Blog #3 Social Media Is Making You Stupid

   The article that I am blogging about it titled "Social Media Is Making You Stupid" written by Inc, a partner of Time Magazine. The article begins by saying how social media makes us unproductive and can even complicate relationships, but it then goes into a thought, can social media make you dumb? Scientists created 5 virtual social networks made up of volunteers. They broke up these volunteers by grouping some in a tight cluster, others were in contact with everyone, and some were not in contact with anyone. After they grouped the volunteers they asked a set of brainteasers to see if those who are more socially connected could decide the right answer.  


   The research showed that volunteers that were in the tightly connected network gave the correct answer more times but also had more opportunities to steal the answer from their social media "friends". Phys,org states, "“This result showed that when the students had lots of connections to peers they could recognize where they had given a wrong answer and swap it for the right one" (Social Media Is Making You Stupid). However, when given a new question that their connections did not have the so called copycats did not preform any better than before they joined the social site. 

   The results offer benefits for both fans and critics of social media sites. If you look at things on the group level, there is a positive correlation for social media. "“Being able to copy from other people in vast networks means analytical responses rapidly spread, fulfilling their promise of improved decision-making for well-connected people,” says Phys.org "" (Social Media Is Making You Stupid). However, on the individual level social media sites are not making you noticeably smarter. 

  This relates to our class because it deals with the behind the scenes aspects of social media. It shows how it might affect productivity which is crucial in a business environment, and it shows that positives and negatives of  being a tight nit social networking sight. 

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