Fourth World People's University: Social Media
Fourth World People's University
Theme: Social Media
June 1, 2019
To prepare for the spring Fourth World People’s University on Social Media, the Prep Team discussed deeply how to approach this broad subject. The positive aspects were to better understand how social media is useful; the negative aspects were how social media can be not only overused but expose people to trolls, disturbing video pop ups and many not asked for advertisements. We also discussed what people want to share, whether starting a business web page or meeting and connecting to friends and family through Facebook.
In order to get ready for the guests on June 1, we had two meetings. The first was to identify what we use social media for, the second to create a social media site that has each group’s preferences, reasons and care for safe use of social media. Prep Team members sought out guests who are deeply involved in the subject of social media, and found an author and technical consultant, and met with them to introduce FWPU and ATD’s approach to dialogue.
In the journey, we also noted a looming question: is social media a connector or isolator? The report below portrays the culminating evening’s dialogue which covered a lot of territory, both virtual territory and human reactions. Enjoy!
Our Guests
Alice Bonhomme-Biais is a software engineer passionate about using technology for social impact. Originally from France where she earned a PhD in computer science, she moved to New York in 2005 and joined Google as a software engineer and then team lead on Google Maps. In 2010, following a major earthquake in Haiti, she transitioned as a founding member of the Google Crisis Response team, working to use technology to help people in situations of natural disasters. In 2017, she left Google to best pursue the use of technology for social impact: she strongly believes that technology should be built for the 8 billion people on earth and by the 8 billion people on earth. She now coaches mission driven tech startups in the US and the world to help them build an engineering culture to foster innovation.
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist who writes the popular “Balancing Acts” column in the Boston Globe. Her work also has appeared in the New York Times and on National Public Radio, among other national publications. Her acclaimed first book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, examined the loss of home as a refuge. Her recent book, “Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention”, examines the questions, How can we harness the technological marvels of our age more wisely and turn data into knowledge and distraction into attention?
Introduction
This is the last People’s University of the year 2019, on social media. Before, we had one on youth and one on mental health. Guillaume saw this poster in the street which said, “Depression in youth has risen 75% due to social media.” Our three themes of the year are in this poster. This meets an assumption we often hear: because of the use of social media people can feel more anxious, more depressed. When you think about social media we are at risk of news, and maybe we are shocked. Another assumption is this image of a group of young people, each of them on their own phone. One question is: Is social media really social? Does social media create more isolation or more solidarity?
How can social media be truly useful for everybody, especially for the people the most excluded? One of the dimensions of poverty defined by the MAP research is social isolation. “Some people living in poverty do not have a social network of family or friends they can call on when they need support."
During this people’s university we are not here today to judge ourselves or others because we don’t want to feel guilt for going too much on social media, or, not enough. What we want to do is put our ideas and experiences together to use social media better. And, maybe to influence social media either by our practice and how we use them.
To help us Marie-Claire made a glossary and she went online to find a definition of the social media we made during our two preparation.
This FWPU was prepared in 2 sessions, each of 3 small groups met and (youth, activists, allies and volunteer corps members), made (or shared their experience with) social media pages.
Presentations/Summaries
Activists
Chose Facebook because it is popular and many know how to use it and collaborate with it—to contact friends, find people, find a support group, get information on many levels.
Choice of a name concern: initially “brainstorming” because this is what we’re doing together, but because “Big brother is watching”, we couldn’t use this name. We ended up with “Sophie Williams” and created a profile picture.
We built a useful Facebook page that:
shares how we feel, both positive and negative. In poverty you are lonely, because you lost your family, friends, and too often you need someone to smile for us.
shares resources to help others: information about soup kitchen and housing assistance, free fun things to do, or tutorials.
shares pictures that make us feel good (e.g. a sunset).
Facebook is a supportive space because we can stay in touch and when someone is unhappy or lonely, you read their post and reply.
We also need to be cautious:
what websites, or personal information we want to share to stay safe and keep the page safe,
some posts irritate for example when people passed away, young teenagers being bullied, sometimes incites bad responses. It’s easy for posts to be misinterpreted,
How people respond to posts was important, are they sincere, or looking for attention, are they trolls or real people? Be able to post “Troll Leave Me Alone!”
Allies
Even though some participants of this group use Facebook, they don’t like social media and didn’t want to create one. Instead they prepared a PowerPoint, listing the positive and the negative things.
