Final Major Project- Psychological impact of Social Media Essay

 

 

 

Social Media is an aspect of our everyday life, due to society being built through the use of internet, WIFI and the communication using these platforms. A staggering 53.6% of the entire worlds population use social media, setting the average daily usage world wide to 2.25 hours a day. Social Media and the impact it has on individuals psychologically both negatively and positively is the theme I have based my final major project around. The current impact of a national lockdown has also caused a increase on how reliant as a nation we are on technology and social media, therefore I wanted to explore this matter while it was increasing to effect the way people go about their daily lives such as virtual meetings, increasing screen time, New social media platforms and the increase of negativity spread online. Overall the main concepts I want to explore and gain more understanding for are: How social media has engineered us to accept how reliant we all are on it, and similarly the concept of our phones being the first and last things we engage with in the morning and at night.

 

Firstly I began by researching ideas and concepts in relation to my idea such as; semiotics, ‘The Social Dilemma- Netflix’, statistical research assessing the effects social media has on mental health, along with my personal primary research I carried out, consisting of a questionnaire completed on a social media platform by my personal platform followers.  I want to develop understanding and review a variety of ways for visually using graphic design to communicate my theme, and by using research this was a method of contextualising my ideas of how technology using features to draw us into spending more times online; adverts, simplistic logos (semiotics), suggestions, Algorithms. All of which have relevance to ‘How social media psychologically impacts us.’ Initially I conducted primary research based on peoples personal incite and opinion on their usage of social media, which I had previously discussed in my final major project introduction presentation. By watching ‘The social dilemma’ on Netflix I discovered more aspects of interests I wanted to explore in relation to social media usage, including; Are the effects of social media addiction the same as drug addiction? The concept that societies usage and attention while on social media is the product. Lastly I was interested by the term ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’, as this was something I had never hear of or considered before. Snapchat dysmorphia is the dysmorphia created for snapchat users due to the filters used on the application that provide smoothing features and blur out any imperfections on users faces. The dysmorphia was first acknowledged in 2018, when people started using plastic surgery to have their real perception adapted to a more ‘filtered effect.’ This is only one aspect of the effects social media has on peoples idea of how ‘perfect’ we should all look and the idea that ‘perfection’ is one visual image, which I personally believe not to be the case, because we all have our own ideas of our ‘realistic perfect selves.’

 

The main ideas and concepts that I have sourced inspiration from for my final major project consists of the personal effects social media has on people psychologically. I sourced this via documentaries and contrasting artists works such as Ben Fearley, Arvida Bystom, Richard Prince. Additionally I also used used books such as ‘Folding techniques for designers from sheet to form- By Paul Jackson’ along with ‘Symbol by Angus Hyland,’ as a way of assisting my physical experimental work.

 

Social Dilemma was a Netflix documentary I watched, featuring how social media is a addiction and how these platforms gather personal data from all of use consisting of: what we engage with, which advertisement we react to and when we are on social media. All of these components are used against use to create personal experiences for use online causing addiction. As a way of contextualising and improve my understanding of the ways we process what we observe on social media, I produced a questionnaire which I posted on Instagram for my followers to engage with. This significantly improved the perspective I had on societies understanding on the negatives of social media, and if people agree as a society we are addicted to our phones. Due to this I was inspired by the question ‘Would you find it hard to communicate with out social media?.’ Leading me into the assessment of how social media improves the way we can communicate worldwide, with out followers, and on discovery pages, but also through the use of icons and how our brains recognise icons meanings, also known as semiotics. From this process of developing my visual ideas and contextualising the primary research I conduced I learnt that Semiotics are a significant feature of the psychological visual experience we have whiles online, by how visually simplistic they are to observe and how recognisable their meanings are, therefore relating this to how impacting social media feeds can be psychologically on our brains I learnt that ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ is a contradictory emotion that takes place when a person continues to actively use their phones despite the feeling of irritation and discomfort, linking to how addictive these platforms have become. Therefore, after all of this research I still couldn’t understand why we allow social media to continue manipulating use into spending more time on our phones, just because it is a preferred method of communication with in today’s society, and why we are all ignoring the impact it is having on us.

