As the digital age continues advancing day by day, social media has become part and parcel of almost everyone’s life both in rural and urban areas. It is a great medium for entertainment, to catch up with friends and family, to foster a sense of community with other users, create visibility around a specific cause, and to learn useful information from around the world.
This is not to say it does not have its downfalls. Since most social media platforms are free for all, there are elements that give it quite a bad ring. This is the unfortunate part of social media where cyberbullying, privacy invasions, misinformation, and abuse are rife and these can all lead to anxiety, low self esteem and other mental health issues for users. Even for the most disciplined of us, social media has the power to influence our thoughts and behaviors both on and offline. It therefore goes without saying that consuming positive content plays a major role in our emotional balance and wellbeing.
These issues are well laid out in a global survey by electronics giant LG who found that 28% of social media users who consume negative comment have increased incidents of anxiety. The survey also found that often times, social media algorithms present more of negative content than positive, to the tune of almost a half of users. In short, other than being time consuming, unplanned social media use can and does make people unhappy.
It is with this in mind that LG Electronics has unveiled the global campaign dubbed “optimism your feed”, a campaign that seeks to encourage people to engage with more positive content online. This is quite apt for LG, given that its tagline is ‘Life’s good’, in line with the commitment to improve the lives of their customers. The campaign works by creating a playlist designed to retrain your social media feed so that the algorithms spit up more positive content.
This is quite welcome. For most of us, whatever comes onto our For You Page is what we continue watching, so the algorithms take it that that is the content we are comfortable with. Unfortunately, this can lead users into a rabbit hole of negativity as we have mentioned above. If I can take my feed as an example, I make sure to be in corners on social media that are not too aggravating, but negativity still finds its way to me since I have not exactly curated my algorithm. That is why I’m curious about LG’s Optimism your feed campaign.
I’m only now beginning to explore this and will be explaining more about it in the next article. In the meantime, LG would like to welcome you to be part of a happier world by hopping onto the optimism bandwagon. You can take part in three simple steps. First, head over to LG’s social media pages ie Tiktok, YouTube or on the official campaign website here and find optimism your feed. Second, find content that resonates with and engage with it by commenting, liking or sharing. This way you are retraining your algorithm to increase positive content on your feed. Third, spread the cheer by sharing the playlist with friends and family.
Just like that the world will become a happier place one scroll at a time!
