From Social to Parasocial Media: Rethinking Youth Online Safety
Think about the last time you were online. Did you use the platform to be social, or just to consume videos from people you have never met? In a recent essay in Social Media + Society, danah boyd discusses this trend, and asserts that twenty years in, the platforms we still call social media have […...
AISummary
This article explains how social media platforms have shifted from places where kids create and interact with friends to places where they mainly watch content from strangers curated by algorithms. Understanding this change is important for parents because it affects what their children are exposed to and how algorithms influence what they see online.
Think about the last time you were online. Did you use the platform to be social, or just to consume videos from people you have never met? In a recent essay in Social Media + Society , danah boyd discusses this trend, and asserts that twenty years in, the platforms we still call social media have quietly become something else. Users are far more likely to scroll than post, and most of what they consume is produced by creators and curated by algorithms. boyd argues that we should stop calling th...