Is this ethical?

       What is the purpose of losing ourselves in our phones? Are we avoiding reality on purpose or is the content we search for truly more important that real life experience? Which content is worth missing out on these experiences? This is what I want to explore in today’s blog post.

       People would like to think that the content they scroll through on a day to day basis is worth their time, heck I’m guilty of this. I believe that by watching hours of YouTube and liking a million different cute dog photos I am making myself happier. Honestly, I’m probably using this to distract myself from my responsibilities but that is besides the point. So, what exactly makes a post worth someone’s time to stop for a few seconds to admire it. I suppose it’s about the intended purpose of the post. For example, fitness Instagram stars. Do they post photos of their defined abs for themselves or for others? Some people might take a look at these posts and only feel effected negatively, thinking that they are as good as them because they are sculpted, while other might consider these types of posts promoting body positivity. Does a post like this one make you think the person is promoting fitness? Maybe, but they also could be getting likes just for being physically fit. The comments seem to suggest the latter.

       While most of the content on social media could be considered useless and only used for personal gain, I do believe there can be exceptions to this. During my time used scrolling through Facebook, many times posts will pop up for missing children or animals. I would believe this to be ethical to spend a short amount of time away from reality to help spread the notice. The people who originally posted this content are going through the unthinkable and I think it is smart to use the internet to spread information because it travels much quicker and over more area than traditional methods. By using the internet to find lost people or pets, the community can be on the look out which is overall a greater good. If I take time out of my day to help these people spread their information than I am doing a service by them. A different example is content that is used to spread information that doing a service to the community, like a neighborhood watch program or reposting a post from a non-profit. As a Social Entrepreneurship major, we depend heavily on the communication of society and much of this communication is done online. Having a social media presence is imperative for the spreading of information efficiently, but this requires the communities help. Our phones cause major distractions as I talked about in my last blog post, but if we used this distracted time to help spread a mission statement for a non-profit that helps get people clean water or help support the homeless then maybe being distracted isn’t so bad.

       We have to be especially careful to what we post online and consider everyone’s perspective. I live by the rule that if anyone’s would be offended by what I post then I probably should not post it. We as humans have the right to voice our opinions, but we must be mindful of how our speech and thoughts affects those around us. However, it is impossible to think that everyone online is going to be kind. Sharing information online is always accessible and I think that people tend to forgot this and then run into trouble down the round when the community finds out about their deepest secrets online. Recently is has become more popular for interviewers to check social media to see if their established online footprint is professional and ethical. It also is increasingly harder to monitor unethical content that is posted online. People can come up with loop holes in code quicker than the post can be taken down. We have the power to report most things on social media, but as we were taught at a young age, the internet is forever. Monitoring the internet is too large of a task for corporations to do so it is our responsibility to only post when we feel that no one will be hurt and if receiving valuable information.

       We have a duty to ourselves and society to decide if the things we discover online are ethical or not and if they are worth our time away from reality. Sometimes we might need a couple dog videos to cheer us up and spread the word about your favorite non-profit, but we should not dote on such cause for an extended amount of time. We should be proper citizen and work to post only subjects that will be of a greater good to everyone other than feeding into their internet addiction.