When it comes to Facebook, I lean more towards the “burn it all down” camp. Based on reactions to the Facebook Papers, I’m not alone. Several scandals have broken out in the past year regarding Facebook and every time, I shake my head thinking that maybe we would be better off without it. However, I’m coming to realize that perspective reflects my Western privilege. I live in a country where…
If you have read my blog once or twice, you may know social media, particularly Twitter, is a favored scapegoat of mine. I often worry that, despite my age, I come off as an old man yelling at kids on my front lawn. Hopefully I am yelling some salient points. A few months ago, I was halfway through my usual rant about social media with a friend who works on…
We think of social media as a level playing field. A place where everyone’s voice matters. But when you look below the surface, social media has become a false democracy. You may remember this news story from 2015: “Red Starbucks Cup Brews Controversy on Social Media.” If you don’t remember this news story, congratulations. You must’ve had a very peaceful November. You couldn’t go on Twitter that month without seeing…
I’m going to have to do my best to not rant during this post. There’s been a running joke on The Crunch that I mention Cal Newport too much. It’s a fair assessment. I like him because he writes books with concrete and actionable steps to take against problems facing the information age. There’s no need to list all the problems and it’s impossible to list all their sources. But…
I received an interesting reply from a reader yesterday about my post on phone addiction. She mentioned she was worried adopting the tool mindset would make her hard to reach. “One thing I really struggle with is how as a college student we are expected to text back really quickly and use our phones to make plans with people…I would love to be able to keep my phone in a…
A few months ago, I wrote an article for the Life Teen blog called “Curbing a Social Media Addiction.” Where I listed seven steps for teenagers to handle social media addiction or just a phone addiction in general. I didn’t mention this in the article, but I based it off the 12 Steps in Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step in AA is to admit that you have a problem. More…
