Thursday, April 25, 2024
It has been a debate for the past few years on whether TikTok should be banned in the United States. The online social media platform gained immense popularity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and has since grown in users. Concerns about TikTok have risen from its parent company, ByteDance, being based […]
I think we’d all be lying if we said we have not been persuaded to buy something from an ad or a video on the internet. On social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, ads are no stranger, but TikTok advertises in a different way. Of course, while scrolling through […]
Over the last decade and a half, social media has completely torn down and rebuilt the ways in which we connect and interact with each other. Soon, however, it’s possible platforms and their regulatory practices could open a new chapter after time on Capitol Hill. The Supreme Court will be […]
Anyone who was on the internet in 2017 knows of the Vlog Squad, a group of friends led by the head creator, David Dobrik. The squad released a lot of content throughout the year, constantly growing in popularity across all platforms. One member of the squad, Natalie Mariduena, more popularly […]
I remember when Tumblr banned adult content in 2018 in response to the iOS App Store removing it due to finding unlawful pornographic content. In 2019, Automattic bought Tumblr from Verizon and began trekking towards building a platform that neither promotes sexual exploitation nor submits to purity culture. A recent […]
Recently, BBC News reporter Marianna Spring faced some controversy as her social media disinformation experiment came to light. For her research, she created five social media accounts for five fake Americans with different hypothetical political views and personalities to see what kind of disinformation may come across their feed. While […]
A few months ago, I worked at a children’s birthday party. The birthday girl was turning seven years old, and I painted her and her friends’ nails and helped with crafts, like slime making. I was beyond shocked when in the middle of the party, several of the kids pulled […]
All summer long, teenagers have been participating in a phenomenon known as BeReal. The app, which launched in 2020, gained significant popularity during the last few months for promoting its users to be authentic online. According to Time, downloads “increased 86% month-over-month from June for a total of 7.8 million” […]
Photo courtesy of World's Direction, Flickr. These days, brands are taking a new approach to their social media marketing, coming in the form of creating content that aligns more with Gen Z and millennial humor than it does professional standards. Brands like Duolingo and Lionsgate hop on trendy sounds, boosting their name with millions of […]
Photo courtesy of Harlen Cruz. You remember the black square Instagram flood of 2020, and the following backlash which brought to common use the term “performative activism.” When someone performs activism, they do something with no real impact and claim to be part of a movement, just as so many […]