Positive: produce information at a low cost; put information that is not main stream; a good way to mobilize, share your commitments, and the commitments of others to provide change; find people you lost contact with but we don’t use the social media to sustain that contact, we use other means.
Negative: social media is full of bad or inaccurate information, so you need to verify; our data is collected and used and we have a lack of understanding of how it is used; privacy is a huge concern; social media is shaping the way we process information, we need information, it shortens our attention span, it is time consuming, and don’t realize that we have passed so many hours; it influences our relationships, whether we use social media or not, other people are talking about things that are happening and you don’t know what it is about; there’s a lot of narcissism going around and includes voyeurism, and that you don’t need to create intimacy in a relationship anymore, you are on the computer and you have that thing in your relationship; there is a generation gap, social media makes that gap bigger.
Youth
We chose Instagram because Facebook is kind of getting old, and more young people are going to be on Instagram and we are looking for young people to join us as a youth group. It’ is smarter way to get young people into this conversation.
Instagram is nice because it’s safe and provides a lot of options to block, mute, delete and report anything.
In the page title we said ATD Fourth World, to show we are a company, and the youth to show we are a youth club, it was important that we put the youth so people would know it’s for young people.
For the bio: we said Fighting Poverty With Young People in capital letters, it shows the main point. To get people to join us we put the peace sign emoji, which is more friendly and not as business’ish. The young social activists with the blue heart is to say who we are and what we are doing. Blue is the color of ATD Fourth World and the heart is that we are a caring community.
What people are invited to post? We posted the selfie of the three of us to show who we are and the working environment. This page we want it to be kind of mixed, not all business, personal things, selfie of us working, in workshops, having fun, not just all business.
We want people in the group to write how they feel.
About using hashtags, we tried #ATDFourthWorld, to see other groups who were into social activism.
Guests’ Reactions
Alice: A lot of things I heard I feel the exact same thing. Like for the personal, what do you post, what do you not post. The fear of isolation, a lot of people are posting things and wondering should I post more or less. The trolls, in the tech world that’s a major thing people are working on how do you connect. And in the first presentation, the questions about whether you can create an account that is not a real person. We had big discussion when I was at Google; internally there was big, big debates, there was pros and cons. And when you think about the trolls, the trolls are not real people, or seeing real people, how would you regulate that? How do you verify that? Facebook cannot go in and verify every single person. Even if you verify, it’s weird because of privacy, you know? So this is a very complicated question. How do you give people freedom to create the account they want, and, to represent themselves?
I know for example in 2011 in Egypt, there was a revolution; the riots were started with a person who created a Facebook account. No one knew who the person was, but it started a movement. In response to a journalist who was killed, I think, started a whole revolution in Egypt just one Facebook account that was not actually a real person. The topic is something that really resonates, there are a lot of people working, big tams, Twitter, Facebook and Google working on how to detect trolls? This is a problem that is not solved yet.
Maggie: I emphasize that it was really interesting how much information packed in a really short time, in the presentation. I’ll start with a couple questions that jumped out at me with each presentation. The first one is, what’s missing when our eyes, our hearts and even our souls and our minds are focused on the technology. Because it’s so alluring, so attention getting, so sparkly, colorful and speedy that I think it’s important to keep our eyes on what we’re not seeing. It sucks up so much of our life now; just a tiny example, those kiosks we see on the streets in New York City that pronounce this trivia at you, you can have all this wifi. I find that as I walk down Columbus Avenue near my house, I look at those things rather than the people. That’s not bad; that’s not good. But that’s why I am wondering what I am missing when my eyes are grabbed by these things?
Part of the second question of what we are missing, I wonder about where’s room for the messiness because it was really interesting to hear about the emotion; there was a blue heart and the smiles; there’s feelings there and they are presented and we have to engage in them in a very certain way. (emoji’s). In boxes, multiple choice, so there’s this messiness this indeterminate part that is being human is getting stuck in boxes. Again, that’s not wrong, we’ve stuck our humanity into a box of a book, or into a storyteller in Ancient Greece. But, this is so powerful, are we kind of shaving away at our messiness? It’s a question that comes up and I think about it a lot. I thought it was really interesting, you were talking about do you feel compelled to respond about sadness, perhaps wondering where it will go? Your empathy is extending or connecting with that person, and then, at the same time, you can also be raising the questions, where will it go? Do they understand me? How? It’s sort of a skill and work when we have of course face to face. It’s really difficult especially for young people to wonder what those skills are; it’s all new territory. Where is the human devotion? 75% of reTweets and postings on Reddit and I think are posted or retweeted without being read, so the headline is the only thing that gets read before it gets shared, pushed on and that changes things because that’s how it allows you to just skim.
