I’m working on a english discussion question and need support to help me study.

Please answer ONE of the discussion topics about Alice Walton’s “6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health”.

After reading the article, please post your response by Friday at 3pm (4/23) (week 3) and respond to one classmate by Saturday, at 3pm (4/24).

Just pick one (do not do all of them – please just write #1 or #2 or #3 – do not write the question, just the answer):

1) What is the reason why we cannot stop using social media even though it is spoiling our life and get hurt from comparing and bad comments? Explain a little.

2) The writer insists that it is stressful when someone’s life has been compared with ours, we may feel inferior. But if we think of it positively, what can we gain from it? Explain a little.

3) Nowadays, there are more and more teenagers who are addicted to social media and that is causing a lot of health issues. Do you have any suggestions to help them? List at least two and explain how your suggestions would help them.

The classmate need to be responded:

1)

I think there’s a couple of reasons why we cannot stop using social media. The first one is indicated in the article: we feel anxiety when we stop using them. I think the reason for this is that once we stop using social networks, we will feel like we are separated from the society. Nowadays, people like using social media to share their daily lives. They like interacting with people by commenting on other’s posts. That’s how friendship maintained. Once you stop commenting on other’s posts and messaging others on social media, you will like not just disappearing on social media, but in the society also. Apart from this, we can discover a myriad of information on the social media, including friends’ status and even the big event which is happening in the city. You cannot stop browsing the social media because that’s how you know you know your friend and things around you. Once you stop scrolling the social media even if it’s only for a while, you are withdrawn from the society, which makes you hard to reassimilate into society again.

The second reason for this is that social media uses AI to attract you to stay, which makes you have a propensity not to leave. I watched a movie named “Social Dilemma” before. That movie shows how social media uses big data to attract your attention. It indicates that social media is monitoring everyone’s behavior on the social media. Once the AI collects enough data from the user, it will analyze the user, including what they like and their mood. With those analyses, social media will let the user see what they want. Finally, people won’t leave because they discover some interesting things that attract them. They will not stop scrolling until there’s nothing to attract them. Because of this, I think this is another reason why people cannot stop using social media.

Anson