User:Oiraignacio/sandbox

Scientific Basis
The documentary explains how an extended amount of media consumption can subtly have a plethora of negative impacts on individuals. Orlowski presents specific data to support this thesis, such as:


 * A 62% increase in hospitalizations for American females ages 15-19 and a 189% increase in females ages 10-14 due to self harm, beginning in 2010-2011.
 * Haidt explains that this spike is due to the great amount of time spent on social media, because people have the tendency to check social media as often as they can and the psychological effects it has on the brain. If a user is feeling distressed, media can release dopamine into the brain, and they eventually find themselves dependent upon it. Harris refers to this as a "digital pacifier" in the film. The reliance on technology in this manner can lead to inability to properly deal with emotions because it alters the development of one's frontal cortex.
 * The release of dopamine makes technology work similar to addictive drugs, such as alcohol or nicotine.
 * A 70% increase in suicide for females ages 15-19 and a 151% increase in females ages 10-14, beginning when social media was first introduced in 2009.
 * The phenomenon of patients wanting to receive plastic surgery in order to look more similar to a picture with a filter on it due to Snapchat Dysmorphia, which can lead to a body dysmorphic disorder and the lowering of one's self esteem
 * This is because individuals may have a constant feeling that they should take on an appearance similar to the one they have on social media, leading to a spike in individuals diagnosed with depression.
 * Snapchat introduced the first filters in January 2015. Since then, there has been a significant increase in body dysmorphic disorders (BDD), which negatively affects one's mental and physical functionalities.
 * Harris explains that increased media usage can lead children to "compare themselves to unrealistic standards of beauty."
 * The practice of using positive intermittent reinforcement in media development to keep users' attention for longer periods of time. It is mentioned that this psychological practice in media is similar to how slot machines work in Vegas, in which the user is unsure if and when something good will happen, so they continue to check their devices in hopes that something new will come.
 * Randima (Randy) Fernando also explains that modern technology is improving exponentially, where today's processing power is a trillion times faster when compared to the 1960's. However, human brains have made no proportional advances.
 * Technology continues to advance at rapid speeds because it is able to constantly learn, whereas humans needs breaks in a learning process. Seibert explains that machine learning makes this possible because the technology acts on its own after an algorithm is made.
 * People are highly likely to believe false information, such as conspiracy theories, on the internet because of the large sum of money made from it, affecting off-screen lives.
 * False information on Twitter spreads six times faster than true, according to an MIT study, because people have a greater emotional reaction towards fake news.
 * Pizzagate was a popular conspiracy theory that circulated the internet in 2016 which claimed that politicians were associated with human trafficking, and Comet Ping Pong was one of the locations where the events took place.
 * Diresta explains that the algorithms are biased towards false information because as more people show interest in such articles, it is recommended to more people.