Aidan Duke

Writer

Sophomore Chelsea Milligan woke up at 6:58 AM just before her alarm sounded, which had become an annoying routine, and she remembered the red low battery symbol and was pretty sure that she had plugged her phone in to charge from the previous night where she had been endlessly scrolling on TikTok.

 Checking her phone for any new notifications, per habit, she saw her friend had shared a video of two dogs dancing for a treat.

Milligan chuckled, but her smile was short-lived as the annoying alarm noise filled her room.  She quickly silenced the alarm and returned to the app only to find a Cheeto Puff advertisement.

Annoyed, she threw her phone on her bed and began to get ready for the day.  

Soon, she would be reluctantly entering Marlow High School and attending her first hour.

The Cheeto advertisement was an aggravation, and she gave little thought to it until she returned to the social media app and continued to be bombarded with the ad, which is when she began to draw some parallels.

The previous day Milligan had debated with a friend on which was better, Cheeto uffs or crunchy,  and now she realized that the ad on TikTok was no coincidence, and strangely enough she desired some Cheeto puffs.  

This phenomenon sits on the edge of creepy and somewhat problematic if she gave it enough thought.  

Milligan then started to examine other parts of her life and began to see that social media was affecting her decisions in life, not in a good way, and maybe more than she would like to admit. 

“I used to be on social media apps all the time but started to stop because of how it was changing me and my friends in negative ways,” declared Milligan. “I feel that the content on social media causes people to change who they are and the way they act.”

One theory that explains why Milligan and her friends might be affected by social media apps is the Social Proximity Effect.

It all started ba ck in 1950 when a certain individual named Leon Festiger, with the help of his colleagues, created the theory of Social Proximity Effect.

This social effect explains how physical and psychological closeness to a person can cause someone to adopt an attraction for them.

This attraction has nothing to do with romance but instead focuses on the influence a connection with a certain individual might have as they spend more and more time together.  

Before technology brought about the telephone, radio, television, or the internet, this phenomenon could only occur due to face to face contact that people shared as they interacted with one another.  

However, people are now able to get onto many social media apps whenever they please and experience the proximity effect through other people’s posts and videos.

In theory, a specific attraction might not be achieved when you consider the vast amount of content one could view with most social media apps, but the potential for connections remain somewhat hidden through targeted advertising, filtering, and marketing algorithms, which could eventually form a subliminal connection as a digital proximity effect.  

Further application of Festinger’s Social Proximity Effect reveals that while some negative connections could potentially be formed, social media apps can possibly form positive attractions as well.

A student that has observed social media as a positive connection is Junior Estrella Molina.

“I feel that social media is beneficial for me because it allows me to stay connected with my friends and my community,” declared Molina.

Social media’s attraction is not something that can only be negative or positive but is a mixture of both depending on the connection it has with the user.

One person that believes social media can be very useful if handled correctly is Police Officer Ronnie Branch.

“Social Media is a great source for students to use and has allowed them to have more opportunities than they would have without it,” expressed Branch. “At the end of the day anything can be bad or good so it depends on how someone uses social media and their intent.”

Like Spiderman said, with great power comes great responsibility so the next time someone is just scrolling endlessly on a social media app be cautious.