to calm down with using it; even Cal Newport said “To get your attention as much as possible throughout the week large portions of your day take a quick glance with everything you post, when someone likes your post you get a notification, it brings you back asking for more…” these companies are making social media very addicting to be on and this is our biggest downfall.

After reading these quotes from the video, I can infer that the overall message points to social media as being used in an addictive way by, taking away our attention span. I have my beliefs about social media, but after watching this video, I feel that some parts where over exaggerating a little. Steven Kolter comparing social media to cocaine is a little too far but I do see what he was trying to get at there. I one hundred percent do believe that social media is taking away our attention span by these small updates for social media platforms letting us know when someone likes your picture or anything because they know we're itching to see what happens next, I definitely do see the problem from watching this video.