Social Media Connections

Social media fuels the fire of feeling connected with others this contributes to the development of homophily. https://medium.com/@gutierrez2416/how-is-your-escape-f16f863b18bd

Most people that use social media crave that interaction, they feel exhilarated with the fact that they can connect to a group of people that they can relate to in a positive manner, people that encourages them and motivates them with everything they post online. Some people will even go to the extent of saying that they cannot live without their Facebook or Instagram accounts, they will say that social media interactions is what gives them motives everyday or that social media makes the day at work better or at least less boring. This will explain why some people are always active on social media and all they do on their free time is being glued to their phones, scrolling through posts and newsfeeds.

Isolation

Algorithms and cognitive biases can intensify homophily and contribute to isolation in many ways. For example, children are growing more and more isolated from human interaction, they are lacking the social skills, which without they will not be able to communicate with anyone once they get out in the real life to get a job or meet new friends. One example for children algorithms will be when they play games on their phones; often I have seen that when they play a game that they downloaded for free, the video game provider will partner with other providers and let them play ads while the kids play the game, depending on the game they are playing. The providers use homophily to make sure they provide the right ads according to the game played, this catches the kids attention and they will go and download that game that they saw on the ad. Having another game that they like to play makes these children spend more time on their phones and less time interacting with other people. “It turns out that the people who reported spending the most time on social media — more than two hours a day — had twice the odds of perceived social isolation than those who said they spent a half hour per day or less on those sites” (Hobson, 2017).

Be socially healthy!

There is so many things that can be done to prevent the potential risk of being isolated from world. For example, parents can limit their children to only playing a few hours on their phone and then take the phone away and give them other alternatives of things they can do that do not involve electronics, like going outside to play. Also, the parents can limit children of how many games they should have on their phones. I think that the less games they have on their phone available the less likely they are to have the need to grab their phone and start playing when they are bored. Eventually they will start getting tired of a game and they want to download another one, so parents should have the child delete that game and download one more to replace it.

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