How To Break Up With Your Phone By Catherine Price: An Analysis

Technology surrounds us everywhere we look. Whether it's the self-driving feature on your electric car or the electric toothbrush you use to brush your teeth in the morning. No matter what you do, you cannot escape it. One of the most prevalent forms of technology in our daily lives is social media, or online platforms where people can share/create content, as almost 4.5 billion people engage in it daily. Over the years, social media has taken more and more control over our lives as a social media content creator has become a full-time job for a large sum of people. In her book How to Break up With Your Phone, Catherine Price expresses her feelings on the soaring popularity of social media. Price writes that social media profits of users’ attention

Further, instead of using social media for entertainment, companies have transformed it into a tool for profit as our attention is being sold to advertisers. Price notes that social media feeds have been designed to be, “deliberately endless (Price 3) so users will be guaranteed to spend more and more time on the app. This endless usage of social media contributes to society’s newfound short attention span and lack of concentration. If your feed is being refreshed and you are constantly shown new things, your ability to perform daily and simple tasks will diminish. In addition, the boom in social media usage has brought increased rates of depression and deteriorating mental health. Price mentions that depression and suicide rates among teenagers is at all at time high (Price 3). Constant media usage can contribute to higher feelings of isolation and anxiety as people are separating themselves from others as people begin to compare themselves with alternate realities posted on content platforms. Social media, as a whole, has turned into a monopolizing business where companies are manipulating and taking advantage of users with no remorse and exploiting them for a

Social media has single-handedly created millions of new relationships and forms of communication between people. Although it's profiting off of our attention (Price 2), Price fails to recognize that with social media’s surge in popularity, more and more awareness is being spread to try and warn users of its effects. With today’s efforts on prioritizing mental health, social media cleanses and mediation is becoming much more common among teenagers. As long as people are bringing more and more awareness, users can get their usage under control to healthy levels. Consequently, Price mentions that more and more information being shared on social media is false and the truth is becoming more blurred (Price 4). Despite the fact that there is more fake news being shared now than ever, the creation of social media as a whole has given people, who previously could not have, the opportunity to share their message and purpose with others. It has given a voice to those who never would have gotten one before. It is our responsibility as users to be cautious of what we see and hear, but recognize the privilege we have been given to share our opinions. Without the use of social media, billions of people around the world could not be as connected and captivated by one