Today is day 196 of the lockdown and business closures for those of us who live or work in Los Angeles County.
COVID-19 has affected everyone.
For the next few weeks we will hear from nine Pepperdine students about their use of social media since the onset of the pandemic and how COVID-19 has affected them. As a tease, I’m previewing some quotations from some of the posts to come.
“The most addictive modern drug is social media; I’m a drug addict.”
‘In the first week of August, my daily screen time average was 7 hours and 2 minutes, with my top 3 most-used apps being Snapchat, Instagram, and Messages. Trust me, I’m judging myself too.”
“As a young African American woman who has indeed faced many challenges due to the color of my skin, I feel as though it’s important to use my platforms to spread my beliefs.”
“Since COVID-19 first altered my plans and my life, I have learned to love social media once again. This is not to say that I still do not get frustrated with how demanding it can be or even that I spend less time on it. If anything, I probably spend more time on social media now than I ever have."
"The whole point of isolation is that you are no longer hanging out with people in person. No longer going to parties, bars, dinners at restaurants or any type of social gathering. Humans, I believe, are naturally social beings. We cravehuman interaction. Social media simply allows us the opportunity to engage with people virtually. It offers an online social life as a replacement for a physical one."
“I believe that my social media time has gone down because the pandemic has caused the media to become such a toxic place. Every morning in the beginning of COVID-19, I would wake up to a new post outlining how the U.S. had thousands of deaths in one night, or about more social injustice occurring all around the nation. I consciously took myself away from that negative exposure because I saw the repercussions in my own life: being constantly angry, impatient, and simply fed up with humanity.”
Jon Pfeiffer’s teaches media law at Pepperdine University in Malibu. CA. The class covers copyright and social media.
Contact Jon and his team today.
