Nora's Narrative: A Journey Through Words

I remember spending a significant portion of time in college attempting to learn how to do my own nails – and I don’t just mean paint them with nail polish. I was spending hundreds of dollars at the nail salon every few weeks getting acrylic nails (for those not familiar with what this is – it’s just fake nails!) I was fed up with how much money I was spending, and frankly could no longer afford it. So I bought the materials needed to give myself fake nails at home, and I spent hours on YouTube researching how to make my nails look like salon nails. 

Before I knew it, ALL of the suggested videos on my YouTube account, instagram page, and even facebook were of nail techniques and how to properly paint fake nails at home. And of course, I was interacting with every single video that came up. Little did I know at the time that acrylic nails are incredibly bad for you. They lead to very thin and brittle nail beds, they include a wide range of chemicals, and there have even been studies linking acrylic nails to cancer. Of course, absolutely no videos were showing up on my social media feeds letting me know about any of this. But the interesting thing was, when I looked up the consequences of acrylic nails, there were a plethora of videos and articles explaining why they are bad for you. 

“Stickiness,” in terms of social media, is the ability of a platform to attract and retain its users’ attention in order to keep them engaged for longer periods of time. How social media platforms do this is by giving individuals personalized content recommendations and including features like the ability to like posts, make comments, etc. Social platforms have algorithms that prioritize the content most likely to create user interaction (Patel, 2024). For me – this meant showing me fake nail content all the time.

There are many benefits to this kind of mode; – such as promoting powerful messages like #BLM or the #MeToo movement and amplifying voices of those who often go unheard. By prioritizing these kinds of messages in a user’s feed, we are fostering community building and inspiring action by constantly being the first thing on someone’s mind when they go to their instagram explore page. By creating and sharing content that resonates with a user’s beliefs, social media can keep promoting awareness of important social movements. In addition, this can provide a space for like-minded individuals to share their ideas, connect, and even collaborate on advocacy projects. Through targeted campaigns, social media can further inspire people to support the initiatives they believe in (Patel, 2024). 

Alongside these benefits however, there are still limitations to consider in regards to the idea of “stickiness.” For one, we are constantly being exposed to ideas that align with what we want to see, not necessarily what we should see. To circle back to my personal example, I wanted to see how to do my nails at home, but what I should have seen and been exposed to is the negative side of the fake nails I was using. A lot of people end up in this boat, where social media algorithms create a filter, leaving users exposed to information that simply reinforces existing opinions, beliefs, and interests. This can lead to societal polarization and even hinder efforts to promote understanding across many different viewpoints. It is not shocking news that social media is designed to capture our attention and try to keep it for as long as possible, but in order to do this we are subject to all of our search history being in the hands of people we don’t even know exist – and this is a scary idea that we often don’t think about, and another limitation of the stickiness model (Chiang & Hsiao, 2015). 

Overall, while it is great to be able to continuously see content you are interested in, it is imperative that we do our best to not be narrow minded when using social media platforms. If we are spending a lot of time looking up certain topics (whether these topics be political, personal, or something else entirely) it is so crucial to also spend time looking up different perspectives to what you are interested in, and ensure that you are remaining responsible for your own exposure to diverse ideas. 

Citations:

Patel, N. (2024a). What is engaging content and how to create it. https://neilpatel.com/blog/create-engaging-content

Chiang, H.-S., & Hsiao, K.-L. (2015, February). YouTube Stickiness: The needs, personal, and environmental perspective. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276235957_YouTube_stickiness_The_needs_personal_and_environmental_perspective