Where are the boundaries? It’s part of our social life, the phone is on the table, the phone is part of when you are with people. It affects you because we are in this world where people are presenting themselves and wondering, gee I didn’t get to go on that wonderful vacation and I feel bad. One of the difficulties is feeling left out. Sort of missing out for young people who haven’t really formed their judgement and things like that. So where are the boundaries? Boundaries are seen in retro old-fashioned thing, home and work? We do this everywhere, gender roles, wife household, marriage, who’s doing what? Boundaries are necessarily taken down; boundaries are an important part of being human. The idea that a kid has a bedtime, or, the weekend is the weekend. Or, that you can have a boundary for what you do where, and when. I think we are being pressured in this world, so I think that is the behind the scenes idea (effect) here. And, the last thing is that it washes over us, kind of like a snobby and necessitates questions that maybe we are not asking each other, or, asking ourselves, because we are all so busy with it.
I thought it was interesting when (the youth spoke about Instagram) She said it was safe! That was so poignant to me. And important that she was thinking about that. I have daughters and that this is safe first of all and second that this was a place where she was with friends. It’s great that there is a safe place, but maybe this is not safe enough.
What you all did is a great job at thinking about what does this symbolize? How do I respond or not? Where is this going? I think it’s really important, we have to keep up. We can Tweet to start a revolution, but the difficult thing is setting up a democracy. That naturally didn’t work out so well. It’s so important that the two halves, the two hands work together—the technology and the humanity.
Alice: I agree. I think the page of offline and online the links between you online presence and yourself. You need that bridge between all the discussions you have online, and everything that happens online? How does that link to real life? I think that’s very important. You can see some people being super active online and you wonder what they are doing in real life. They can say all these things online, or even people say on line this is unacceptable, and be very loud, but are they going to be in the streets, do something, say something?
Maggie: And I found when you say, like “Troll leave me alone,” I found that very courageous.
Alice: To take a stand on the internet is not easy.
Dialogue
Regulating the Internet
Participant: Are there any regulations, in terms of any of the social platforms? Because regardless of whether you put private on not private, is there any government body that’s still going to see the information, regardless of whether you put private or non-private. Is there any government regulatory, body to storm that matrix?
Alice: That is a good question, and a very hard one. There are lots of people working on that. Right now, if you publish something on Facebook, it’s only Facebook that can have access to it. It’s the same on Google, you can have a gmail account and Google has access to that, often internally. It’s not like everyone at Facebook, or everyone at Google can actually access your data. Often the company organizes so some people might access your data just to do maintenance, they must get approval and sign something, that they are not allowed to do anything with the data. Google will push back just from a human rights point of view. They sometimes, can, if it’s like a terrorist reason, or something like that they might be able to have access to that. In Europe though there are way more laws to protect that. Often large companies will follow the European law. Recently there was a law that was passed; it is called GDPR, that means, that anyone, any website not just social media, when you connect a data value, they need to have your approval. So even if you go shopping, they need to let you know they are going to store that information. And they need to provide a way for you to say I don’t want you to store my information. However, how are you going to verify that you are really gone? If the company does not do that, you can sue them. There are a lot of discussion about regulation. You have groups around digital rights.
Facilitator: A group of parents who had their children in foster care or used to have children in foster care feel they don’t have privacy. They know that people who work in the child agencies spy on them on Facebook. I just wanted to share that because, we were talking about dangers, and for me that can have a very serious impact and lead to decisions that can be made for you.
Participant: That’s the scenario of big brother is watching you. They can get what happened twenty years ago and get you for that, something that happened twenty years ago, you did time, or something like that and it will come back to haunt you at a later time.
Alice: You should always be careful of what you do. It’s a thing, to not click on anything you don’t know what it is, or you receive an email that’s from someone you don’t know. Or you feel it has an attachment you don’t know.
Participant: And when the government tries to know where you are they can do that when the phone is on; but if you remove the battery they can’t do that?
Alice: When it’s off they can’t see.
Real time versus online time
Participant: the majority of us are on social media 15 to 20 times a day. Do you feel that people have that separate time for life as humans? I feel like I am 50-50 into it. As I am getting older as a parent, I feel like we are going to have this time together time which is so important, more important.
Maggie: It’s also hard to know; it’s not so black and white anymore, because a lot of families will like watch a movie, and the parents and kids are not allowed to talk while watching the movie.
