Psychology of Social Media Week 1 Post:

Week 1 Social Media Psychology:

This week in Social Media Psychology, I added the class so I only attended Thursday's class. In class on Thursday 4/24 we started learning about the history and development of the internet and the development of social media.  Some of the history I learned behind the internet and world wide web creation, as well as history of the usage of social media, is quiet intriguing as it gave a context for me to first see how it developed, and now after the intro, will soon be able to excitedly see how social media has and still is directly impacting the human psychology. To be exact I'm excited to see how social media is affecting the way humans think, communicate, feel or behave over extended periods of time.

I learned some very interesting important facts about the history and development of the internet and world wide web with its many social media tools, and these important history facts definitely left me inspired to see how much work and inspiration was put into the internet and social media tools, and how the creation of such social media tools, have allowed much further inspiration and people's work to be spread through these social media tools via the world wide web!

First off in regards to learning about the history of the internet, In class from videos and discussions I learned that the internet first got started back in the day as a way to communicate during the cold war. During the cold war, Eisenhower and America's Department of Defense created a group called Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which hired some of the best scientists and scholars to create inventions and technologies such as rockets and computers to help aid America in their communication efforts and to protect them. Eisenhower wanted the Advanced Research Project Agency, to create a communication tool that could send data, that even if one connection was broken it could still reach its destination.

Also a fact I found interesting that I learned from class, was in class videos I learned that later in history on top of this internet connections, a man named Tim Berners- Lee created an amazing invention called the World Wide Web, that works on top of these internet connections with importantly the purpose to help people around the world find and read documents on the internet. He created inventions such as HTTP, which are Hyper Texts for computers to be able to communicate, Urls known as Uniform Resource Locators, and lastly invented html also known as hypertext markup language which is used to design web pages.

By reading the article "25 things you might not know about the web on its 25th birthday", it made me realize that truly, 25 years ago, when the World wide web was designed little did people know, the literal enormous impact and transformation, the world wide web would have not only on people's ability to have access to and retrieve information easier, but also have access to mass communication and/ or social media. This inspired me to see and be thankful for the technology and social media tools available because of the hard work and research of others.

Learning about the history behind social media tools, the internet and the world wide web through discussions, videos and in required reading articles such as "25 things you might not know about the web on its 25th birthday", might sound cheesy but learning the historical context first of the history of social media, literally opened my mind to not only the amounts of work, inspiration, complex systems that keep the social media tools such as internet, world wide web pumping each day, but most importantly in relation to this class, I am excited to learn how social media, whether through internet world wide web or other sources, has impacted people's thinking, feeling and behaving over periods of time.

Upon reflecting on the readings and videos in class, now after having a clearer understanding of the historical context, I'm excited to learn, how social media is impacting human beings every day lives. In particular it makes me wonder if social media tools, the internet, the world wide web have more benefits or detriments on people and their cognitive, emotional and physical wellbeing. Overall, I'm just excited to see how exactly daily usage and sometimes overusage of the different tremendously well-known social media tools and applications, are impacting human kinds communication abilities, thinking and learning processes, as well as learn the realities of the benefits and the pitfalls that can come with such an obsession with social media tools people have these days! I'm so thankful for the opportunity to learn, grow and help communicate, serve and love with these social media applications and tools so widely available. Overall, after this weeks class, obviously, most all of these questions I obviously don't have all the answers to yet, but from taking this class, I am honestly excited, interested, and can't wait to learn about the impacts social media has on the human psychology in their thinking, feeling and behaving over extended periods of time! I will use this knowledge I learn about social media effects, to teach my future family to choose healthy choices and habits with regards to choosing social media tools, as well as, facts to maybe inspire and sadly maybe even have to scare them to see the realities of the long term affects of their choices and to choose lifestyles and behaviors especially with social media that will help them keep growing as our wish to keep positively, growing, learning and serving in general.

As a side note just seeing and learning about the unfolding history of the world wide web, made me realize how honestly thankful I am and honestly of course how blessed I am to live in a time where there are networks of knowledge, opportunity, loving connections, even in regards to social media tools available, to help me achieve and learn about god, because the glory of god is intelligence, and when I am motivated to work hard out of love, and find my place in the world, I can use my knowledge I learn and put the knowledge to practical use, to bless my future family and most importantly to me, out of love, and inspire me to serve and work for people in compassion. I'm honestly sincerely thankful for my opportunity to learn here at Byu Hawaii, but now I need to keep using my time wisely to accomplish all the tasks this semester heavenly father has blessed me with being able to have the opportunity to have!

Thanks

The end of blog one

McKenzie Ames