What Is The Internet Doing To Us?
By: Paige Verrillo
Tags: Internet, Instagram, Communication, Fake News

What is the internet doing to us? Some say it ruins lives, and others say it is great for connecting. I think the impact that the internet has on us depends on how the consumer uses it. Take me, for example. I have been a member of the Instagram community since I was 12 or 13 years old. The majority of my friends were obsessed with being on this app, and I followed suit. We would all take pictures of literally anything and post it to our profiles. You may be thinking, “What about the aesthetic?” Well, people used Instagram way differently back then. It is important to note that Instagram was created in 2010, only 10 years ago. I would say that from 2010–2013, Instagram was very casual. People would post whatever they wanted with no edits, no captions, no context, and it was seen as very normal. But alas, in 2015, Instagram started to get different. People were posting more selfies, adding a bit more cleavage to their photos, and using filters that no one had ever used before. My friends would show me before and after pictures, showing off their editing skills, and I found it fascinating. I was 15 years old when I started to edit my photos to make myself look skinnier. This evidently led to a horrible eating disorder, where I had to be hospitalized and sent to therapy for many years. My parents banned me from Instagram for a year, and they really did not want me going on it ever again as they think it is the most toxic platform for girls especially. I experienced first hand how dangerous and traumatizing social media can be, but today, I use what I learned to my advantage, and I feel like Instagram is now an expressive platform for me.

In the The Rabbit Hole” podcast, they focused on a boy named Caleb who had mental health issues just like me. The difference with Caleb and I is that he used the internet because he was depressed, and I became depressed because of the internet. Caleb got attached to Youtube because it helped him escape the world he was living in, whereas I had to reevaluate how I was using different platforms because of the issues it was causing me in my life. So, to go back to the question, “What is the internet doing to us?” Well, it depends what you want to get out of it all. Caleb wanted to find an escape from reality, and eventually, he found people on Youtube that influenced him to get a job, get out of his bad state of depression, and become passionate about politics. I, on the other hand, wanted to make myself look different and “better,” so I posted pictures that were fake and edited. Obviously this was not the right thing for myself, so I took a step back and looked deeply at my morals. In today’s world, Instagram influencers post pictures that are so edited they hardly look like themselves. I look at these pictures and feel nothing. I know that people edit their photos because they want their followers to think they have no flaws, but realistically, I know these people do not look like that in person. It makes me feel better that I took control of what the internet was doing to me and I used it to be better and to be more confident. My story and Caleb’s story both present evidence that the internet can be toxic, but if you change your perspective like I did, the internet does not have to be this evil thing. Like I said, it depends on the consumer, but if you are a consumer like Caleb and get addicted to platforms like Youtube, you need serious help.

I am actually very interested in conspiracy theories. I remember when I was younger I would sit on Youtube for hours watching Shane Dawson’s conspiracy theory videos. After watching these videos, I would do more research just to see how many other people believed in the same theories. Basically all of the conspiracy theories that I have heard from Shane Dawson are still in my head. They were so memorable because some of them were just so absurd. I think the reason conspiracy theories get spread around so quick is because people love to hear things that are out of the ordinary. There are conspiracy theories made up every single day by random people online. I believe we do not live in a “post-truth era” because of the lies spread within the conspiracy theories, and also lies constantly spread online. Fake news is what makes people have little trust with our social, economic, and political institutions. In the past, people did not get their daily or political news from Twitter, they got it from news stations on the radio and television. There was little room for fake news because the source of the news being shared came from a limited number of people. There is no stopping people from posting fake news on Twitter, that is just the world we have to live in. Twitter and Facebook began to mark tweets as fake news, or inaccurate, during election season, and I think they will continue to do this with posts that many people see. I do not see us living in a “post-truth” era ever again because people love to make up stories and news spreads within seconds nowadays.