Participant: It’s either Saturday or Sunday we have no electronics. I noticed that on Thursday we were all on our phones. I said, No! We are going to play a game together, go to the park, and we had the best two hours ever. It’s getting annoying for me…
Maggie: I wrote a story for the Boston Globe about a decade ago for young people that were not going to have a part of this; in other words, I called them tech refusnicks. You can also create routines and rituals, like you said, “it’s off, after 7 pm.” After a while, as a parent, realized at dinner time, it wasn’t just about food, it was about conversation.
Participant: Before we moved, I didn’t use Facebook, but today it is the way I found to take message with my friends. It’s particularly hard to find my place between too much and not too much.
Communicating safely and happily online
Maggie: Something about bullying, think about our own responsibility for civility, not only whether it’s the ‘bot’ or the troll. The scientists have people tinker with the concept “to pause before sharing”, some college students found that to pause before reacting to something on Twitter was annoying, but they also found that they were less reactive; it was helpful. People reactions when you say something mean, or, didn’t mean to be mean, when they did it in conversation, versus on Twitter, 40% said when they did it in person, their response was to apologize. On Twitter, the same 40% said their response was just to delete the comment, deleting it as if they hadn’t done anything wrong rather than facing up to what they had done to someone.
Participant: Twitter is basically our thoughts, all eyes looking at that post!
Participant: Facebook has a feature to be private, to not allow trolls to access your page. I have six children, many nieces and grandchildren. I love to post pictures, we go everywhere, to the beach. My daughters were at the beach, they were teenagers, so they were old enough to have Facebook. My older daughter told me that you have your profile, and anybody can see it. You have to actually close it and make it for friends only. If they are not listed as friends, they cannot see it.
Alice: I think that’s very important. A lot of people don’t realize they are posting something that is public. When you post you can choose whether something is public or just for your friends. And also being aware, where you have friend requests, when people say, I want to be your friend, especially among young people it’s all about the number of followers. So making sure that you know the person. Otherwise, people say, yes, yes, yes, I have 500 followers. This is how trolls work. I think Instagram is public, when you put it on Instagram, everyone can see it; it’s different than Facebook.
Participant: In Instagram, there was a choice to make it private, similar to Facebook, in the sense that people would have to ask to be part of the group--public or private, you have to be invited, or as they say, to ask, then you get permission.
Alice: And someone said (in the presentation), the risk of being misunderstood, and that reflects on your reputation. I am surprising myself to say that, I wasn’t a big fan of the emoji thing. Most of the time, I hate when people use too much emoji. But I started to use them more because when you write something to be sure people get the emotion. Particularly when you have friends from different cultures, sometimes I make jokes that people might get offended. Sometimes, using the emoji’s sometimes help specify.
Participant: When we started the meeting, I was concerned with all the big emojis used for the ice breaker. I hate emojis. Feelings have so many nuances, that just putting a smile or a sad face, and then we see the movies now the actors have the face of an emoji. When you see them, they are bad actors. They just express those stupid emojis that are not expressing the whole human spectrum.
Participant: I like emojis, because I won’t use profanity on social media. They have an emoji which has the black thing across the face. That is so useful! And they get it, you don’t have to use nasty words or go into the profanity thing. You just press that emoji and they get the picture!
Facilitator: I think it’s very difficult to express your feelings. People like inspirational quotes because they express what we feel, and we relate to it. We can express yourself with nuance--call your friend, or, see your friend. Tweets must be short, so how can you express yourself with nuance?
Participant: Sometimes on Sunday I catch up on Facebook and see what’s going on and feel some pressure to respond. If someone posted ten times during the week, and seeing all their moods, it feels like you are reading their journal. I don’t know which one to reply to. Without the risk of ‘you didn’t ‘like’ my post,’ I don’t want to feel guilty, I try to choose which ones to like; but can’t always put, like. or example, sending my deepest sympathies for you and your family, close friends, you would find different words to express it, to find a balance and communicate.
Alice: I think if you we all use emojis and all that, maybe one day we will lose the capacity with words.
Maggie: They’ve done studies about language use, simple writing letters is an example of sophistication of vocabulary. It’s the balance as you say, …I’m not 22 but still have trouble keeping the relationship of being human; it’s that practice.
Does Social Media take over our lives?
Participant: When you worked at Google, were there rules not to be overwhelmed by all the information, and relations with coworkers who were always working on computers?