 

From artists research I found this enabled me to compare different techniques of visually communicating and conceptually communicating the theme of the effects of social media. Ben Fearley is one of the illustrative artists that I researched.  I was visually drawn to his work due to the concept being explicitly portrayed. He used social media icons as a way of visually representing his concept , which linked to my research into semiotics. I also liked the message of how social media consumes use, and society as a whole, which is portrayed through the imagery of the icons being displayed on a plate. Conceptually I am attracted to Ben Fearley but visually I feel like his work is to explicit. For me I like to make the observer assess and make sense of the concept their selves. Therefore a contrasting photographer with a similar perspective of the way she portrays her work is Arvida Bystrom completed a sector of work called ‘inflated Fiction’ exploring how our perception and experience of reality has been moulded. Part of her work involved personally implanting 30 chips into her skin as a way of exploring the concept of ho technology is beginning to be intrusive to our bodies. I would like to respond to the idea of this by producing my own photography shoot experimenting with casting social media feeds and comments and tones of social media icon onto a person, reflecting the idea of how impacting social media is and the psychological impact of it on a persons well being. Overall from a artistic perspective I think the psychological impact social media is having on society hasn’t been explored a vast amount. Due to this I was able to begin my work with in depth research both primary and secondary and explorations which inspired my own work, because I struggled t find artists whoo I both visually and conceptually liked.

 

The Research gathered from my primary questionnaire, carried my inspiration for ideas. This is because it enhances how people experience different emotions in relation to social media. The platform that I used to conduct this research was the social media platform, Instagram. My idea behind using this platform was the answers would be collected by users of the social media, which would create more reliable and relevant opinions, enabling me contrasting how they feel. Additionally, I feel by conducting the research in this manor it was collected in the most valuable and in a non-bias way. One component of social media that I want to focus on with in my art is the impact of the idea of ‘perfection’ and how we compare ourselves to what we see online, but the ideas of this is ironic, because people only post online what they think they look good in, not the reality of their day-to-day life. Through my research I discovered that people are beginning to get cosmetic surgery as a way to appear more filtered and have ‘smooth skin’ which is in result of snapchat filters. Statistically it has been proven that fifty seven percent of social media users edit their photos before posting online.

 

As a method of increasing inspiration and relevance of my working practice and practical work I wanted to produce for my final major project I began to experiment with a traditional ink pressing method to explore the impact of visual and conceptually communicating typography in relation to addiction of social media. From this process I explore the process of composition, busy, minimalist symmetrical layout, and more unsymmetrical positioning. Including different surfaces which I experimented with printing onto; sugar paper, cartridge paper, tracing paper and printed yellow paper. I gathered some inspiration of simplistic lettering fonts from the style that would be typically used on social media. Exploring this further I layered two prints portrait and landscape which increased the visual impact proceed with the monotone print. Additionally, I then moved onto producing a three-dimensional structure using the prints I produced and adding dimension. My idea behind doing so was to see how the structure would photograph once shadow and light was casted onto the structured contours, and how this adapted the effect of the words were perceived. The structural experiment worked successfully by adding dimension and emphasis to the lettering, but I feel some depth to the power behind the word ‘Addiction’ was lost, simply before the formation was no longer 2D. Therefore moving further I would like to manipulate the idea of adding depth through tone and digitally layering, or layering on a photocopier, manipulating composition and layout.

