"Social Media is Making You Stupid"

"Social Media is Making You Stupid"

http://time.com/9207/social-media-is-making-you-stupid/

• I chose this article about the negative effects of social media and how it is making people dumber rather than smarter as it is something that I do not completely agree with.
• The article mentions how social media 'can make you unproductive' and 'may eventually make us stupid by making us smarter first.'
• I do not agree with this article as I think that social media, despite its negative impacts, can actually help make a person smarter as it allows them to learn information that they would not learn if it was on another media platform that they were not as familiar with and/or don't consume.

'The greater problem seems to be the human tendency to copy others.'

• Although this is a thing that is common on social media, not all consumers copy others. When this does happen, it is common for fake news to spread which may be making people less clever as they are taking in information that isn't true. However in many cases, the information that is copied from others is true and providing the consumers take in that information they will become more knowledgable about it. 

'But did copying smarter social connections improve participants' ability to figure out the answers independently? In short, no. Given a fresh question, the copycats performed no better than when they first joined the social network.'

• I do not agree with this as, although not all social media consumers will take in the information that they learn from other people on social media, some people will and once they know that information, they will then be more informed and smarter when it comes to that subject.

Overall I think this article may be correct in some cases however not in all therefore I disagree with it. Many social media consumers  will learn and become more informed through information that they have obtained on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. I think that this article may be correct in some cases such as when fake news spreads across social media platforms and consumers copy it and start to believe it is true such as when their was a series of celebrity death hoaxes across Facebook that users of the social media platform started to believe. I think that, depending on the consumer, social media could have both  a positive and a negative impact and could make consumers smarter or 'stupid.'