Alice: In the tech company, you can have a room where it’s dead silence and everyone at computers and no one talks to each other, but they are actually talking to each other sending messages. There are some apps that have been developed to help you stay focused. For example, I have to do my homework for the next thirty minutes, and if I am on the computer, if you do something like go to Facebook it’s not going to open. As human beings we are not that good at doing everything at the same time as we think we are. The reality is sometimes we do one thing for even fifteen minutes is way more efficient than trying to do ten things in fifteen minutes.
Participant: I discovered a word that was on social media, it was FOMO, or, Fear Of Missing Out. because I am from France and we don’t use this word, it’s very American for me. So if we are reaching out for example, say to a friend let’s meet tonight. And the friend writes, I am sorry I can’t but FOMO. It means I am busy but it says, you guys are having fun, and I will be missing out because I won’t come.
Participant: I’m totally addicted to Facebook. For example, yesterday we met two new people, and at the end of dinner I entered them into Facebook, and then we started talking and we discovered we had five other friends in common. And also, how do you know that person? Anyway, I am not saying it’s good or bad; I am saying it’s so much a part of my life.
Facilitator: It’s also a fact that sometimes before meeting somebody for the first time, we google them.
Alice: Often when you look for a job, the first thing they are going to do is look for your name on social media. So that is the part that is always important to make it real, even if you posted on Facebook, and you think I only posted for friends, only share something that it’s not the end of the world if it’s seen by the public. The risk of something getting out there is pretty high. For me when I post something for my friends to see, also if it’s out there, I would not regret it or feel embarrassed.
Participant: Even if you are tech savvy it’s complicated. My rule is, I will only share your post if I am going to share with the whole 8 million because it’s too difficult to filter--this is for my close friends, the close family, old friends, new friends, work friends.
Alice: That’s something I would be more mindful of. How do you use social media for support but still have in the back of your mind you don’t want to share everything?
Finding the humanness in online connections
Maggie: Take a step back and imagine you are an alien that landed on this planet, and imagine looking at all these things, what would you see, and, one of the things you would see is, what is the vocabulary we use? Like, followers? What does that really say? What is a friend, how it has changed! The idea that we are using these templates and boxes to try to push humanity into something. There’s a study that shows that people that personalize their news feed are more likely to re-share, and not see news as fake.
And, it’s also interesting just to think about the question of boundaries. I call it a cognitive prosthetic. When people ‘Google’, people are less ready to wrestle with or solve complex problems. That has a place in life. But the way it’s changing us is really invisible. We need to have these discussions so that we stay aware. How do we all feel when we are in this or that state?
Participant: One thing is for your post, and the other is who will repost or not ? Even if you say, it’s only my friends. And then, your friends of friends, and it goes. For me, I’m not very keen on these things. The first picture of my daughter on social media, I didn’t put it there, someone posted it with very good intentions. So we have very little control. And the other thing, when you are applying for a job, they will look at your social media and for me what is scary is that they will make an opinion. You have no control over that, whether you decide to not have social media.
The second thing that is really, really important, and maybe because I have a teenager, is how do you live with these things when you are an adult and you have experiences in life? Everything that is happening before social media, has happened before. I don’t know if you have ever been in a stadium where there is a mob mentality? Social media for teenagers has some of this. You don’t have the freedom to think differently because you decided to be in this Instagram group with your friends. I am an adult, I can think and choose. For young people, it’s these conversations, someplace where (real) connections don’t exist!
Participant: It’s more about the people I communicate with and I am actually going to make my Facebook group smaller. At this time in my life I feel there’s no need to actually have you there if we’re not going to communicate. Like an in box on how you doing? Actually asking, on my page I am starting to weed out those people. Probably by the end of the year my Facebook people will only be the people I actually truly communicate with.
Social Media and Mental Health
Participant: For Mental Health and social media, I don’t know if the 75% is accurate of not, but that’s sometimes what we fear, that because of social media there’s more depression.
Maggie: It’s not just that data. There is a lot of data linking the amount of time kids spend online to link also with whether they are more passive or active. It’s sort of, watching other people’s lives it leads to lower well-being.
Participant: I feel like that statement is 50-50. Because it goes into reaction on what you post. Post every single day, you are acting insane. If you post every 15, 20 minutes and you get like, maybe two likes, then you say something radical, or something they are not supposed to say and they get responses. That is because of the reaction people. The reaction time you get. If you don’t get enough reaction in time, you feel like your world is based on Facebook, Instagram, or whatever.
Participant: I feel like on social media you try and portray the best version of yourself. And those people on Instagram will be constantly comparing.