 

Contextually I was widely influenced socially, considering the impacts the media as a whole has on society from the impact on young teenagers growing up in a society of visual comparison and who was initially effected by the impacts of social media the addictive nature of notifications, alerts and status of attention one of your posts have had. The time aspect of social media dates back to 1997, when a platform called ‘Six Degrees’ was created, which essentially enabled users to become friends with one another and have their own personal profile. Therefore essentially this formed to basic purpose and layout for what we know social media to be today, but is social media the same for the users of today in comparison to when the platforms were initially created. Today the most commonly used social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram and twitter, and to put this usage into perspective for the current pandemic period, 72% of users increased their social media consumption over lockdown, resulting in individuals spending four hours a day online, which is almost a hour more then post-pandemic.

 

Overall through consideration of the controversial views that my final major project may provoke. My personal perspective of the issue of social media is overall negative, due t my personal experience on it. I think as a whole it is negative due to my personal screen time and the amount that it has increased over the pandemic, I experiences the effects cognitive dissonance and therefore continued to use my phone despite the discomfort it was producing. Additionally I also find the effects negative because of how reliant as a generation and society we are on it. The idea of it being more difficult to communicate with people if it isn’t through social media. Controversially there are also positive perspectives individuals will have about social media, such as how it helps provide information globally across the world within seconds, and how it has enabled families to keep in contact via facetimes throughout the times of lockdown. Therefore contrasting perspectives of how social media is used and the balance people have on it may change dependant on their personal experience.

 

Finally I would like to express my idea through the contrast of typography and photography. Additionally I would also like to combine the both through a photo shoot and use of a projector, to see how scale of typography and symbolism can impact the final visual concept. The plan I will produce for this will be experimenting with font and font size, alone with colours and how the different colours change the mood conveyed with in the image. I will also use illustration represent the contrast of scale.

 

In conclusion my current findings stand at the fact that individuals screen time is increasingly rising, and this matter is going ignored, despite the fact this is simply addiction, this year alone the average time a person spends on their phone has increased by 37 minutes. Additionally the inspiration I have gained from the artist Arvida Bystom, is what gave me the idea for the combination of the projection of typography and photographing it in a studio, this is due to the fact of being inspired by Bystoms concept but wanting to manipulate the idea on a exterior in comparison to embedding it. Therefore I have learnt the link between peoples opinion of social media and how this impacts the statistics. All of the knowledge I have learnt will be applied to my practical work through both visually and conceptually. For example I will work with some statistics through out the projection photoshoot and working with how this will visually impact the concept I am trying the communicate.

 

Bibliography:

 

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David Airey. 2021. Symbol, a book by Angus Hyland and Steven Bateman | David Airey. [online] Available at: < https://www.davidairey.com/symbol-angus-hyland-steven-bateman > [Accessed 27 April 2021].

 

Dazed. 2021. Arvida Byström on why she implanted 30 NFC chips under her skin. [online] Available at: < https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/42591/1/arvida-bystrom-implanted-30-nfc-chips-under-her-skin-inflated-fiction-exhibition > [Accessed 27 April 2021].

 

 

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Ramphul, K. and Mejias, S., 2021. Is "Snapchat Dysmorphia" a Real Issue?. [online] Available at: < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5933578/ > [Accessed 27 April 2021].

 

Smart Insights. 2021. Global social media statistics research summary [updated 2021]. [online] Available at: < https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/#:~:text=Research%20by%20Global%20WebIndex%20that,2%20hours%20and%2025%20minutes. > [Accessed 27 April 2021].

 

 

the Guardian. 2021. Faking it: how selfie dysmorphia is driving people to seek surgery. [online] Available at: < https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/23/faking-it-how-selfie-dysmorphia-is-driving-people-to-seek-surgery  > [Accessed 27 April 2021].

 

the Guardian. 2021. Snapchat photo filters linked to rise in cosmetic surgery requests. [online] Available at: < https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/08/snapchat-surgery-doctors-report-rise-in-patient-requests-to-look-filtered  > [Accessed 27 April 2021].

Google Books. 2021. Folding Techniques for Designers. [online] Available at: < https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Folding_Techniques_for_Designers/cfUgEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover > [Accessed 27 April 2021].