The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/social-media/)
CFI said that the sexual violence demonstration was canceled before criticism from the Coalition for Mutual Liberation was publicized.
It feels surreal to live in an age where everyone has access to the internet, allowing us to create a narrative of who we are, and what we stand for from the touch of our phone screens. The technological advancements in the past century have created unspoken interconnectedness, resulting in people giving their two cents where unneeded.
Or perhaps, people have become more out of touch than ever before. There is growing concern that we are living in a world where empathy is not prioritized, and people’s devices have become extensions of themselves. As someone who has grown up always having had access to the internet, it feels like second nature to pick up my phone upon the next buzz or ding. While it isn’t news that my generation has become increasingly reliant on technology to complete schoolwork, network and search for jobs, I feel this disconnect all the more in recent weeks.
Through her YouTube channel and fashion brand, Kate Stephens ’26 works to show consumers the agricultural process behind clothing and food.
Every once in a while, I click on a verified creator’s story out of curiosity, and it’s always funny to see how long it takes to click through the entire story and how insignificant most of the things they choose to share are.
The creation and rapidly developing popularity of BeReal, an app that seeks to embody the idea of authentic social media, proves that authentic social media is an oxymoron. BeReal sends users a notification once a day at a random time, prompting them to take both a front-facing and back-facing photo of whatever they’re doing at that moment. The mission statement is: “Your friends for real. A new and unique way to discover who your friends really are in their daily life.” What started out as a new concept for social media that heavily nudges users to be genuine soon became another highlight reel under the guise of authenticity.
When BeReal first began to get popular in early 2022, it was mostly within very small circles. Back then, it was much easier to comply with the concept by taking the photo on time, rather than repeatedly deleting and retaking it.
Coming into college, we are conditioned to curate our profiles to provide a solid first impression to the friends we make in the first weeks. However, as the months pass and the rest of our lives come into focus, those old memories are replaced with new ones, and the only thing that actually seems to matter becomes our core relationships and times spent with others — not superficial perceptions.
BeReal walks a middle road between throwing your phone into Beebe Lake and spending your vacation obsessively taking selfies. It’s what I like to call dumb social media — apps whose entire appeal is their limitations. BeReal does not allow users to see follower counts, filter their pictures or post more than once a day. The app exists more or less as an elaborate inside joke between its users, a meme turned to reality. And it’s not alone in the dumb social media category.
A year and a half filled with uncertainty has left Cornellians and Americans nationwide grasping at the straws of capricious public health advisory in search of information to protect their communities from COVID-19. Cornell Tech experts note that social media has played an irrevocable role in allowing avenues for disputing the science surrounding COVID-19, straining pandemic response globally.
Many students bought and sold surplus tickets for the 2021 commencement, slipping the University rules designating two guests per graduate.
My friend was ecstatic when he thought he found his professor’s profile on Snapchat. We’d soon learn that the discovery was too good to be true; the account was not the professor’s, who quickly disappointed inquisitive students in a Piazza post. The greater irony is that as students, our communication with professors outside the classroom is indeed limited to Piazza, aside from email and now Zoom. However, as younger generations increasingly link themselves to the social media phenomenon, it begs the question how much longer this “distance” between professors and students will remain.