Participant: For instance, there is a topic and so many people have a different opinion. And whether you agree or not it’s overwhelming to be able to answer back. You feel a bit like, well, it’s not they are bullying you, they are arguing something you don’t agree at all, you are speechless, you are not going to put your own opinion on it because it’s so overwhelming. And here we are talking about numbers, because on Facebook so many people have a different opinion on one topic that even if you think very strongly they are wrong, it is very hard to answer back. I think it could be kind of depressing too. To not be able to answer back to all those opinions that are, totally crazy sometimes!
Participant: You have the power to unfollow people. For example, there was the presidential election and I was really not happy with someone on my Facebook posting stuff that I was not agreeing with so I deleted the person, I did not want to see those posts anymore.
Maggie: It’s also interesting because it changes the numbers of people coming at you. It’s numerical sense online, that whatever it is you are gaining reaction, that’s numerical. So for a young person whose identity is in development, it’s almost hard not to think, How I will be responded to in these really categorical ways. I think it lends itself to fear, you know, of not doing the right thing. Fear of expressing yourselves is very categorical and numerical.
Alice: Sometimes Facebook gives the illusion that you can have thousands of friends, and stay in touch with everyone and, then, for me that makes me feel bad when I didn’t see someone for a long time, and feel bad that I didn’t take the time to see that person. It gives me the illusion that I can stay in touch with every single person that I meet in the world. And the reality is just not that possible. And in the real life, you might stay in touch with the people that life nearby or randomly run into someone at the store and you have a conversation. I think online it sort of forces you to stay in touch. I mean that’s stressful!
Participant: People online reach out that way because they know from those thousand people somebody might answer them. I saw a post over the holidays of a person feeling suicidal. I wonder if this statement that depression is rising is because you can see the evidence where many times if you weren’t on Facebook, you wouldn’t know. Because people hide their feelings maybe it’s safe for people to post those feelings on the phone instead of going to a person? I feel the safety thing has two sides. Communicating in this sense (through Facebook) might be easier than a more intimate conversation.
Participant: Concerning that people get impressed with a lot of social media and the internet, I think people still feel lonely. I feel that people are afraid to face their loneliness and to be by themselves. Social media does not solve the problem of loneliness and people are afraid to be by themselves.
Participant: I don’t buy this depression. I think people are bored, being in a consumer society, we don’t hunt, we don’t fish, we just lay back, and we get bored! We’re all just consumers. And this is just another thing to consume. Technology is just the latest addition; it’s still sell, sell, sell, consume, consume, consume and that’s going to make anybody bored, and depressed. Depression, I don’t know; depression is a serious thing.
Conclusion by our guests
Alice: I think what I learned from this discussion is that a lot of these issues are universal, for instance, when I talk with my friends or people in the tech world or people here, we actually all face the same issues with social media. It’s overwhelming, we’re not sure when we share something with whom should we share. We all say we should use the best of it but we don’t use less of it; it’s true there are a lot of things that are unequal, but there is a struggle for everyone on social media the same way. One of the thing that stuck me was that when we talk about all these connections, I am not going to go home and delete my account, but I can delete it on my phone so I only use it on my computer! The connections on Facebook are very real. Online or offline, you say that we want real connections, do I need to be in touch with all of these people on Facebook? Maybe no, maybe I want to keep a small group that is more like real life. How do I make my Facebook like real life and not imaginary?
Maggie: The thought everyone is putting into this is really important because it’s a crossroads moment. In the history of inventions, the inventors have always dominated the conversation at the beginning. When they invented the telephone, people thought it was going to be a business device. They were shocked when people were having social conversations, and yet the devices, the bicycles, telephone, computers, etc. have all been adapted according to our choices.
We are at the crossroads of the choices we make, companies are starting to listen to people and be responsible and we have to be, too! There are two sides to us; there’s the push button, instant gratification, I want that potato chip etc., that’s part of humanity, the primitive mind. The new mind starts with uneasy-ness, it starts with uncertainty. If you are uncertain about life, it shows you are starting to think! We should take joy in the fact that we are uncomfortable, because that’s what humans are…Keep the big goals in mind like what I want for my family, what do I want for my kids, what do I want for the weekend? And, keep awake as we push these buttons, shovel this stuff out, our good thoughts and our bad thoughts.
Conclusion: For the last People's University of the year, FWPU Prep Team thanked everybody for their participation with a Certificate of Participation for the dialogues on the following themes: mental health, youth, and social media.