Pocket Full of Distractions (by Montrell Wiley)

The digital world can be tiring. Some people treat social media like a part-time job by making sure that their posts and their profile content follows the status quo. There are roles that people play online that they have to fill in for everyday to satisfy their followers and themselves included. This can cause major distractions for us that veer us away from our daily lives at work, school, or during social interactions. Not only does social media distract our minds from our responsibilities, it also diverts our attention away from things that effect society as a whole, such as political debates, elections, or decisions. James Williams says that undermining the spotlight of attention frustrates our political lives in several ways. One is by distracting us away from political information and toward some nonpolitical type of information. (James Williams, p.51) How likely are you to spend long periods of time reading up on politics opposed to the eye-popping posts that we see everyday about absolute nonsense (well, usually nonsense)?

One may look at someone's online profile and conclude that none of that stuff matters because in reality that person is something completely different. Does that make their content anything less than real? Is it okay for someone to live a lie online? The validity of someone's profile can be a uncertain if you do not know them personally. The internet gives you for the most part anonymity to others online, which I believe to be a popular benefit among people. Something that goes along the same lines as anonymity would be the lack of accountability that comes with being online. There is no face to face interaction so one's sense of sympathy erodes, and sometimes you become this evil troll creature that attacks any and everyone online, thinking that there would be no consequences.