Video making

A is on his phone, looking at Twitter and Instagram

B is A’s friend and recently doing social media addiction research.

B comes inside this room

B: Hey A, how’s your day!

A: Great, Look I just found another interesting app called Instagram!

B: Not again! You’re always on your phone!

A: I just downloaded it 3 days ago, it’s fun, you should try it.

B: Did you know

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that 60% of adolescent’s sleeping patterns are affected by the use of their phones an hour before bed. This can lead to sleep deprivation. The use of social media keeps our brain highly active and therefore it takes longer to get into a deep sleep, which means we don’t get enough sleep for our brains to properly function. Sleep deprivation is one of the key factors to developing depression and can lead to an overall in the quality of an someone’s life.

A: So, if I stop playing on my phone before I sleep then I will be fine? Are there any other negative effects of using social media?

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B: There are so many more negative effects that social media has on us. Adults spend around 32% of their total work time on social media, and this causes a major reduction in the overall productivity, studies show that it reduces by 13%. A decline in productivity rates can directly affect the profitability of an organisation. Heavy use of social media can also have a negative impact on an individual’s mental health. Heavy users of social media have a 13%-66% higher chance of developing depression. This is a due to low self-esteem and isolation from heavy use of social media, as you are constantly looking and comparing your life to everyone else’s. It also leads to less physical activity and less opportunity to develop real authentic relationships. Do you find that you prefer to communicate with people over social media instead of face to face?

A: Yes I do!

B: The other one of the major risks of using social media is exposure to online abuse from “bullies” or “trolls”. Around one in 13 people in Australian have experienced some kind of online abuse, such as threats of death, rape, sexual assault, and stalking. Race-based abusive language is also common. A portion of these people who were exposed to online abuse had to seek help from a doctor or psychologist which negatively impacts work productivity. As a result, the loss of productivity has estimated to cost the Australian economy as much as $3.7 billion dollars in 2019. By looking at the annual Digital Growth statistics in Australia, usage of social media is exponentially growing. Whilst the average time Australians spend on the internet has decreased by around 30 minutes, the time spent on social media is almost unchanged. Particularly, Instagram had a 2.1% increase in active users. However, twitter and snapchat saw a 2.3% and 14% decrease respectively. This indicates a change in the social media platform, but overall, active social media users increased by 5.9% or by 1 million users from 2018 to 2019. This indicates that addiction to social media is an ongoing problem and still requires a creative solution.

A: So how can we use social media and avoid these consequences at the same time?

B: With globalisation taking place, social media is indeed both vital and beneficial to society as it achieves in time communication worldwide. However, social media can be used to a degree where consequences faced are minimal. I am currently working on a project called ‘Urs Matter’. This is a mobile app developed to help manage an individual’s social media usage so that it is not over-used.

The main interface has two buttons showing the usage time of social media app’s and then the maximum usage time that the ‘Urs Matter’ app allows. The users preset the maximum usage time of their social media apps and once the usage time has been reached, users will not be able to access any of their social media apps.

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When the study and work mode is on, users are deemed to be at work or studying and they cannot access any social media apps on the phone. However, to turn the function off and access their social media, users must complete a complex Sudoku. Otherwise, the users have to wait until their preset time is finished.

When leisure mode is on, you cannot access any of your social media apps at all. This mode is to avoid unnecessary use of the apps and to prevent you from being distracted by your phone.

Section for customer service: The app also provides a consulting hotline for social media addiction through the forum of a live online chat with a customer service agent.

Section for Urs Matter forum: Users can share their successful methods to overcome social media addiction on the public forum. This forum also promotes communication amongst people who are in similar situations and makes people feel apart of a community.

Section for achievement: This section records the date the user started using the app and shows how successful they have been in reducing their social media usage against all the other users in an app ranking list. The ranking gives users to have an incentive to achieve their goals.

A: To me this seems like an unrealistic app that I wouldn’t use. This app seems like it is more aimed at people who are actually willing to reduce their social media time. For someone like me who enjoys being on social media I probably wouldn’t download this app.

B: Well this leads me to my second part of the project, called “social media abandon “ training camp. As most people are afraid of being alone, they start to be addicted to the social media network. This opportunity brings together people from around the globe who are addicted to social media. This camp involves the people giving up all their digital belongings and then we will distribute everyone a cell phone without any social media apps except for text message and calling. The participants are then encouraged to make friends face to face through various sorts of events, such as board games, Karaoke, hiking etc. The aim of raising these events is to promote the importance of interacting with people face to face instead of behind a screen. Also, there will be seminars hosted by experienced staff to teach successful methods on how they can overcome their social media addictions. This camp’s overall aim is to make people more aware that being away from social media can be interesting and fun and how it allows them to make more new friends, open their minds much like the older generation in society.

A: The camp sounds so much fun and much more appealing for me. Let me know when the camp starts so I can sign up!

Time spent at work

Social media Work 32 68